This master's degree thesis discusses urban land policies as part of the economic and social system and the spatial planning policy that enables local communities to manage space in more effective ways thus assuring them the means for an enhanced functioning of the land market. Even though Slovenia's development strategy (2005) associates the urban land policy with the improvement of spatial management and the development of the land market, it is surprising that the legislation defines this field in a narrow and insufficient manner. The review of professional sources shows that the problems in the enforcement of land policy, which coincide with the problems of the profession and the practicalities of spatial management, are not treated holistically enough. Warning about the deficit of spatial regulation is the added value of my work. The thesis exposes numerous factors that condition specific problems in the enforcement of spatial planning documents which are commonly encountered on the local level. The formal spatial decisions were not put into effect as they were planned, which shows that the actual trends are not proceeding in accordance with a sustainable spatial development. The causes for the breach between the planning and effectuation of spatial plans is not to be found in the strategies themselves, but rather in the low managing capabilities of the spatial system and the implementation deficit in the carrying out of decisions that have been accepted. The existing prevailing normative managing in the planning of land usage and the utilization of its developmental potentials, which was necessary in the period after Slovenia got its independence, necessitates a completion that would comply with the principles of sustainability and laws of the market. Taking in consideration the findings of various professions, that can contribute to an integrated treatment of the function of spatial policy in the processes of urban development and acknowledging the developmental trends in countries with a constituted land market, I argue that a new urban land policy in the form of a systematic, institutionalized and instrumental support to the execution of spatial planning documents on the local level is needed.