Leveraging land-value capture in contexts of urban austerity: evidence from the Grand Paris Express (France)

Austerity urbanism has emerged as a powerful concept to explore the political and socio-spatial consequences of cuts in public spending, but interrogations remain regarding public actors’ shifting role in urban production in times of increased budgetary constraints. This article focuses on Land Value Capture (LVC), a financing mechanism that has been gaining traction amongst scholars and practitioners alike. While LVC can be framed as a valuable tool to finance infrastructure provision in times of austerity, we argue that the existing literature has neglected its use by other public actors, for the funding of other urban projects. Indeed, we analysed how different public actors (public landowners, land developers, and local governments) sought to take advantage of the anticipated rise in land value around future stations of the new urban railway system surrounding Paris, the Grand Paris Express. Through an exploration of four case studies, we show that LVC can be a flexible instrument that allows actors to either play into, or mitigate austerity-driven urban policies in French cities.