Developers‘ profit can fund public urban infrastructure’

 The question of how to fund infrastructure in the Global South was considered in a session organised by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, which discussed “Land Value Capture”, Land Value Capture is a system that allows the state to raise funds, either directly or indirectly, that ensures that some of the profit made by developers is returned to the communities, and that development helps fund and maintain the infrastructure that it relies upon. Marti Smolka talked about a system in Sao Paulo where development only required an additional levy if it was over a Floor Area Ratio (FAR) of 1, reflecting that tall buildings in a city have a single connection to infrastructure but require additional capacity.

Apart from acquiring funding, how that funding is spent is also vitally important, and in a session organised by the African Centre for Cities, at the University of Cape Town, the notion of “Cities of Integrity” was introduced. Dieter Zinnbauer looked at the financial scale of infrastructure and the ways funding might be siphoned off corruptly, using examples that show that such corruption is not only an issue in the Global South. To help stem this tide, planning educator Gilbert Siame discussed how he was developing ethics and professional practice education in Zambia, where a small number of planners are both working for developers and the state, creating conflicts of interest.

Julian Raxworthy
Honorary Associate Professor, ATCH (Architecture, Theory, Criticism and History) Research Centre, School of Architecture, University of Queensland