Current issues in land rent policy
Value Capture: The Latin American Toolbox

Centres of Regional Science:

PAGE 05
Land markets: market failure, policy failure – which
dominates, where?
by Paul Cheshire
PAGE 07
Why a taxation on development rents?
by Roberto Camagni
PAGE 09
by Martim O. Smolka

Proximity team, University Paris
Saclay, Agroparistech, INRA
Meet the Fellows

Jacques Poot
PAGE 13

Women in Regional
Scienceby Simona Iammarino, Brigitte
Waldorf, Alessandra Faggian,Elisabetta Marinelli, Bianca Biagi,
Margherita Gerolimetto, RachelFranklin

PAGE 15

PAGE 10the sections has allowed for change to take place within theorganisation. Several areas have been at the centre of the action.
First, there was for some time a consensus growing around theidea that the RSAI needed to become more proactive insupporting the development of regional science across the world.
This has been one of the main thrusts of my mandate, which has
included the creation of three new initiatives: ‘Nurturing newtalent’, ‘Building bridges’, and ‘Thinking big’. The aim of these
initiatives is, respectively, to facilitate the training of young
researchers in international workshops, to encourage theparticipation of researchers from less developed countries inregional science conferences, and to facilitate the bidding for
ambitious research projects by young scholars. ‘Nurturing newtalent’ and ‘Building bridges’ have already been in place for two
years and proved a success. ‘Thinking big’ has been launchedthis year. The calls are out and I would encourage you to take alook and apply, if applicable.
Another area where progress has been made is in therelationship with the super-regions. The relationship between the
RSAI and the super-regions that make regional science – ERSA,NARSC, and PRSCO – was in the past not always as smooth as
it should have been. Hence, much of my informal and formal
efforts over the last two years have been devoted to building
bridges with the super-regions. One important step in thisdirection has been the approval by the RSAI Council of the bylaw that ensures that the presidents, or equivalent, of the superregions will always have a voice and a vote at the RSAI table.
Similarly, the RSAI will be represented at the super-region’s
council meetings, guaranteeing that the channels ofcommunication remain always open and strong.
Moreover, the expansion of the regional science community has
continued apace. In particular, the creation of a new Latin
American and Caribbean super-region is a clear evidence of how
far regional science has come in this part of the world over thelast decade. The emergence of a multitude of dynamic and ablegroups of researchers across Latin America and the Caribbean,
as well as the numerous annual meetings held by the regional
science sections in the region are living proof that research inregional science keeps on expanding in parts of the world where
before it was conducted in relative isolation and without the
support of international networks. Talks are also taking place in

1. Introduction
1.1. Welcome from the President
by Andrés Rodríguez-Pose

Two years have flown past and it is now
time to pass on the baton to a new RSAI
president. From January 1, 2017, Professor
Jacques Poot, of the University of Waikato
in New Zealand, will steer the RSAI affairs
and I will continue to serve as pastpresident, but, more importantly, to play an active role as an
ordinary member of the regional science community.
Two years are too short a period to radically change anorganisation. One first has to learn how it works, understand the
intricacies inherent to it, and help build the necessary alliances tomake change happen. It was, in any case, never my intention toradically change the RSAI. If the RSAI has been around for morethan six decades, it is because it has great strengths. Most of all,the power of the RSAI is based on its capacity to bring together alarge community of top researchers from a variety of disciplinary
fields. Regional scientists who are willing to give their time andeffort to improving our understanding of how economic, social,
and political phenomena evolve in space and affect the life andwell-being of individuals across the world. By freely volunteering
their time to get together, network, and prepare new initiatives,
they continually contribute to create a widespread sense ofcommunity, gathering scholars from different fields and national
origins and allowing the Association to constantly andsuccessfully renew itself over time. Another great RSAI strength iswhat some would consider a weakness. The RSAI is anorganisation of organisations, bringing together numerous
subnational, national, and linguistic associations, grouped into
super-regions, under the umbrella of regional science. This nonhierarchical, collaborative framework may lead to some confusion
and the occasional spat, but is also at the heart of nurturing aworldwide community that extends beyond national andcontinental boundaries, giving rise to a buzzing web ofrelationships and connections.
The presence of great strengths did, however, not mean that
there were no issues that had to be dealt with. In these two years,
garnering the support of the RSAI Council, the super-regions, and-1-

the work I have witnessed and with the certainty that, under theforthcoming steering of Jacques Poot, the RSAI will be in great
hands.
Andrés Rodríguez-Pose, President RSAI (A.RodriguezPose@lse.ac.uk)

other areas of the world in order to warrant that the regional
science community keeps on growing. Testimony of this is therevamping in 2017 of the Indian Regional Science Association,with the prospect of new and exciting RSAI endorsed activities
that will take place in India in the near future.
There is, however, considerable work still to be done. The
regional science community is as large and diverse as it has everbeen. Since becoming a member of the Association, I have seen
its conferences grow in numbers and diversity. There are certainly
more young people and women at the conferences than once
upon a time. The ethnic diversity is also becoming greater.
Nevertheless, there is no room for complacency. The number ofwomen, young, and/or ethnically diverse scholars is still limited.
There also seems to be a glass ceiling in the representation ofthese groups in the governing bodies of regional science, in
general, and RSAI, in particular. There is a strong need toincrease the awareness about this sort of discrimination (see therelevant piece in this newsletter) and to do something about it.
And the effort to raise the profile and representation of thesegroups should not come from the groups themselves but, as
stated recently by women regional scientists, from the dominantgroup – that is, white, middle-aged, academic men. It is thisdominant group that needs to raise awareness of these problems
and champion change in order to make sure that the regional
science community remains a vibrant and dynamic house for all.
These two years have been fantastic and much more rewarding
than I originally envisaged. Actively engaging with regional
scientists in meetings and conferences across the world has
been highly gratifying and inspirational. My respect for all of those
who volunteer work and devote considerable amount of their time
to regional science has nothing but grown. It would be impossible
to mention everyone who has inspired me during my time aspresident, as I am certain to forget numerous people. But I cannot
but underscore the enormous support received by our executive
director, Tomaz Dentinho, and by Elisabete Martins at the RSAI
office. They are the ones who really make the Association tick, by
spending endless hours finding solutions to problems and dealing
with website, publishing, finance, and all other issues that emerge
on a daily basis. I hope to have been a good successor to thework conducted previously by Jean-Claude Thill and my otherpredecessors. I leave more humble, wiser, and in awe of much of

