The Politics of Land Value Capture in London: London Planning Seminar

Professor Jenny Robinson will be discussing her paper 'Extracting Value, London Style: Revisiting the role of the state in urban development'.

This paper brings the case of a large-scale urban development in London (Old Oak Park Royal) into conversation with a wider analysis of the politics of urban development. Rather than start from globalising processes such as neoliberalisation or financialisation, in which different urban outcomes are treated as “variegations” of wider processes, this paper focusses on the territorialised politics of urban development (often relegated to “context”) as a starting point for a wider theorisation of the role of the state in urban development. In the London case an idiosyncratic regulatory context characterised by significant territorial fragmentation and reliance on limited planning gain incomes to support development motivates a sharp formulation of state interests and capacity in relation to value extraction, and throws into relief developer interests. The paper demonstrates how this financial and institutional architecture directly shapes the built form, generating a new “London style”. Placed in conversation with analyses from a range of other contexts, notably Asia, the paper explores the potential for new theorisations of state interests in urban development.