Self-financing land and urban development via land readjustment and value capture

Abstract

This paper is about a unique case of a 47 mile long ring road in Ahmadabad, India, planned and implemented using self-financing land readjustment (LR) technique. Uniquely, no landowners were displaced, while the road's 200' wide right-of-way (ROW) was reserved while land abutting the road's ROW was also developed in a self-financing manner. Forty six different – neighborhood scale LR plans were formulated, systematically planned, and spatially arranged to carve the road's ROW and service abutting land with infrastructure. This paper showcases how a regional level infrastructure asset can be created using the LR technique, and how rapidly growing fringe area can benefit using the LR technique. This case is becoming a new model for capital intensive road projects now in India, inspiring other financially constrained similar size cities to follow Ahmadabad's LR based ring road development model. The case study is useful for land management and planning professionals, especially those who are engaged with fiscally constrained and rapidly urbanizing cities of the developing world.