1.2. Welcome to the 2016 NARSC
Congress
Neil Reid
University ofToledoExecutive
Director
NARSCJohn Leatherman
Kansas State
University
NARSC 2016 Local
Organizer
Executive Director
MCRSA

Haifeng Qian
University of
Iowa
NASRC 2016
Program Chair

Katherine Nesse
Seattle Pacific
University
NARSC 2016 Local
Organizer

On behalf of the North American Regional Science Council andthe Mid-Continent Regional Science Association it gives us great
pleasure to welcome you to Minneapolis, Minnesota for the 63rd
Annual North American Meetings of the Regional Science
Association International. With more than 650 regional scientists
from across the world in attendance these meetings provide an
excellent opportunity to learn about cutting edge research being
undertaken by your colleagues. The meetings are also about
networking and so we hope that you enjoy not only catching up
with old friends but also making new professional acquaintances.
Hopefully, these conversations during a coffee break, over a drink
at the bar, or over dinner will stimulate new ideas for professional
collaborations.
While here please take the opportunity to explore the city of
Minneapolis. The city is, of course, home to the Mall of America,
one of the world’s largest shopping malls. It is only 15 minutes
from downtown Minneapolis and with 520 stores, 50 restaurants,
an indoor theme park it is great place to do some holiday
shopping. If shopping is not one of your favorite activities there
are plenty of other things to do and places to visit including The
Walker Museum of Art (one of America’s largest modern art
museums), The Guthrie Theater (the area's largest theater-2-

the profits of the rentier can be taxed so that the value
generated in transforming the environment truly becomespublic.
We then fly to Paris to meet the research group dealing
with proximity at University Paris Saclay, Agroparistech.
André Torre tells us all about how the group was formed
early in the 1990s and the way their contribution toproximity economics provided an interesting niche forthem to study.
Further, we have the honour to have Jacques Poot
describe his career achievements in the usual ‘Meet theFellows’ column. Jacques is President Elect of the RSAI
and we believe this is a nice introduction to him for the few
of you who do not know him personally.
Lastly, this issue hosts two interesting letters to theeditors. In the first, eminent women regional scientists
discuss the extent of the gender bias in our discipline
while proposing some possible solutions; in the second,
Vijay Pandey tells us about the perspectives of Regional
Science in India.
We both wish you all a good read, and fruitful sessions in
Minneapolis and elsewhere this year.

company), and The Minnesota Orchestra. The city also has avibrant dining and bar scene with something for every taste andbudget. Please visit www.minneapolis.org for a comprehensive
list of things to do in Minneapolis. Most of the city’s attractions areeasily accessible by Metro Transit, which provides both Light RailTransit and public bus service within the Minneapolis metropolitan
area.
In addition to the above attractions NARSC invites you to tour
Minneapolis by Bike. The tour will start at 3:00pm on Saturday,
November 12. The 1.5 hour “City Loop" tour will cover the
downtown area and will focus on the development of the city,
industry and recent changes. The tour cost is $39.50 (includes
bicycle with helmet with speakers). To register please go to the
NARSC website and click on the News and Announcement icon
to access the tour registration link.
Please enjoy the conference and your visit to Minneapolis. We
look forward to seeing you.

1.3. Welcome from the Editors
by Andrea Caragliu (andrea.caragliu@polimi.it) and Graham
Clarke (G.P.Clarke@leeds.ac.uk)

2. News from the RSAI Council
2.1 Major events
Report on the Ph.D workshop in Regional
Science – “Nurturing new talent”

Andrea Caragliu
Graham Clarke
Dear all,
We are happy to host so many interesting contributions inthis issue of the Newsletter.
RSAI activities thrive as usual, and while this Newsletter
will reach you in Minneapolis, MN for the 63rd NARSC
Congress, we hope you will find some time to read it. The
major topic we cover in this Newsletter is a debate on
current issues in land rent policy. Martìm Smolka (Lincoln
Institute), Paul Cheshire (London School of Economics)
and Roberto Camagni (Politecnico di Milano) guide us
through the intricacies associated with land rent policy.
They deal with how this peculiar (and important topic forregional scientists) type of rent emerges, how and why
new construction should be regulated (or not), and how

byDanielaConstantin,

Directorof

PROMAR(daniela.constantin@maa.ase.ro)

