Mobilising land value increments for urban development: Learning from the Latin America experience

Abstract

Urban 'land value capture' is the appropriation for public purposes of some of the increase in the value of privately-held urban property that results from public decisions and public investments. Historically, 'land value capture' was placed on the intellectual agenda by the somewhat idiosyncratic economist, Henry George. 'Land value capture' taxes, which have long been on the books in several Latin American countries and elsewhere, have rarely raised much revenue. This may be changing, however. There is a new and more pragmatic interest in the issue, stimulated in part by the justification for land value capture that is inherent in neo-liberal economic theory, but mainly by the more mundane reality that, because of widespread administrative and political decentralisation, municipal governments are now casting around for new sources of revenue.