Swapping Development Rights in Swampy Land: Strategic Instruments to Prevent Floodplain Development in Flanders

Abstract

Creating natural flooding areas to give way to water requires space. In practice, it is often difficult to deal with historically designated development rights, particularly in densely populated areas. Development rights are often seen as a part of land property rights of a land title and represent a certain financial value. Our contribution aims to describe how Flanders, the northern and Dutch speaking region of Belgium, struggles with (re)allocating development rights in flood-prone areas, highlighting that regular and innovative policy instruments significantly shape the behavioural responses of different actors in flood plains.