On May 19-20, 2016 the PhD Workshop in Regional Science
entitled “Nurturing New Talent” took place at the Bucharest
University of Economic Studies (BUES), Romania. It was
supported by the Regional Science Association International andorganised by the Romanian Regional Science Association(RRSA) in collaboration with the Faculty of
Administration and Public Management(FAPM) of BUES.
The workshop started with the Opening
Ceremony in the Aula Magna of the BUES.
After the “Gaudeamus Igitur” hymn,-3-

of Economic Studies, the RSAI President and the RRSA
President. Also, all PhD students have been urged to apply for
RRSA and RSAI membership and have been advised to submit
their papers to the Romanian Journal of Regional Science andother regional science-related journals and to participate in the
future regional science meetings organised in Romania andabroad.
To conclude, the workshop has been a complete success, theparticipation of all key actors being gratefully acknowledged.
Special thanks go to the RSAI and the local organisers for theirinvaluable support!

speeches were delivered by the local organisers – Prof.Dr.
Nicolae Istudor, Rector of the Bucharest University of Economic
Studies (represented by Prof. Dr. Dorel Mihai Paraschiv – ViceRector) and Prof.Dr. Elvira Nica, Dean of the Faculty of
Administration and Public Management, by Prof.Dr. Daniela L.
Constantin, President of the Romanian Regional Science
Association as well as by Prof.Dr. Andrés Rodriguez-Pose,
President of the Regional Science Association International.
Two Plenary Sessions hosted four outstanding keynote
speeches delivered by Prof.Dr. Andrés Rodriguez-Pose, London
School of Economics, RSAI President, Prof.Dr. Tomaz Dentinho,
University of Azores, RSAI Executive Director and Mrs. Aura
Raducu, Former Romanian Minister of European Funds – on
May 19 and by Prof.Dr. André Torre – INRA and University ParisSaclay, ERSA Vice-President and member of the RSAI Council –on May 20.

Professor Manfred Fischer awarded the RSAIFounder’s Medal
The highest accolade of the RSAI, the Founder’s Medal, wasawarded to Prof Manfred Fischer, of the Vienna University of
Economics and Business at the ERSA Congress in Vienna inAugust 2016. The medal is awarded every four years to scholars
who have made significant lifelong contributions to regional
science. The committee, presided by Dr Emmanouil Tranos,
recognised Professors Fischer’s capacity to push the scientificboundaries in the fields of mathematical and statistical modelling,methods and techniques in regional science, spatial
econometrics and spatial analysis.

Nurturing new talent 2016 Workshop in Bucharest

16 PhD students from Bucharest as well as from other Romaniancities with important academic and research communities (e.g.
Timisoara, Iasi, Suceava) presented the preliminary results fromtheir ongoing PhD research in five paper presentation sessions,offering a relevant image of the productive explorations in regional
science undertaken by the Romanian young scientists. The
keynote speakers as well as Romanian professors acting as PhD
advisors, together with scientific researchers – most of them also
RRSA members - from Bucharest, Timisoara, Cluj-Napoca,
Pitesti and other cities and FAMP professors served as excellent
chairs and audience members, stimulating effervescent debates
and offering valuable suggestions to the PhD students.
At the Closing Ceremony each PhD student received a certificate
of participation signed by the Rector of the Bucharest University

Professor Fischer being awarded the Founder’s Medal by RSAI
president Andrés Rodríguez-Pose

Professor Manfred Fischer joins a long list of awardees goingback to 1978 that includes the likes of Walter Isard, Martin
Beckmann, William Alonso, Jean Paelinck, David Boyce, Peter
Nijkamp, Antoine Bailly, and Arthur Getis.

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Although precedents can be found as early as the 16th century,and there have been isolated or unsystematic experiences inmany jurisdictions since then, discussions about the need forurban policies that would provide for value capture began insome countries in the 1970s. But it was only in the late 1990s thata significant number of nations enacted this type of legislation.
Colombia took the lead with passage of Law 388 in 1997, soon
followed by Brazil with its Statute of the Cities legislation in 2001.
Since then, Uruguay approved value capture provisions in 2008
and Ecuador in 2010. Peru is now in the process of sending its
law (SEDATU) to the congress, while Guatemala and Chile are
currently conducting high-level national debates on how thelegislation should be formulated.
Windfalls to Landowners from Urbanization
The need for capturing the value generated by urban landtransformations stems from the fact that landowners in Latin
America often reap huge increases in unearned income from avariety of public projects or the easing of zoning and otherrestrictions. A few examples in this sense:• Consistently in the region as a whole, conversion of rural land tourban use typically raises parcel prices by more than 400 percent(Bouillon 2012).
• In São Paulo’s high-end areas, the value that developers arewilling to pay for the right to build at a floor area ratio (FAR) of twoor three (rather than the basic FAR of one) is well over US$500
per square meter (Sandroni 2011).
• In Rio de Janeiro, the markup for developing new land at the
low-income urban periphery is huge, with fully serviced landselling for US$145 per square meter compared with aninvestment of just $10–35 per square meter (Vetter et al. 2011).
• Even the expectation of new public investments can boost
prices. In Cali, Colombia, announcement of a future low-income
housing project lifted the per-square-meter price of land in thearea by a factor of eight within a year and a half (Bonilla and
Loaiza 2006).
Land-Based Financing Tools
Value capture turns land into a major potential revenue source formunicipalities, improving their ability to meet public expenditures
as well as manage urban growth and promote greater social
integration. Depending on the legal frameworks within which they
operate, local governments have an opportunity to tap this

2.2 ANZRSAI network linking with other"southern cone" sections
by

Robyn

Eversole,

UniversityofTasmania, Australia(robyn.eversole@utas.edu.au)

The Sustainable Regions Applied
Research Network (SRARN) is a newinternational research network
dedicated to addressing practicaldevelopment challenges in rural
regions. In its first phase, SRARN willconnect researchers and researchgroups in Australia, Chile, and Argentina around sustainableregional development issues of common interest. These
researchers already work closely with stakeholders in their own
regions; the new network aims to stimulate international
collaboration and knowledge partnering to grow the impact of
their work. SRARN is supported by the Australian Government
through the Council on Australia Latin America Relations(COALAR) of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade; RSAI
is a project partner. Those interested in further information about
the Network, including how to join and upcoming events, should
contact Robyn Eversole, President of the Australia and New
Zealand Regional Science Association (ANZRSAI) and SRARN
Coordinator (robyn.eversole@utas.edu.au).

