Selling “air rights” not alone improves city revenues, but also enhances density and more efficient infrastructure usage. Image source: Shutterstock (#491076787), pictures dense housing in Hong Kong.
As major cities are growing larger each day, the need for larger budgets for infrastructure developments poses extreme difficulties to urban administrations.
Waiting on infrastructure funds from national governments is often not a lucrative option, so mayors have come to sell “air rights” or “unused development rights” to improve their budgets. These so-called “air rights”, is the difference of a building’s actual floor area to the maximum floor area that was designated for it. This helps cities generate revenues to realise development projects and increase their future property tax revenues as real-estate values increase.
Cities, such as Stuttgart, Hong Kong and Paris are leading the way in competitive downtown areas.
World BankWhy not share this article?
