Surplus value recuperation for urban development: an inter-american comparison

Abstract

Local governments design a broad range of fiscal  policies that have been inspired by the idea that land value increment may be mobilized to the benefit of the community Í€“that is of land value capture. This paper compares the experiences of North America and Latin America with value capture tools and discusses the reasons why different policies have been favored and different results and degrees of success obtained in their implementation. Focusing on broad categories of value capture policies, the first part of the paper compares the overall performance and/or experience of the two regions with the capturing of land value increment through conventional taxes, fees and regulatory urban policy instruments. The second part of the paper shows that the same "value capture principle" to address similar problems (to deepen land value taxation; to finance urban infrastructure; to control land use) result in different outcomes (sometimes even opposite) in different contexts, most notably those presented in North America and Latin America, respectively. The papers concluding section provides some evaluative comments regarding the apparent lag between the intentions and outcomes of value capture policies as experienced by the two regions. Keywords: land value increment, public policies, North America, Latin America.