ZONING MEASURE BY INCLUSIONARY ZONING FOR AFFORDABLE HOUSING

Abstract

City Planning is a key mechanism for government to manage and control the direction of the city. City Planning arranges all areas into zones according to land use classification. Each classification indicates activities that are allowed or disallowed to be conducted. City Planning can be enforced when come into the law form. 

            However, when the City Planning law is enforced, the price of land continuously increases and in turn affects the house price. At present, the price of land and house has been extremely increasing when comparing to the past. Many consumers cannot afford to buy a house because their income is too low, so they are forced to live far from the city center. Hence, these consumers have to face many inconveniences such as daily traffic jam and stress; such difficulty is considered adverse effect of Planning law. 

            The City Plan Act, B.E. 2518, disregards the affordable housing issue. This act supports the zoning planning and city plan procedure and makes the zoning planning and city plan concrete and enforceable. However, there is no provision that would encourage developers to supply the affordable housing while they could still enjoy profit due to they have much potential than consumer to access to the public resources. As a result, many consumers have to face the problem of unaffordable housing or be forced to live in the areas which are far from the city as the accumulated problems.

            The sustainable growth of society, private sector and consumer can occur if there are more dimensions in laws which balance benefit among stakeholders, implement good planning, and support co-operation between government, private sectors, and consumer.

            This thesis studies the relationships between City Planning law vs. land price, the Corporate Social Responsibility concept (CSR), existing Planning law, the alternative planning system which called “Inclusionary Zoning” and applications under the Inclusionary Zoning Law of three selected foreign countries, namely the California and Oregon State in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Malaysia. From studying these countries, it is anticipated that Thailand would see the problems arising from legal measures against the unaffordable housing which is the adverse effect of planning regulations and thus be able to provide proper legal measures to cope with the issue. This thesis also identifies and recommends alternative solutions.