Working Paper
PDF | Free | 32 pages
Download PDF

Value Capture for Urban Development

An Inter-American Comparison

Martim O. Smolka and David Amborski

August 2007, English


The local governments designed an ample range of fiscal policies or regulations that have been inspired by the idea that the increase of the value of land can be mobilized in benefit of community-this is the concept of Land Value Capture. This work compares the experiences of North America (the United States and Canada) and Latin America in the use of tools of capture of capital gains. It discusses the reasons for which different policies have been chosen, and the different results and obtained levels from success in its implementation. Focusing itself in an ample category of policies of capture of capital gains, the first part of this work compares the general performance and/or the experience of the two regions with the increase Land Value Capture through conventional taxes, rates and instruments of policy of urban regulation. The second part of the work sample that the same “principle of capture of capital gains” to approach different problems (to deepen the application of taxes to the value of the Earth; in order to finance urban infrastructure; and to control the Earth use) it produces different results (sometimes inclusively opposite results) in different contexts, more remarkably in those than they appear in North America and Latin America, respectively. The conclusion of this work presents/displays commentaries of evaluation with respect to the clear breach that exists between the intentions and the results of the policies of capture of capital gains, according to the experience of the two compared regions.