The role of jurisprudence in public value capture in urban development: A comparative analysis from Dutch, English, Spanish and Colombian courts

Abstract

In the past decades, public bodies made growing attempts to ensure urban developers financed public urban infrastructure. These attempts have led to debates in international urban planning literature addressing the legitimacy of public value capture. However, the relevance of jurisprudence remains underreported. This paper aims to partially fill this gap by exploring, in four countries, the relevance of jurisprudence for the legitimacy (which contributions are legal, when and why) of a specific public value capture tool: Developer Obligations (DOs). In the case of Dutch and English courts, their decisions supported the legitimacy of gradual enlargement of the scope of obligations. The Spanish courts focus on the equal share of contributions among all landowners instead. In these three countries, the legality of contributions might be addressed in different ways while it is not fundamentally disputed. In Colombia it was—and jurisprudence ended the discussion.