Value capture is a type of public financing that recovers some or all of the value that public infrastructure generates for private landowners. In many countries, the public sector is responsible for the infrastructure required to support urban development. This infrastructure may include road infrastructure, parks, social, health and educational facilities, social housing, climate adaptation and mitigation tools, and more. Such infrastructure typically requires great financial investment and maintenance, and often the financing of such projects leans heavily on the government bodies themselves.
Municipalities have used numerous means to capture unearned land values increased by the addition of public infrastructure. This image shows how building height and density (and therefore value) have increased near rail transit stations.
Georgism, also called in modern times Geoism, and known historically as the single tax movement, is an economic ideology holding that people should own the value that they produce themselves, while the economic rent derived from land—including from all natural resources, the commons, and urban locations—should belong equally to all members of society. Developed from the writings of American economist and social reformer Henry George, the Georgist paradigm seeks solutions to social and ecological problems, based on principles of land rights and public finance that attempt to integrate economic efficiency with social justice.
Georgist single tax poster published in The Public, a Chicago newspaper (c. 1910–1914)
1914 billboard citing Henry George in Rockford, Illinois
Henry George School of Social Science in New York City