3. Current issues in land rent
policy3.1 Value Capture: The Latin American
Toolboxby Martim O. Smolka, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, Cambridge MA(msmolka@lincolninst.edu)

Conventional fiscal policies largely neglect
the fact that the costs of providing urban
infrastructure and services are public, but
their benefits are private. The notion ofvalue capture is to mobilize, for the benefitof the community at large, some or all of
the windfall income that landowners gainfrom public investments and by changes in administrative norms
and regulations that raise the value of their properties.

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Auctioning Additional Building Rights
Brazil’s Certificates of Additional Potential Construction Bonds(CEPACs) provide an ingenious solution for valuing additionalbuilding rights by basing the charges on the amount thatdevelopers are willing to pay in a competitive market. CEPACs
are issued by the municipality, regulated by the Comissão de
Valores Mobiliários (the equivalent of the Securities andExchange Commission), and auctioned on the São Paulo Stock
Exchange. The bonds are used in large-scale Urban Operations(UO) in rezoned areas that require improved infrastructure, withrevenues resulting from the sales of building rights reverting to the
UO area. In only two UOs (Faria Lima and Agua Espraiada), the
CEPAC auction raised in excess of US$2.5 billion. Theserevenues were used to defray the costs of transit improvements
as well as redevelopment of the Jardim Edith slum andconstruction of an iconic bridge that cost over $100 million.

fundamental resource using a variety of land-based financing
tools (LBFTs).
Betterment contributions: These charges or fees are imposedon property owners to defray the cost of a public improvement orservice from which they specifically benefit. In the United States,
these charges are known as special assessments. Use of
betterment contributions came back into common use in Latin
America, with over $1.7 billion collected in the eight largest cities
in 2007–2012. Bogotá alone supported a public works programfor 2005–2016 from contributions worth about $1 billion (Borrero,
Durán, Hernández, and Montaña 2011). In Medellin, betterment
levies are paying for more than half of the road grid (Garcia
Bolivar 2012).
Charges for building rights: Building rights charges recover theland value increment resulting from development rights over andabove an established baseline. Over time, the charges have
evolved from the more ad hoc manner of exactions into one
where the fees are calculated according to predefined criteria andapply to all properties in the city or in a well-defined zone basedon the master plan. The instrument that regulates charges for
additional building rights in Brazil (Outorga Onerosa do Direito deConstruir, OODC) is based on the notion that the landowner’s
right is limited to a basic floor area ratio and imposes a charge forthe right to develop land at higher densities. It also applies toother types of changes yielding more profitable land use options,such as conversions from rural to urban uses or the rezoning ofareas for renovation or commercial uses. In 2013, São Paulo
distributed about US$130 million in OODC payments to financeprojects that included bus terminals, transportation corridors,parks and green areas, slum regularization, historicalpreservation, and drainage.

FAR – Floor Area Ratio

Jardim Edith slum residents were relocated to a new building in thesame area using $57 million in funds raised by CEPACs.

Exactions: Exactions are cash or in-kind contributions and othertypes of charges for extraordinary building rights, withcompensation negotiated directly with municipal authorities.
Under the Law on Fair Access to Habitat enacted in 2012 in theProvince of Buenos Aires, Argentina, the municipality of Trenque
Lauquen amassed about 100 hectares of land to urbanize. In
combination with the funds collected from 10 percent of the land
value increment generated by urban development of more than
5,000 square meters, these exactions are enabling themunicipality to address the majority of its annual affordable
housing needs.
Land banking and Land leasing: Under land banking, themunicipality acquires and holds large tracts of land in order tocontrol their use and prevent speculation. Upon sale or lease of
banked land, the municipality captures the land value increment
resulting from public investments or market forces. In the 1980s
and 1990s, the administration of Aguascalientes, Mexico,acquired land through expropriation and other negotiations to-6-García Bolivar, L. 2012. La contribucion de valorización en la ciudad deprovide an alternative to informal settlements while also imposing
sanctions on pirate subdivisions (Jiménez Huerta 2013).
Land readjustment: This scheme requires contributions of landby local owners to an entity that then uses (sells) the contributions
to finance the cost of infrastructure and services. These
investments, in turn, increase the value of all properties in thearea. Participants in land readjustment initiatives assume the riskthat the increase in land values from urbanization will more thancompensate for the reduction in their individual holdings. The
Simesa project in Medellín, an area of about 30 hectares, wasoriginally owned by a steel mill and other smaller factories. Using
land readjustment, the area was transformed into a fully selffunded residential complex on 13 plots, with 37 percent of theland set aside for parks, green zones, and streets.
Property taxation: Any tax on land value is a form of value
capture insofar as much of that value results from accumulated
public actions and investments. It follows that the property tax
captures some value increase since it applies to both buildings
and land. To pay for a new 40-kilometer subway line in Buenos
Aires that would double the existing capacity, Law 23.514 of 1987
created a special fund financed with a 5 percent increase inproperty taxes for all city residents, plus another 2.4 percent
surcharge for residents living within 400 meters of the stations(Cuenya et al. 2003).
Transfers of development rights: Transfers of development
rights (TDRs) are in-kind compensation by the municipality toowners for constraints on building rights (e.g., historicpreservation or environmental conservation), or when owners
surrender some of their land for a public project such as widening
a road, creating a park, or rehabilitating a slum. These rights canbe sold to third parties or used directly in developments inpredefined areas. The city of Porto Alegre, Brazil, used suchrights to compensate owners releasing part or all of their property
to make room for a new avenue crossing the city.
References

