Every area development starts with a long list of ambitions. Greenery, outdoor space, amenities, sustainability, affordability and mobility. Everyone subscribes to them. No plan starts with the idea of scrapping quality. Until the first calculations are made.
Then it turns out that many of those ambitions never had a fair chance. Not because they are unrealistic, but because maximum land yields were bid for during acquisition. The land price was fixed before talking about what the site needs. From then on, that price determined the latitude. Energy, materials, climate adaptation, nature and parking must conform to a starting point that has nothing to do with content. What can be done after that almost always takes place within the margin.
The asymmetry of the system
We calculate with what is easy to determine: the maximum number of homes. That drives the acquisition price or the acquisition contract. Future-proof ambitions only take part if they are anchored in advance in environmental visions, programs and plans or visible in future steering from the Bbl. This creates an asymmetry that colors the entire process. Land value comes first, content comes second.
Quality is thus relegated to the bottom line, when it should be the basis of any livable area. That's the pink elephant in area development. It's not the parking standards, not the sustainability rules and not the supposedly supra-legal requirements that block ambitions. It is the land valuation that precedes the conversation about quality and determines the bandwidth within which everything should fit.
Quality as a value generator
Anyone who takes a substantive approach to area development sees that outdoor space, amenities, future-proofing and affordability can reinforce each other. This is not wishful thinking. Transit-oriented development shows that public quality often makes property values rise harder than a high land price. The Superblocks in Barcelona are a case in point.
This is also visible closer to home. Take De Kwekerij in Doetinchem. Exactly the same homes were also built in Haarlemmermeer, with the same technology, materials, sustainability, design quality and, above all, environmental quality. Yet the average buyer there paid almost double the four-ton purchase price in Doetinchem.
Not because more quality was delivered, but because much of the value simply flowed away to the original landowner and intervening speculators. In Doetinchem, the same product was realized with considerably less money without compromising on (environmental) quality. So the difference is not in what is built, but in how the system allocates value and who appropriates that value.
Quality therefore requires a different logic. Not first calculate and then delete, but first clearly determine what is needed and only then calculate.
The perverse incentive of land
Still, even after high acquisition, municipalities steer for the highest price again in tenders. The scope for quality is thus capped twice before the substantive conversation can even begin.
The problem goes deeper. In the current system, it is not the person who delivers quality who earns, but the person who owns the right land at the right time. The added value created by public policy, zoning changes and area development ends up with owners and speculators who contribute nothing to affordability or quality of life. That private profit comes directly at the expense of public space.
As long as land is allowed to function as an investment product, quality will continue to depend on chance. A plan's financial space is determined by what someone once paid for a plot, not by what an area needs. It is illogical and it is destructive. Housing is a social task, not a revenue model for middlemen.
About residual value
The residual value approach is a good tool, but only if it is applied consistently. That means stopping separate land and building operations. It also means that costs for area quality, future standards developments, parking, climate adaptation and other area tasks are part of the same calculation system. Only then will it work.
But as long as land pricing is frozen early and acts as a final outcome without substantive direction, nothing will change. Then the existing system will continue to lead and quality will once again come late to the table.
Empire and EU as a preconditions machine
Standards for CO2 reduction, material use, circularity and adaptation are becoming more and more decisive. But as long as these are not timely and sharply issued, they remain out of the picture in land bids. As soon as they become reality, resistance arises, framed as supra-legal, while they were foreseeable a long time ago. But when the shovel goes into the ground, supra-legal no longer exists. Then the laws of the moment apply.
The lack of a national guideline on future-proof construction shows what happens when predictability is lacking: three years of stagnation.
The Environment Act as a lever
The tools in the Environment Act offer an opportunity to break the order. By anchoring ambitions for climate, adaptation, living environment and future value in good time, they become part of the development logic even before land is traded. Developers know where they stand and speculation becomes more risky.
Even in complex projects, such as the Mandela neighborhood, you see market players translating investments in quality into a lower land price. The value is then reaped in the future, by buyers, investors and the municipality itself.
The sustainability of practice
Pace, quality and affordability combine to form the task. If we want to future-proof area development, the conversation starts with a simple question.
What quality does this place need and what does that mean for land value?
As long as acquisition prices remain out of the picture, ambitions run aground on the same wall. That wall is not invisible. It is in the middle of the process and pushes quality to the margins. While quality is the basis of value.
It's time to reverse the order. First determine what an area needs. Then determine what the land may cost. Only then is there room to stack ambitions. Only then does it become clear that quality is not a closing item but the foundation of value.
This article was written by Jan Willem van de Groep, programmer, future thinker and publicist. He is known, among other things, for the government program Building Balance.
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