Dear Colleagues,

The shortage of financial resources is a worldwide problem. Coming out of the economic and financial crisis, countries as well as municipalities have decreasing means to fulfil all their public commitments. Urbanization requires increasing funding for public infrastructure and services, which, in most cases, leads in turn to rising land prices for urban properties. So, should those who benefit from it share some of the costs? How would that effect development and progress? What are the most appropriate ways to do so?

The Special Issue aims to focus on three main aspects of Public Value Capture of Increasing Property Values:

• Common Framework: Land and its value play a crucial role for social activities and development. Therefore, increasing property values have deep social, economic, and distributive justice implications. Defining which value should remain in which hands is a normative issue with philosophical and political implications. Thus, it has to be considered how property in general has been constructed in the law, political philosophy, and constitution of a country, as well as in the development of the theory of location and ground rent. European countries have developed under philosophical references and settled their own range of property rights in accordance with the dominant political trends and social acceptance. Looking at different systems could help to propose new solutions for the creation of a common framework.
• Innovative Tools: Tools which are used in many countries are: fees and taxes, a “real estate consortium” (joint development of public authorities and private land owners), a negotiated development (between developer and municipality), flexible building rights (exceptions to the general use regulations in favour of investors or property owners who paid a certain amount of money), the urban development or redevelopment measure (for the new development of urban areas or elimination of urban deficits), interim acquisition (build-up of land stocks by municipalities) and contract models (agreement of certain duties of the private partner in return to subsequent building rights). The design of the tools and their application varies from country to country. It is important to determine which implementations can be considered as innovative and forward-looking.
• Allocation of Development Costs and Benefits: Land values are determined by several factors—i.e., it is a result of both public and private investments and actions. A conceptual delineation of these elements can facilitate the discussion of who should capture what. Through new tools of public value capture, further possibilities for increasing financial resources for public duties (due to the discharge of the public budget concerning costs of infrastructure) can be opened up.

Dr. Andreas Hendricks
Dr. Vida Maliene
Dr. Andreas Ortner
Prof. Dr. Erwin van der Krabben
Prof. Dr. Sonia Guelton
Guest Editors

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• public value capture terminology
• public value capture framework
• tools of public of value capture
• cost allocation of captured value
• beneficiaries of captured value