Medellín. Paper presented at the Simposio técnicas y modelos sobre
contribución de valorización, Bogotá.
Jiménez Huerta, E. 2013. Conformación de reservas territoriales en
Aguascalientes como eje central para prevenir la informalidad. Paper
presented at the Foro Latinoamericano sobre Instrumentos Notables deIntervención Urbana, Quito, Ecuador.
Ochoa, B., et al. 2011. Evaluating the practice of betterment levies inColombia. Working Paper. Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land
Policy.
Otoya, B., and L. and J. Loaiza. 2006. Application of new land value
capture instruments in Colombia. Working Paper. Cambridge, MA:
Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
Sandroni, P. 2011. Urban value capture in São Paulo using a two-part
approach: Created land and sale of building rights. Working Paper.
Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
Vetter, D., R. Massena, and M. Vetter. 2011. Land values and theaffordability of lower-income housing. Internal report. Land Markets in
Latin American and Caribbean Cities project of the Latin American and
Caribbean Research Network and Inter-American Development Bank.

3.2 Land markets: market failure, policy
failure – which dominates, where?
by Paul Cheshire, London School of Economics (P.Cheshire@lse.ac.uk)

There are good reasons for regulating landmarkets. They suffer from endemic
problems of ‘market failure’ in the classic
sense used by economists. Occasionally
there is monopoly, for example, in theprocess of site assembly especially fortransport infrastructure. That is why we have‘compulsory purchase’ or ‘eminent domain’. As elementary urban
economics teaches us the value of any parcel of land depends
on the uses of all near-by parcels: and often such uses generate
externalities (impacts not reflected in prices paid by the owner
who generates the effect). Above all in land use there are criticalissues of public goods: goods from which no revenues can bederived. The most obvious would be parks, wilderness areas,
habitats or historic buildings but perhaps the most important is tosupply land for public, especially transport, infrastructure: not justfor the now but for the foreseeable future to allow cities to grow. In

Bouillon, C. 2012. Room for development: Housing markets in Latin
America and the Caribbean. Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan Ltd.
Cuenya, B., et al. 2003. Relevamiento de métodos e instrumentos parala ponderación y recuperación de plusvalías urbanas generadas por la
acción pública municipal. Buenos Aires, Argentina: CONICET and
CEUR.

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Conservation Area (as is much of other inner London Boroughs)
and one of the eight protected sight lines of St Pauls extend
16kms to Richmond; another to an oak tree on Hampstead
heath. No wonder London is such a low rise city. Some people
may like it like that but it comes at great cost and the skyline ofManhattan or Hong Kong has its attractions.
The effects of restricting space is cumulative over time because
new building is always a small fraction of the stock. It affects thecosts of office space – in a 2008 paper Cheshire & Hilber showedthat the ‘regulatory tax’ measure – the mark-up of the price ofoffice space compared to its costs of construction - averaged over
five years was up to 800% in London’s West End. The effects on
housing are most dramatically revealed in how much the price ofland increases if building permission can be got. In the northernfringes of London farmland is about £20k per hectare; but if you
could build on it then the price would be maybe 750 times higher £15m per hectare. The increase around Oxford, where houses
cost more relative to incomes than anywhere else in England,
would not be very much less.
The result is rapidly falling home ownership amongst the young
and a substantial redistribution from the young to the old and frompoor to rich. The latest English Housing Survey showed acontinuing rise in age for first time buyers with the proportion of 25
to 34 year old owner occupiers falling from 59 to 36% over 10
years; and for the first time ever, more owner occupiers did nothave mortgages than did. Our policies also generate a serious
misallocation of both scarce land and housing. We build houses
not where they are most socially valuable – near jobs – but whererestrictions allow. Over the past decade more than twice as many
houses have been built in Barnsley and Doncaster than in Oxford
and Cambridge (Cheshire, 2014). The lack of competition fromhousing means we have a gross over-supply of golf courses (justwithin the GLA area there is an area of golf courses that would
cover Kensington & Chelsea twice over) and grazing for horses.
The problems of the British housing market (or those of New
Zealand or the coastal areas of the USA) result from policy failure
not market failure. What is needed is for land supply to respond to
economic demand (but of course take account of environmental
value) and for local communities to be provided with enoughincentive from land value uplift for them to welcome development
rather than resist it as if life itself were at stake.

