Loehr turns delay from an incidental feature of urban development into a modelled economic mechanism. The paper combines real-options theory with strategic complementarities among landowners: uncertainty raises the value of postponing an irreversible investment, while the expectation that neighbouring owners will also wait further increases the continuation value of delay. The result is multiplicative rather than additive, producing private development thresholds that can remain systematically above socially efficient thresholds. This generates a precise account of land banking, slow build-out, spatially clustered underdevelopment and welfare loss without assuming irrational actors or an absolute shortage of developable land. Methodologically, the paper formalises stochastic land-price dynamics and game-theoretical interaction, then evaluates policy instruments according to how they alter waiting incentives. Its bridge to urban political economy is especially productive: land value taxation, public ownership, long leasehold structures and planning deadlines become temporal devices acting on development thresholds, making the governance of urban time as important as the governance of land use.
URBANISM MEETS ART