Planners as Market Actors: Rethinking State–Market Relations in Land and Property

This paper challenges the dichotomous distinction between planning and the market promoted by mainstream economists, by arguing that markets should be seen as socially constructed not given. Drawing on recent developments in institutional and behavioural economics, it contends that what is required is not for planners to become market actors, but rather to realise they are already “market actors” intricately involved in framing and re-framing property markets. By highlighting planners’ potential to re-make, rather than merely accept, market conditions, the paper calls for state–market relations in land and property to be accorded a central place within the new spatial planning.