rich countries we need to safeguard land for highways and highcapacity public transit and for their expansion to accommodate
growth. This issue is even more significant in developing
countries. The failure to safeguard land for public use– often
coupled with growth constraints in the central municipalities – is amajor cause of informal development; once established thismakes organising efficient urban expansion problematic.
The common form of land use regulation is ‘planning’ or ‘zoning’.
There is, however, a chasm between regulation or planning to getland markets to deliver something closer to the social optimum
and the restriction of the supply of space. Policy may increase thepublic good by preventing development in environmentallyvaluable areas or preserving scenic landscapes; certainly bystopping building on urban parks. But as has been shown withincreasing persuasiveness over the last 20 years, policy in many
countries – the UK, USA, Canada or New Zealand to name just a
few – has gone far beyond that. It has rationed or constrained the
supply of space for little or no social or environmental gain but atgreat cost.
The crisis of housing affordability in Britain, for example, with its
epicentre in London, is largely the result of restricting the supply of
space for now 60 years – since Greenbelts were establishedaround most large cities with the sole purpose of preventing
development (Cheshire et al., 2014). They sound environmentally
cuddly – they are green after all. But they have no environmental
rationale and almost certainly increase average commuting
distances; most Greenbelt land is privately owned and thebiggest single use is environmentally damaging intensive arable.
More restrictive local planning also increases average commutes.
We (Cheshire et al., 2016) recently found a one Std. Dev.
increase in local restrictiveness increased the length of commuteby 8.5%. Hilber and Vermeulen (2016) found that if, since 1979,
the most restrictive local jurisdiction had been as flexible as theleast restrictive, house prices in it would have been 35% lower.
It is not just that in Britain we cannot build outwards (£18bn spenton Crossrail but no additional houses near any of thosegreenbelted, Home Counties communities suddenly transported
to within an easy commute of the highest paying jobs in Europe);
it is almost impossible to build up either. Some London Boroughs,
like Islington, have blanket bans on any building over 7 stories
almost anywhere; 75% of the surface of Westminster is a-8-acquisition of the monetary counterpart of these advantages byland-owners in the form of rents was considered by classicaleconomists – but also by many neoclassical economists at the
beginning of last century – as a “non-earned income” that should
be adequately taxed. Alfred Marshall, following Smith, went so far
as to claim that a 100% taxation on land rents would havecertainly produced huge political effects, but in economic terms“the vigour of industry and accumulation need not have been
impaired” (Principles, Book VI, ch. 9, Sect. 351) - a sentence
recalling georgism, that curiously was dropped by Marshallhimself in late editions.
In present days, a taxation of land rent is not generally pursued
by governments in its smooth and continuous manifestations but
rather when it appears in sudden, one-shot and relevant ways as
a consequence of changes in land uses, real estatedevelopments or as a direct effect of new, specific public
investments. Value ‘recapture’ and value ‘sharing’ on‘betterments’ (UK) or ‘windfalls’ (US) are pursued with different
intensities in time and space in advanced countries andincreasingly in some developing countries like Colombia andIndia. In fact, the issue is highly politically sensitive, but
increasingly felt as central in the contrast of private and public
corruption. In some cases, like in Italy, rent on urban
transformation was traditionally assured a condition of fiscal
paradise by legislation and practice, with the effect of drawing
savings and investments out of the manufacturing sector. In
Europe, Anglo-Saxon countries are at the forefront in rent
taxation: in the UK, according to Allan Evans, taxation on planninggains can nowadays reach 40%, being much higher in previous
after-war periods; in Germany, in the most advanced and imitated‘Munich way’, local taxation is as high as 30% of the total market
value of the urban transformation. In France a lower but still
relevant share is reached through private-public negotiation, but
only on large development operations; this share might beestimated to be 15-18% of total market values (10-12% in Spainand 4-7% in Italy).
In the short term, the distribution between the private and the
public spheres of surplus values generated by urban
transformation certainly represents a zero-sum game, implying adifficult and tough bargaining process, where public authorities
may easily succumb as a consequence of information

References
Cheshire, (2014) ‘Turning houses into gold: don’t blame the foreigners,
it’s we Brits who did it’, CentrePiece, Spring.
Cheshire, P., C.A.L. Hilber (2008) ‘Office Space Supply Restrictions in
Britain: The Political Economy of Market Revenge’ Economic Journal,
118, (June) F185-F221.
Cheshire, P., C.A.L. Hilber and H.R.A.Koster (2016) Empty homes,
longer commutes: the unintended consequences of more restrictive local
planning, mimeo.
Cheshire, P. M. Nathan and H.G. Overman (2014) Urban Economics
and Urban Policy: Challenging Conventional Policy Wisdom, Edward
Elgar.
English

Housing

Surveyhttps://www.gov.uk/government/collections/english-housing-survey
Hilber, C.A.L. and W. Vermeulen (2016) ‘The Impact of Supply
Constraints on House Prices in England’, Economic Journal 126(591),
358-405.

