Compare methods

	Land Value Capture Analysis	Urban Vitality Index
Field	Urban Studies	Urban Studies
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	2006	1961
Originator	Jeffery J. Smith & Thomas A. Gihring (value-capture synthesis)	Jane Jacobs (conceptual); operationalised by later urban analysts
Type	Estimation of land/property value uplift attributable to public investment for value capture	Composite descriptive index of urban vitality
Seminal source	Smith, J. J., & Gihring, T. A. (2006). Financing transit systems through value capture: An annotated bibliography. American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 65(3), 751–786.	Jacobs, J. (1961). The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Random House. ISBN: 9780679741954
Aliases	Value Capture Analysis, Land Value Uplift Estimation, Betterment Value Analysis, Transit Value Uplift Analysis	Urban Vitality Measure, Jacobs Vitality Index, Street Vitality Index, Urban Liveliness Index
Related	4	4
Summary	Land value capture analysis measures the increase in land and property values that a public investment — a new transit line, station, park, or rezoning — creates, so that some of that windfall can be recovered to help pay for the investment. Grounded in classical economics and synthesized for transit by Smith and Gihring, it isolates the value uplift attributable to the public action, usually with hedonic price models and quasi-experimental before/after comparisons, and then quantifies how large a capturable surplus exists. The logic is one of fairness and finance: when public spending lifts private land values, recovering part of the gain funds the public good that created it.	The urban vitality index is a composite descriptive measure of how lively, busy and economically active an urban area is, built from the conditions Jane Jacobs argued generate street life. In The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), Jacobs identified four generators of diversity — mixed primary uses, short blocks, a mix of building ages, and sufficient density — together producing the foot traffic and 'eyes on the street' that make places vital. The index operationalises these qualities as measurable indicators for each spatial unit, normalises them onto a common scale, and combines them into a single vitality score that can be mapped, compared and tracked over time.