Designing Land Value Capture Tools in the Context of Complex Tenurial and Deficient Land Use Regulatory Regimes in Accra, Ghana

Rapid urbanization has increased the demand for urban infrastructure services. Municipalities have attempted to finance infrastructure services with value capture instruments. The paper highlights how value capture instruments are designed and implemented in Ghana. The study used the case study strategy of inquiry and multiple case study design to locate the research within the contexts of fiscal decentralization policies, urban planning and land tenure frameworks. The paper concludes that the tax or fee-based land value capture instruments have more chances of success if teething implementation challenges are addressed. The current passive approach to urban development and the inability of metropolitan, municipal and District Assemblies to enforce land use regulation does not promote the implementation of the development-based land value capture instruments. Besides, the concept of land value capture is not clearly understood in general among key stakeholders. The paper proposes a mutual gains approach to resolving the teething implementation challenges for tax or fee-based tools.