3.3 Why a taxation on development
rents?
by Roberto Camagni, Politecnico di Milano

Cities are large collective goods created through public andprivate investment decisions, providing advantages in terms of
citizens’ well-being and efficiency of production activities. As aconsequence, the economic value of their single parts – places orurban spaces – is not determined by individual action, but bycollective action external to the individual actor: as all classicaleconomists maintained, urban land values depend on the “overall
development of society”.
Land and property
valuesarethecounterpart of realadvantages that can beobtained from locating
new economic or
residential
activities
within the city: advantages of internal and external accessibility,
availability of public goods and services, agglomeration ofnumerous complementary activities, enhanced by an efficacious
and far-sighted urban planning and by the presence of a shared,
collective project for the city. As a consequence, the private-9-asymmetries, lack of sufficient incentives for public officials, lack of
the requisite skills in public administrations in many countries,
fuzzy legislation on taxation levels and pervasive nontransparency. But in the long term, the game could turn into a
positive-sum one, if the share of recaptured land rents ischanneled towards urban infrastructure improvement andenhanced livability services: a virtuous cycle of continuous urban
wellbeing, competitiveness and growth may be triggered, turning
the game into a win-win one.
A further economic rationale for rent taxation resides in the factthat the private appropriation of surplus values by land-lords
happens not just at the expense of public budgets – deeply
involved in investments, services and urban maintenance – but
also at the expense of private productive classes (on profits) as
surpluses can only appear thanks to industrial innovations,general development and increasing citizens demand.
On the juridical side too, many justifications were produced inmany countries in favour of a taxation of capital gains and realestate surplus values. The British legal system, established with
the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, removed the right toland development from the bundle of ownership rights, statingthat the entitlement to development should come from apermission granted by the state or the local authority. In more
recent years, development permits are assigned throughcomplex planning agreements implying the possibility for theadministration to recover ‘planning gains’ in kind rather than only
in cash, through the direct provision of extra benefits for the areaby the private party – beyond the necessary physical precondition
for the functionality of the estate developments.
In Spain the new Constitution, art. 47, prefers a more direct,
transparent and generalized obligation to a case-by-case solution
through public-private negotiation: “the community and the local
public administration will participate in the surplus values
generated by the planning action of public bodies.” Many Latin
American Constitutions include a similar principle for equity andincome distribution reasons: no citizen should accumulate wealththat does not result from his own effort – “no enriquecimiento sinjusta causa”.
In other cases where recapture of surplus values has never been
explicitly accepted, a different rationale is given for some form oftaxation of real estate development: impact fees imposed on thedeveloper (US) to recover the public costs for the provision of
public goods and infrastructure directly linked to the development
scheme (“recoupment”) or as a counterpart to the spatial andenvironmental impacts of the scheme itself – on traffic, on
demand for local public services, on depletion of some commons.
This justification comes close to a traditional claim of planning,
namely the need to provide or reconstruct public goods – natural,semi-natural or built – endangered by physical expansion of
settlements: a sustainability justification which adds to an equity
justification.
All the previous justifications – of an economic, juridical or ethicalnature – hold a superior relevance in times, as the present ones,
characterized by difficulties in public finance, collapse of public
investments particularly on cities and necessity of relaunchingsolidarity, sustainability and competitiveness in our cities.
References
Marshall, A. (1920). “Principles of Economics”, London (UK): Macmillan
and Co, 8th ed.

4. Centres of Regional Science:
Proximity team, University Paris
Saclay, Agroparistech, INRA
by André Torre, Agroparistech (torre@agroparistech.fr)

Our history started in 1999, when André Torre came to Paris as
an appointed full professor, and integrated the SAD-APT
laboratory in Agroparistech (the main French School of engineers
in environment and agronomy science) and INRA (the large
public body devoted to studies about agriculture, agri-businessand rural areas). Previously, he had spent some years at the
University of Sophia Antipolis as an assistant professor, working
on the creation and the diffusion of technology and high techinnovations at the local level, using input-output techniques andindustrial economics methodologies, and then four years in
Corsica working on local development. There existed a traditionof research about geography and territory in the Paris team, but
André rapidly decided to start multidisciplinary research on
Regional Science and to launch a new team devoted to theworks on proximity relations as well as cooperative and noncooperative behaviors at the local level.

- 10 -

Andrè Torre speaking in Clermont

Step by step, he was joined by young researchers and PhD
students, and the team developed its own methodologicalframework. Now it has a stabilized but is still a growing
configuration (two new women assistant professors are joining it
this autumn), involving around 20 tenured researchers and about
15 doc and post-doc and a few associated researchers or
professors. They are mainly economists and sociologists, with a
few geographers and planners. The team is now led by Romain
Melot (assistant Professor in Sociology) and Frederic Wallet(assistant Professor in Economics). It involves well known
scholars in the field like Jean-Baptiste Traversac (assistantProfessor in Economics), Maryline Filippi (Professor in
Economics), Florence Pinton (Professor in Sociology) or
Emmanuel Raynaud (Professor in Economics)…
The team hosts the two main French speaking Journals in thefield of Regional Science, namely the Revue d’Economie
Régionale et Urbaine, also named Journal of Regional and
Urban Economics (mostly in Economics), and Géographie,
Economie, Société (mainly in multidisciplinary fields), respectively
directed by André Torre and Frederic Wallet. It has the
responsibility of many teachings and masters courses, but one
can isolate the Master DEBATS, on sustainable development,
biodiversity and local development, which is supported by a
UNESCO chair.
The recognition of the group's scientific work and management
experience have allowed it to be entrusted since 2008 as a pilotof the largest French research program dedicated to agriculture
and rural development. The PSDR program (For and About
Regional Development) is about academic research partnerships
involving researchers from different disciplines, local actors andpolicymakers. It includes 33 collaborative research projects thatare spread over almost all of the French regions, under the
direction of André Torre (Program Director) and Frederic Wallet(General Manager).
The group is located on two sites in the
Greater Paris area, one in the Quartier
Latin, in the heart of Paris, and the other in
Ivry, south Paris. It became, two years ago,
one of the major components of thedepartment of Social Science of the big
University of Paris Saclay. It is considered
Frederic Walletas one of the major contributors to researchin regional science, land use assessment and environmental
research in France, with a good and increasing international
visibility.
The name of the team is directly related to its contribution to thedevelopment of the ideas in Regional Science, in terms of
Proximity. The definitions of the proximity-based approach are
based on a division according to two main dimensions –geographical and organised - which include more refined anddetailed categories.
Geographical proximity is above all about distance. In its simplest
definition, it is the number of meters or kilometres that separate
two entities. But it is relative in three ways: the morphologicalcharacteristics of the spaces in which activities take place, theavailability of transport infrastructure and the financial resourcesof the individuals who use these transport infrastructures.
Geographical proximity is neutral in essence. It is the humanactions and perceptions that give it a more or less positive or
negative dimension, as well as certain usefulness. It is the way inwhich actors use it that matters. Thus, the fact that two firms arelocated in proximity to each other may or may not be a source ofinteraction: these two entities may remain indifferent to each otheror they may choose to interact. But this mobilisation can havedifferent results depending on the actions undertaken. For
example, it might be the diffusion of scientific or technologicalknowledge through spillover effects, but it might also lead to firms
spying on other firms, or unduly reaping the benefits of an
invention. Geographical proximity can be activated or mobilized
by the actions of economic and social actors. More precisely,
actors might seek to get closer to, or further away from, certain- 11 -

