Publications

This case study has been prepared as part of the Lincoln Institute’s program on “The City, Universities, and Land.” It has been written by Wim Wiewel (University of Baltimore), based on presentations at a workshop held at the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy on September 18-19, 2005, by Joseph T. Maguire, Jr., John P. McQuaid, and Michael K. Owu (MIT); Gayle Farris (Forest City Enterprises);...

The property tax has been subject to much popular criticism and political pressure in recent decades. Several states have implemented, or are considering, a variety of caps and limits on property assessments, property tax rates, or total revenue raised from the property tax. Perhaps the best-known example is California’s Proposition 13, which ties property assessments to the purchase price of a...

During the last decade, bus rapid transit (BRT) has revolutionized regional transportation planning in much of the developing and developed world. BRT went from being a fringe transportation option used in a handful of Brazilian and Australian cities to becoming a prominent mass transportation alternative for local and national governments. Arguably the BRT concept with highest recognition is...

The conservation movement has used both private enterprises and public programs to preserve lands of ecological, aesthetic, and historical value. One notably successful effort has employed referenda for the conservation of open space. Between 1998 and 2006, some 1,550 referenda appeared on state, county, and municipal ballots across the United States, and their success rate was very high: nearly...

Jim Levitt focuses his work on conservation innovation—present-day and historic innovations that protect land and biodiversity. He has a particular interest in the role that innovations in conservation finance play in advancing the work of professional and volunteer conservation practitioners. In addition to his responsibilities as coordinator of the Lincoln Institute’s annual Conservation...

New Book Announcement: Making the Property Tax Work: Experiences in Developing and Transitional Countri...

New Book Announcement - Fiscal Decentralization and Land Polici...

New Book Announcement - Global Universities and Urban Development: Case Studies and Analys...

New Book Announcement - Toward a Vision of Land in 2015: International Perspectiv...

New Book Announcement - European Spatial Research and Planni...

New Book Announcement - Visioning and Visualization: People, Pixels, and Pla...

New Book Announcement - Transforming Community Development with Land Information Syste...

Program Calend...

The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy is supporting a new public radio series titled Shifting Ground that aims to bring new depth to the reporting of land use issues. This occasional series, airing on All Things Considered on National Public Radio, explores how land policy has an impact on the ground. The series showcases innovative tools and practices that are being applied in communities facing...

The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy publishes and disseminates the work of its faculty, fellows, and associates in several formats. This catalog includes summaries of more than 100 books, policy focus reports, and multimedia products on a wide range of topics in valuation and taxation, planning and urban form, and economic and community development in the United States, Latin America, Europe,...

The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy has collaborated with the International Center for Land Policy Studies and Training (ICLPST) in Taiwan for many years, and in October 2006 the two organizations cohosted a conference on land-related issues to commemorate the 100th international training course held at the center. The conference gathered some of the best thinkers on land issues to discuss their...

Two remarkable phenomena have affected the practice of planning over the past two decades: the rise of public involvement as an integral component of urban decision making, and the technological innovations that enable the visualization and simulation of physical reality. Together these phenomena anticipate the future, turning the planning process into a journey of discovery for professionals and...

Accurate land valuation is critical to land value taxation, which taxes land more heavily than improvements. In previous work we found three approaches to valuing the land component of improved properties. Using data for recently sold single-family residences in three study areas – one each for the three valuation approaches – this paper applies an hedonic pricing model to estimate in a single,...

This article describes the overall Peruvian policy on municipalities and their legal mechanisms for the recovery of local government investments (the Betterment Levy and the Special Assessment on Public Works). The Betterment Levy Program in the Municipality of Lima (1990-1993) is analyzed and it is concluded that the application of these instruments is viable, especially in lower income...

This paper provides an overview of the nature, development, extent, and effect of residential property tax relief programs in the United States. Its major focus is on circuit breakers, which target aid to low-income taxpayers. Circuit breakers are unique in providing property tax reductions that vary inversely with income, enabling more precise targeting of needy recipients than other approaches....

A new era of data democracy has arrived, enabling tremendous improvements in land information systems and opening up a wealth of opportunities for the practice of community development and the management of community resources. Geographic information systems (GIS) and Web services have dramatically expanded the ability to access, analyze, disseminate, and display vast quantities of data....

The study begins with a bibliographic review of the historical background and the existing legal framework for the capture of value increments. It goes on to examine cases where value capture could have been applied and the modalities that were proposed for doing so. In Venezuela value capture is an eminently municipal revenue source, but it has not been prioritized by municipalities. In...

Urban sprawl has become a policy concern of national prominence. Land or split-rate taxes are one potential way to address this issue. In theory, such taxes can lower the land/capital ratio. This in turn can raise the density of housing units where it is applied, if the average quality/size of each housing unit does not increase by enough to offset an effect on the number of housing units. ...

Students of public finance and fiscal decentralization in developing and transitional countries have long argued for more intensive use of the property tax. It would seem the ideal choice for financing local government services. Based on a Lincoln Institute conference held in October 2006, the chapters in this book take this argument one step further in drawing on recent experience with property...

Continuing their Lincoln Institute–sponsored research on the role of universities in urban development, Wim Wiewel and David C. Perry have edited this book on global universities to complement their previous volume on U.S. institutions, The University as Urban Developer: Case Studies and Analysis (M.E. Sharpe and Lincoln Institute, 2005). This work is part of the Institute’s City, Land, and...

