Land Value Capture Analysis

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.