The relative value of a piece of land in relation to others depends mainly on the possibility of greater or lesser urban use "Use (urban planning)" (more or less built area for a given land area), its more or less central position in relation to the population, the social groups present, the environmental quality, the public services and urbanization in the environment, the employment offer in the area or the proximity to facilities or communication nodes among other reasons.[3].
The variation in social, environmental or urbanization conditions, or the authorization of greater urban use of a land in accordance with urban planning, or of uses not authorized until now, may alter its value in relation to that of others. The fair distribution of benefits and burdens among land owners can be achieved in the sectors of developable land that are planned to be transformed into urban areas through reparcelling, as Spanish urban planning legislation has historically required. However, such distribution of burdens and benefits derived from urbanization has never been addressed in Spain at a general level, since the taxes levied on land ownership are not enough to compensate for the benefits or damages derived from the unequal fate that the land may suffer due to changes in social or environmental conditions or decisions by urban planning authorities.
This is especially evident in the benefit that may arise from the authorization of larger buildable areas[3] or the reclassification of land that will go from being rural to urban and therefore much more profitable[18] (especially when, due to its situation, there were no expectations of such a transformation), despite the transfers and urbanization works to which the owners are obliged. In the case of some Spanish autonomous communities, regional land legislation has made the urban development agent[19][20] (real estate developer)[21] the beneficiary of the capital gains obtained with these reclassifications to the detriment of the owners, but, regardless of the system planned by each community, and especially during the real estate bubble 1997 – 2007, the reclassification of land has been common in accordance with urban planning agreements that justified assumptions specific modifications of the planning or with ad hoc revisions of the planning, for the benefit of companies promoting large urban development actions[22][23][24] that acquire the land with the purpose of its reclassification, and ultimately, also for the benefit of financial entities.[21].
In the words of Jorge Agudo,[25] "Since in this matter administrative decisions are dominated by a very wide margin of discretion, land classification has been identified more with a 'lottery' than with an objective and reasonable decision. This 'planning lottery' generates a 'comparison effect' between those who are favored by the administrative decisions and those who see how their property maintains its rustic character and, therefore, remains empty. of profitable uses. As the owners who do not benefit from the urban planning decisions see the heritage content inherent to their right diminished, it is easy to understand that among their main objectives is to ensure that their land goes to the next stage, 'becoming' developable land.".
Thus, Manuel de Solá-Morales suspected[26] that the negligence of the Administration in allowing the formation of marginal urbanizations built without a license near the cities was due to an interest in creating capital gains in the intermediate lands and subsequently authorizing their urbanization: "The magnitude of the 'absolute' income generated just by converting the rural land to urban use is so great, and the conditions for the city to orient itself in the direction of those lands are so uncertain, that It is advisable to abstain from a part of that income to reduce the risk of this uncertainty.”
For J. M. Naredo, reclassifications and increases in buildability are an endemic evil of urban planning in Spain:[27] "during the Franco regime, planning was often a dead letter that the powerful managed to readapt to their interests. But during democracy, the tenuous barriers of urban planning that conditioned the uses and buildability of the land to what was foreseen in the Plan were further degraded. Well, the changes in the legislation made it easier for this buildability to be agreed upon at a discretionary level outside of planning, allowing the buildability of the land to no longer depend on what was provided for in those public documents that were the municipal plans, but on the power of the buyers and owners of the land to achieve reclassification and obtain capital gains” “in the model exemplified by Spain, the real estate business is based, above all, on the possibility of adding several zeros to the value of the land for the mere fact of building it. urbanizable”.
According to Burriel de Orueta[24] “The General Plan has thus lost its deep sense of choice of the territorial model by the representatives of the citizens after a broad public debate and is becoming in many cases a mere coverage and legal legitimation of the previous decisions of the companies.” “In some cases it has even been the companies that have 'generously' carried out or have financed the municipal planning.”.
