Public land development is an approach where the public authority acquires land for development, services the land with public infrastructure, and transfers the serviced building plots to private building developers or self-developing end-users. Motivations to use public land development can be divided to planning goal related motivations and financial motivations. In this paper, we study management of public risks related to the use of public land development by analysing case studies located in Finland and the Netherlands, countries known to have strong tradition in public land development. Our findings indicate that, whereas public land development has efficiencies in managing the risks related to the achievement of public planning goals, the management of the financial risks related to the public land development approach can be remarkably difficult even in countries with wide experience in public land development.