The potential of Land Value Capture to secure sustainable urban development supporting air quality enhancement

Cities are both major contributors to pollutant emissions and victims of poor outdoor air quality (World Bank, 2010). Poor air quality has a direct negative impact on the environment and on human health which has consequences for economic growth and social care. The World Health Organization estimates that 80% of urban residents will be exposed to pollution above acceptable levels in 2018 (WHO, 2018). Whilst the causes of poor urban air quality vary by context some issues are widespread; in Western Europe 40% of the urban pollution is caused by transport and domestic fuel burning, whilst in China this figure is between 30 and 39% (Karagulian et al., 2015). Decreasing the pollutants from housing and transport is therefore a key priority for cities (Un Habitat, 2015), yet retro-fitting cleaner energy provision to houses and supporting alternative urban transport infrastructure can be both financially costly and limiting to short term economic growth. Urban governments, therefore, need to consider policy and finance mechanisms to both fund and adapt urban housing and transport to limit localised air pollution.

Successfully meeting the two topics of this call: 'reduction in adverse environmental impact of cities'; and, 'the provision of safe, affordable and sustainable housing, transportation and basic services', is contingent upon creating a dynamic and responsive relationship between taxation and funding the urban adaptations and service provision. Land value capture (LVC) promises to be a highly efficient and effective urban policy to enable the recovery and reinvestment of value arising from government enhancements to urban sustainability and livability, in particular improving air quality. When practiced effectively LVC offers the potential to instigate a longer term process of investment in the physical environment to support the creation of sustainable communities: a virtuous circle of development and investment.

LVC mechanisms are extremely diverse, from the active land assembly of municipalities in the Netherlands, to the use of auctions in China and the negotiated agreement of discretionary obligations in England. Each mechanism attempts to capture a proportion of the uplift in land value from state action (whether assembly, infrastructure provision or planning permission) to reinvest in social and environmental public goods. Yet, each system has been criticized for failing to meet the demands of the 21st century's most pressing issue of delivering economic growth within a context of climatic instability (see e.g. Crook et al., 2016).

Capturing a proportion of land values in the development process offers an innovative way of improving housing- and transport-induced poor air quality through investing in urban environments. To do this we will explore two issues in China, the Netherlands, France and the UK:

- the impact of air quality on economic activity and quality of life
- the impact of alternative land value capture mechanisms for enhancing housing and transportation

The adaptation of urban environments in China and Europe is necessary to enhance air quality as a mitigating factor in climate change and improve liveability. LVC is one attractive possibility for governments to fund these adaptations and enhance the economic, social and environmental sustainability of cities. The uplift in land values achieved through planning consent, infrastructure provision and the effects of economic growth may be captured by the state using an array of LVC mechanisms.

Dissemination and cross-national learning is one of the key components of this project. We have brought together policy-makers, stakeholders and interest groups as an integral component of the project through an Advisory Board in order to maximize the opportunities for co-learning and knowledge exchange. A core component of the regular project meetings will be providing opportunities for mutual engagement between the advisory members, the project research team and local and national stakeholders (e.g. when the meeting is held in Liverpool representatives from Liverpool City Council, Liverpool City Region and the Local Enterprise Partnership will be invited to contribute to round table discussions and project presentations). These meetings will involve site visits and project specific interest groups to ensure that local and national relationships between partners and relevant interest bodies are developed. As such policy makers and local and national practitioners will play a core role in the formation and dissemination of knowledge created in the research.

To encourage a clear pathway between the research itself and the community of policy makers the project has a rigorous governance structure as set out below:

Consortium Manager (CM): Professor Alex Lord (Liverpool) will be responsible for the overall management of the project. Professor Lord has experience of leading international research and complex consortium research projects with high policy impact.

Work Package Coordinators: Dr Dunning (Liverpool), Professor Kim (SJTLU), Professor Li (Tongji), Dr Dong (Liverpool) and Professor van der Krabben (Radboud) will be responsible for ensuring all tasks and deliverables within their Work Package are completed on time and to standard.

Advisory Board: The board will initially comprise of the Royal Town Planning Institute (UK); Institut d'aménagement et d'urbanisme de la région d'Ile-de-France (France), the EU COST Action (CA17125) 'Public Value Capture of Increasing Property Values' (Netherlands); and Wei Yang and Partners (UK). Other members will be added as they engage with the research at the behest of the Consortium Manager. Members will be invited to a special session during all project meetings to provide critical feedback on the project design and policy outputs. The board will also act as advisors should their support be necessary under the risk contingency plan.

International Collaboration: In addition to a clear management structure it is also important to ensure that the collaboration between international partners is well organized. We have designed each work package to support inter-continental partnership and will seek alternative continental critique for each of the case studies. In addition to support early career international collaboration, each partner institution will host a junior member of staff for one week from each partner institution throughout the course of the project. These exchanges will be thematically linked to the research project but their primary focus will be on international network building. Where feasible these junior exchanges will take place prior to partner meetings in order to minimize costs.

To ensure a wider reach for dissemination we have a joint web and media strategy. A project website, with content in English, French, Dutch and Chinese will provide a platform for access to information about the project and will act as an open access repository for papers and data in relation to each of the work packages. To ensure that the project website (and relevant data and outputs) are widely known, we will undertake regular media engagement through the project partners and Advisory Board members' substantive media reach. This will include both traditional media press releases to local, national and international media outlets and through bespoke (project level) social media engagement, in particular accounts will be created for Twitter and Weibo.