Coase’s ‘The Lighthouse in Economics’ revisited: a planning note on the view of building facades as a public good

This interdisciplinary article follows up on a discussion of the lighthouse as a public good in terms of planning in this journal by elucidating the neo-institutional economic proposition that views of building facades along streets are common property and are public goods in the sense that their consumption is mutually non-exclusive. Hence, planning interventions are justified from an economic point of view to ensure the adequate supply of this good. This proposition is set within the context of the arguments for and against a lighthouse being a public good with reference to Coase’s 1974 paper and recent interpretations. Some planning implications are discussed. This article was published open access under a CC BY-NC-ND licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ .