This resource includes all of the material assets (for example, buildings, meeting rooms, equipment, lands, IT equipment, etc) at the disposal of different actors that own or hold rights of use for the implementation of their different activities. These assets are not only indispensable to the implementation of the regular activities of these actors, they also play a central role in the communication functions of the latter with their social, political and economic environment. The assets controlled by public actors are highly diverse and range from motorways, rivers and forests to various old buildings (historical heritage) and more recent ones (administrative and cultural centres, schools, prisons etc).

All environmental policies [the public actors of all public policies] are endowed with varying quantities of public assets.… While the public ownership of a number of strategic infrastructures has long been considered an essential condition for the implementation of public policies, in particular those relating to spatial planning (transport, telecommunications, energy, schools, the military etc), the current processes involving liberalization and privatization of certain infrastructure (airports, telecommunications, urban networks) challenge the capacity of the state to mobilize infrastructure resources. Thus a new question arises in relation to maintaining the capacity of public actors to attain their objectives in a context in which the proportion of these infrastructure resources (for public use) held by private actors is on the increase.

Two main functions may be associated with this resource…. The first … involves the capacity of public policy actors to directly manage a service or to impose restrictions more directly, for example in cases in which a public body is the owner or manager of such a good. It is easier to restrict public access to an ecologically sensitive area if it is owned by the state than if it is in private hands. The state can use the lever of purchasing lands to place an area under protection or for granting surface rights to enable construction (of houses) to locations that are most suited to such purposes in terms of spatial planning. Hence it is easier for the state to act in such contexts than if it must impose restrictions on private owners. For example, entire sections of the lakeshores in Switzerland are not accessible to the public, despite the fact that this contravenes the principle enshrined in federal law (Spatial Planning Act).