The Politics of Land and Value

Case Studies from Across the Globe

Mi Shih, Kathe Newman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2026
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9781040636794
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book investigates the treatment of land as a source of money in global urban processes. Probing land development at moments of value creation, capture, negotiation, contestation, and transformation, it sheds light on how and why value practices matter in transforming the politics of the status quo so that the social life of land may thrive.

This book approaches value as a mode of practice to investigate how the deepening treatment of land as a source of municipal revenue and private profit has become a hegemonic project that penetrates and shapes key aspects of how we run cities and live our urban life. Closely related is a set of issues that greatly concern urban scholars, municipal planners, and community organizers around the world: the use and politics of land value capture (LVC); the role of the state in land taking and assemblage; mechanisms of land development tools and their impacts; public–private power relations; the conceptualization, production, negotiation, and distribution of costs and benefits; fiscal policy; and community mobilization and political contestation. Nine global case studies offer insights into the centrality of land development as a source of money, the narrowing of how land is valued, the resulting problematic outcomes of market capture of land value, the politics of the status quo, and community experimentations with counter and alternative practices. A value framework serves as a heuristic to help probe the politics of land development more deeply at different moments of practice: value creation, value capture, value negotiation, value contestation, and value transformation. Bringing the case studies into a useful juxtaposition, the value framework also outlines how to engage practices to generate a transformative politics of land under which competing value logics and the social life of land may thrive.

This book is particularly useful for urban scholars, municipal planners, community organizers, educators, and students in fields related to urban planning and geography and those who are interested in issues around LVC, land development tools, urban redevelopment, public–private negotiation, urban political economic analysis, community mobilization, alternative urbanism, equity, and justice.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgments
• List of contributors
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction. The politics of land and value: Case studies from across the globe
• 1 Liquid assets: Riverfront development, ecological value, and the case of Lincoln Yards
• 2 Intensification and land value capture in Toronto: Contested practices, discretionary approaches, and multi-level governance realities
• 3 Planning narratives and development realities: Value creation and contestation in urbanizing Jiufenzi in Tainan City, Taiwan
• 4 Subsidizing sunset: Transformations of land, value, and planning in post-handover Hong Kong
• 5 From land prices to construction deficits: Understanding housing overappreciation in Santiago
• 6 Fulfillment prophecy: Readying land for Amazon’s expansion in south suburban Chicago
• 7 Civic mobilization and public land in West Philadelphia’s Mantua neighborhood 2013–23
• 8 Transforming Treasure Hill: Socially produced landscapes, the politics of land, and value contestation
• 9 Land value creation, capture, and transformation: Housing decommodification and cohousing in Vancouver
• Conclusion. City’s social futures: Transforming the politics of land and value
• Index