According to S. Vives and O. Rullan[21], regardless of whether regional legislation benefits owners or developers, the final beneficiaries of land rents are financial entities. And financial liberalization, with mortgage securitization, which led to financing from global financial markets, necessary for the promotion and purchase of housing, is the ultimate reason for the drift of Spanish urban planning policy, conditioned by business groups or pressure groups, and for the reclassifications that accompanied the real estate bubble: "it was the financial liberalization reforms that took the initiative and, directly, caused the drift of the Spanish Urban Planning System towards neoliberal approaches" “The borrowed money, although fictitious, flooded the land and urban policy was limited to channeling the floods, either with plans that defended the interests of the owners, or with plans that defended those of the developers.” “We can no longer speak of a social class of urban owners, but of power groups or oligarchic urban lobbies.” “This also means that those who control the real estate market begin to play an active role in the creation of the conditions that allow them to intensify their future income through policies aimed at requalification and urban revaluation.” “Another of the fundamental consequences of the process of land financialization is that through these mechanisms it is not necessary to be the owner of the land, nor even a developer or developer, to appropriate its income.”.
The same lack of equity is manifested, when these lands are expropriated, in the cost that expropriations have for the public treasury in cases in which the legislation establishes fair prices based on market values (as in the case of Land Law 6/1998)[28][29] which may be inflated due to expectations of revaluation, and be much higher, therefore, than the profitability of those lands at the time of expropriation. As Ildefonso Cerdá said in his General Theory of Urbanization[30] in relation to the benefit obtained by the owners with the expropriation of buildings for widening streets "Who ignores the thousand ingenious means put into play by individualism, in order to obtain the greatest possible advantages from the sacrifices made by the municipality or by the State? We will only say that, from this procedure... apart from the enormous economic damages that must be regretted, it has resulted that in the end of most of the road improvements carried out, the benefits obtained by the property are more noticeable than the true satisfaction of the needs of the movement... From all this it follows that everyone has contributed to pay for the urban reforms and improvements that everyone was to enjoy, although some, in a more special, direct and immediate way, in addition to what they were entitled to as an integral part of the public, and that this inequality should not so much be regretted for the iniquity it entails, as for having been an obstacle to the realization of the general and complete transformation of cities”. Cerdá himself had to face this inequity in the management of his Expansion Plan for Barcelona, as Celeste Miranda explains:[31] “The city council had to expropriate and financially compensate the owners, and also bear the costs of opening and enabling the new streets... Cerdà stated in the 30 points of his economic Plan, that such an agreement seemed to him 'a leonine contract'. An agreement according to which, all benefits were only for exclusive benefit of the owners”.
Likewise, there is an unfair distribution of burdens and benefits in the assumption of costs and benefits derived from the construction and maintenance of urban infrastructure[32][33] and in the so-called gentrification processes. The Charter of Athens[34] said about the suburbs: "The density of the population is very low there, and the land has hardly been exploited; despite everything, the city is obliged to provide the extension of the suburbs with the necessary services: roads, canals, rapid means of communication, lighting and cleaning, hospital or school services, etc. The disproportion between the ruinous expenses caused by so many obligations and the little contribution that a dispersed population can make to them is surprising." As for to gentrification, as described by Magrinyà, Oliete and Pérez-Foguet,[35] "In the case of cities in developing countries, this concept extends to the result of a rapid improvement of the infrastructure of a neighborhood of informal construction. The poorest population, often renters, has to leave the neighborhood due to the increase in prices; the greatest beneficiaries of these operations are the richest owners, who were not initially considered as beneficiaries of the project." Another aspect of the Gentrification, with serious social consequences, and the cause, in part, of the rental bubble in Spain, is the increase in the value of real estate as a consequence of the possibility of change of use that promotes the rise of tourism, such as homes converted into tourist apartments, which are much more profitable. reduced incomes.[39].
And there are also cases of illegal buildings or developments that have to be demolished at the expense of the public treasury or whose owners have to be compensated by the Administration as a result of licenses granted against the applicable regulations.[40][41][42][43][44].
Inadequate planning and negligence on the part of the Administration in controlling compliance with planning, very common in Spain, are also frequently aggravating factors of the damage caused by natural disasters.[45][46][47].
And finally, the burdens that the owners of land that fulfill very useful environmental functions for society as a whole bear without any type of remuneration are unfair. Although legal mechanisms have been developed in this matter, they have so far been of limited application.[48].