Town planning and local government: evaluation of urban development proposals

Abstract

The current local governments in Poland have gained an opportunity to act as managers of towns and rural communes. Simultaneously, the economic recession forces a rational use of available resources. One means to this end is the ex ante evaluation of development proposals. Town planning offers a variety of evaluation methods using different criteria. To the local government, however, two seem to be the most important: effectiveness and costs. In fact, all the other criteria can be expressed through them. Evaluating whether the goals are met is obvious. The next step should then identify the capital costs to be covered by the local government plus other 'expenditures' by the community, such as social and opportunity costs. The aim of this paper is to point at the potential use of evaluation by local governments, with some theoretical contribution to the evaluation criteria.