Rethinking value in land and negotiating the city’s social future

In a context of global competition for capital, austerity politics, municipal entrepreneurialism and financialization, land is increasingly seen as a source of money for fiscal revenue. Mechanisms of land value capture, as a consequence, have accelerated forces of land monetization and commodification in recent years. This special issue is a collective attempt to rethink the concept, practice and politics of value in land development. Seven authors bring two, still largely separate, discussions into conversation. One concerns the politics of land development that has emerged through the expanding use of regulatory land use tools oriented single-mindedly around the capture of monetary value from land. A second theme focuses on how the city’s urban future is produced through social and political contestation constrained by the valorization of land’s exchange value. Taking a longer and relational point of view, authors in this issue examine what is at work – politically, economically, fiscally, institutionally and ideologically – to enable land development and land value capture to become an increasingly used solution to fiscal revenue generation in communities around the world. This issue also fuels our imagination to consider how we might discuss social futures rooted in social values. There is no finality to the kind of present-future relationship that land value capture helps to shape. Value is an intentional choice and is performed, and if we take such a value concept as our starting point, then value practices hold the key to whether we can achieve a more socially desired or intended end.