Community Benefits agreement: an introduction Sample Clauses

Community Benefits agreement: an introduction. The Community Benefits Agreement, from now on called a CBA, derives from the United States planning practices. It is a rather new planning tool which is focusing on the direct negotiations between the initiator of a project and the citizens whom the project will confront, who are called the community in the agreement. It can be seen as a private exchange of approval for a development program from the community, in exchange for several benefits from the initiator. The initiator can be a private project developer, a consortium of private developers or a governmental body who acts as the developer. When this initiator wants to realize a certain project, which can be any kind of development project, it approaches a coalition of community groups whom the project it concerns. This community definition, as will be discussed later in this research, will be one of the main problems in contracting a CBA. When the developer has defined the community actors of whom it thinks are concerned with the project, it offers benefits or mitigations in return for the approval of the community for the project. These benefits and mitigations can, according to Van der Veen (2014), exist of three elements. First of all, it can exist of behavioral premises, such as the reduction of nuisance or the communication during the execution of the project. Transparent plans of the proceedings during the project for example might result in more trust and transparency of the project, which might be beneficial for community organizations. The second element consists of promises on public facilities. This can for example contain the realization of new town halls, the realization of a new school or the guarantee that some work which comes with the project will be outsourced to the local population. In practice, these jobs are being transferred to minority groups. Third, some benefits can exist of financial contributions to support local initiatives or training programs for minorities. In the United States, these benefits are mainly addressing the community in the presumption that the governmental authorities will take care of the overall public good. In the past decade, the CBA has spread throughout the United States and has become increasingly popular. As the CBA started in 2001 in California by realizing the Los Angeles Staples Center, a huge sport complex , it quickly spread throughout the United States. A CBA is agreed before the development goes to the city for approval. The initiator negoti...