Teardowns provide direct information on land values in fully developed urban areas because such properties are valued only for their land and location rather than for the characteristics of the structure. Stein-like procedures make efficient use of limited data when a group of variables – the structural characteristics – are expected beforehand to provide little explanatory power. Using data...

This work constitutes an initial approach to the topic of taxes on property value appreciation in Mexico. These value capture taxes are imposed by public authorities on land value increments that result not from any action on the part of the landowner but from community efforts and/or investment...

This paper deals with the land and housing market in low-income neighborhoods of Lima (Peru), focusing primarily on the connection between this market and the processes involving urban consolidation and provision of public services. The widespread ignorance and myths surrounding the subject probably owe their origin to the dearth of previous studies on land markets in these neighborhoods. ...

The article discusses the changes that have occurred in the periurban agricultural land market of Metropolitan Lima. Using the mechanisms of income formation to illustrate these changes, the article looks at the ways in which agricultural land becomes land for urban use, the development of legal and illegal land markets, the current amount of agricultural land, and changes in land ownership...

How does the relative lack of comparable sales in a neighborhood influence the frequency of property assessment appeal applications and their likelihood of success? Using a data set of appeals applications submitted and decided in Chicago during reassessment years 2000, 2003, and 2006, we estimate the probability of successful appeals for small residential properties as a function of market...

The research study presented here seeks to explore the feasibility of employing the nighttime satellite imagery time series dataset (The Global DMSP-OLS Nighttime Lights Time Series 1992 - 2003 Version 2) to track urban change across two continents and examine the pace of urban sprawl in the United States and part of the European Union since the mid-1990s. It is the first study analyzing the...

Spatial Gini coefficients are used to analyze the distribution and concentration of population in the U.S. by decade from 1900 through 2000. The analysis first uses states as units of observation and compares the results with those obtained from several other countries also using state or provincial data. These results show that the regional distribution of population in the U.S. has become...

The proposal for this course resulted from the Seminar "The Land Question and Social Policies" where the research paper entitled "The Price of Land Expropriation: Limitations on Public Policies in the Areas of Housing, Environment and Public Highways in São Paulo" was presented. This event took place on 1 December 2000 at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of São Paulo...

This work is a brief descriptive history. It provides an overview of disasters that have occurred in large urban centers over the last 30 years, as well as the damages and deaths these have caused. I believe that phenomena with destructive potential will occur with greater force in urban conglomerations, since the degree of vulnerability in these areas is quite high. I discuss the factors behind...

This paper aims to examine the role of collective land purchasing as a strategy currently employed by groups of poorer people seeking a place to live. On the basis of interviews with practitioners familiar with this subject (leaders of pro-housing movements, project consultants, members of the technical staffs of government agencies dealing with land subdivision and housing finance, lawyers,...

In Brazil, there are no appropriate policies to capture value increments resulting from public investment. Decreases in public revenue and the current financial crisis have pushed local governments to find alternatives for new revenue sources. This project draws on a systematization of some American and Colombian experiences with value capture policies and instruments, as well as the experience...

For many years it was thought that no informal housing rental market existed in Caracas. The present paper records the results of a study undertaken in 2006 which shows precisely the contrary: the informal housing rental market is indeed active, growing, complex and governed by its own rules. ...

A generalized before-and-after evaluation relying on hedonic models is used to value the network and the local access effects of an extension to Bogotá’s BRT system. Properties already served by the BRT but benefiting from the enhanced regional access provided by the extension are used to assess the network effects of the investment, relative to properties in a control area. Similarly, properties...

Territorial Cadastre in Latin American CountriesThe book describes in detail the main characteristics of the cadastral systems implemented in the 19 countries of Latin America. The topics are organized in a standardized structure including geographic, historic, institutional, legal and technical aspects. This allows the book to be read vertically (by country) or transversally (choosing a topic...

In October 2007 Peking University Provost Lin Jianhua and I signed an agreement to establish the joint Lincoln Institute of Land Policy–Peking University Center for Urban Developmentand Land Policy. Lincoln Institute and Peking University established this joint center to provide support for education, training, and research in urban economics, land policy and management, property taxation, local...

The debate about the reality of global warming, and the human role in precipitating climate change, has been largely put to rest. Four working groups from the United Nations–sponsored Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (2007) have come to a consensus that would be gratifying if it were not so frightening. Yes, the globe is warming they say. Yes, humans are the primary agent for this...

Most people are not particularly fond of paying taxes of any sort, but the discontent with one particular type of public levy, the local property tax, is gaining momentum across the country. Disgruntled homeowners are demanding that governors and mayors find alternative methods to raise revenue in order to relieve their own property tax burden. Decades ago this discontent led to such tax...

Although vast differences in standard of living exist among the native-born residents of Chinese cities, the distinction between all urban natives and rural migrants runs deeper. It is, in fact, the fundamental social division in Chinese cities for several reasons, including labor market segmentation that sees migrants doing dirty, dangerous, and low-paying work; institutional rules that favor...

Faculty Profile of Fernanda Furta...

Property taxation and school funding are closely linked in the United States, with nearly half of all property tax revenue used for public elementary and secondary education. There is an active policy debate across the country regarding the degree to which public schools should be funded with property tax dollars. Some policy makers and analysts call for reduced reliance on property taxation and...

The Lincoln Institute’s Program on Latin America and the Caribbean has made several of its new publications available in digital formats. These electronic books and CD-RO Ms can be distributed more easily to more readers than traditional printed books, so the research and curriculum materials can be shared with our Spanish and Portugeuse speaking colleagues in the regio...