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Optimizing Performance Guarantees

Zoning Practice — October 2026

By Wayne Feiden, FAICP

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Cities, towns, and counties use performance guarantees in the regulatory permitting and entitlement process to ensure that what gets approved gets built in accordance with all permit conditions. Guarantees ensure that projects meet community standards and requirements even when a developer defaults due to insolvency, bankruptcy, or neglect.

Planners often rely on their attorneys to avoid mastering arcane financial guarantees and, fortunately, few projects fail. However, this means that practitioners may not be prepared to help local officials pick up the pieces when, inevitably, some project stalls or goes bust. Besides the immediate challenges, this reduces social trust in government when trust is already low.

This issue of Zoning Practice explores how planners and local officials can leverage performance guarantees to improve development outcomes. It begins with a primer on distinct types of non-financial and financial guarantees before highlighting key challenges and recommended practices for regulatory design and implementation.

Details

Page Count
13
Date Published
Oct. 1, 2026
Format
Adobe PDF
Publisher
American Planning Association

About the Author

Wayne Feiden, FAICP
<p><strong>Wayne Feiden, FAICP </strong>is Director of the Center for Resilient Metro-Regions and Lecturer of Planning Practice at the University of Massachusetts.&nbsp;Wayne&#39;s focus includes all aspects of placemaking, design, planning, and sustainability in his planning practice and research. He has led or served on dozens of strategic planning teams in 21 states and five countries. Wayne&rsquo;s Rockefeller Bellagio residency (Italy), State Department Professional Fellowships (Indonesia and Malaysia), German Marshall Fund fellowship (Northern Ireland, England and Denmark), Fulbright Specialist fellowships (South Africa and New Zealand), and Eisenhower Fellowship (Hungary) all had a placemaking focus. His research publications include &ldquo;<em>Urban and Regional and Organizational Strategic Planning</em>,&rdquo; &ldquo;<em>Conservation Limited Development</em>,&rdquo; &ldquo;<em>Building Sustainability and Resiliency into Local Planning Agencies</em>,&rdquo; &ldquo;<em>Local Agency Planning Management</em>&rdquo; and &ldquo;<em>Assessing Sustainability</em>.&rdquo; Wayne is a fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners and has won professional planner and advocacy planner awards from APA-MA. Wayne has a BS in natural resources from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and a master&nbsp;in city planning from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.</p>