Land-use agreements when the developer is not sure of infrastructure costs

Planners wish to avoid a lawsuit by the developer over their cost estimates of the public works required by his project. To avoid a suit, they can offer him his choice of several sets of conditions that would attach to land-use permits. In computer simulations of five such short- and long-term contracts, the developer chooses a ``development agreement" -- characterized here as a long-term contract in which the developer pays an impact fee and obtains a freeze on taxes and regulations -- in more than 97\% of the cases.