The aim of this book is to use the tools developed by modern microeconomics to provide a framework for the analysis of policies towards the allocation of land and the control of activities using land. There has been a traditional conflict between economists and land-use planners. But the new concepts of externalities and public goods have given economists new tools particularly relevant to land-use planning. Developments in planning theory have also tended to make the planners' prime concern the best allocation of total resources: the central problem of economic analysis. The principal focus of the book is the general justification for intervention in the urban land and property markets, the principles for evaluating such intervention and the proper role of the public sector within the urban economy. It also considers in some detail the practical problems involved in putting these principles into effect.