people or places, or they might feel satisfied or dissatisfied withthe geographical proximity of certain people, places or technicalobjects. One then talks of sought for and unwanted geographicalproximity.
Organized proximity refers to thedifferent ways of being close to otheractors, regardless of the degree ofgeographicalproximity
betweenindividuals, the qualifier “organized”
referring to the arranged nature of human
Jean-Baptiste Traversac
activities. Organized proximity rests on
two main logics, which do not necessarily contradict each other;
the “logic of belonging” and the “logic of similarity”. The logic of
belonging refers to the fact that two or several actors belong to
the same relationship graph or even to the same social network
whether their relation is direct or intermediated. The logic ofsimilarity corresponds to a mental adherence to common
categories; it manifests itself in small cognitive distances between
some individuals. They can be people who are connected to one
another through common projects, or share the same cultural,religious (etc.) values or symbols. Social norms, common
languages partake of this organized proximity.
Temporary geographical proximity (TGP) constitutes one form ofgeographical proximity that enables actors to temporarily interact
face-to-face with one another. The development ofcommunication technologies and ICT facilitates long-distanceexchanges; be they for economic reasons between producers, orfor day-to-day relations between friends or relatives.
Consequently co-location no longer constitutes an absolutenecessity. A large part of the information and knowledge that arenecessary for production or innovation activities can betransferred from a distance, through the telephone or Internet
mediated exchanges for example. However, sometimes face-toface interactions are necessary and beneficial. TGP corresponds
to the possibility of satisfying needs for face-to-face contact
between actors, by travelling to different locations. This travelling
generates opportunities for moments of geographical proximity,
which vary in duration, but which are always limited in time.
The group has also worked in an extensive way on the relations
between territorial governance and territorial development
processes. The notion of territorial governance is related to theprocesses of decentralisation and the setting of new forms of
public action and involvement in decision making, passing from ahierarchic organisation, founded on the public institutions, to a
network type organisation that combines public-private
partnerships and involves a highly varied group of players andmultiple territorial levels. It corresponds to the participation of local
stakeholders with heterogeneous preferences in the territorial
development decision process, and refers to concrete objectives
in terms of local development, like favouring the setting up of
territorial development projects, contributing to the design of wide
consultation schemes, facilitating the coordination ofheterogeneous groups of players, limiting the spatial exit ofpeople with certain profiles, avoiding sterile confrontations, anddeciding about future development pathways. It corresponds to
the rupture of the government approach to public affairs byhermetic administrative and political devices, and the upsurge ofquestions of local democracy in the management procedures ofpeople and organisations.
Our research on the land use and proximity conflicts shows thatthey are a form of expression of opposition to decisions that leavepart of the local population unsatisfied. Some local innovations
provoke resistance which can give rise to conflicts. Majorchanges, which involve reconfiguration of the use of space(introduction of transport or waste treatment infrastructures, newlocal urbanism plans, territorial or environmental zones) generate
conflicts whose spatial and social extent can become very
considerable. During the phases of conflict, social and interest
groups tend to reconstitute themselves and may even undergo
technical or legal changes. Once a conflict ends, it leaves behind
new local agreements, new modes of governance, newconfigurations of discussion forums as well as new technicalprocedures (changes in direction, various adjustments, changes
in urban planning documents, etc.), all arrived at during thenegotiations. Harbingers of territorial innovation, conflicts are thus
both the result as well as the cause of territorial changes.
Thus, territorial governance is not limited to an idyllic vision of
economic and social relations, i.e. to forms of cooperation andcommon constructions. It is also about interaction between forces
promoting cooperation and other forces promoting conflict. The
processes of territorial development and their progress are madeup of phases of negotiation, collaboration or appeasement, and of- 12 -

much rougher periods when certain groups or categories ofplayers clash, sometimes violently, in defining the steps to befollowed and the options to be adopted. The team is alsointerested in new forms of activity that structure the rural and periurban areas, and their relationship to the city; for example
alternative food systems or more broadly, territorial innovation.
These ideas have been developed in several projects, like theEuropean TASTE project (Towards A SmarT rural Europe),
involving various European teams, where the possibility of asmart development in rural areas has been tested.
The research group has joined the international scientificcommunity, participating in the organization of many activities.
The ERSA Conference in Paris, in 2007, on Local Governanceand Sustainable Development, the ERSA Workshop ‘Do Rural
Regions count?’ in Paris in 2012, or the international Workshop
on Proximity and Regional Development in Paris in 2011 are
three examples over time. André Torre, Jean Baptiste Traversac,
Frederic Wallet and Maryline Filippi have organized various
special sessions on Proximity relations, territorial governance, or
rural development in different ERSA or RSAI Conferences. André
Torre has been Vice-President of ERSA since 2014 and amember of the RSAI board. He was appointed President of theFrench speaking section from 2008 to 2011.
The scientific strength of the group is also reflected by the various
books or special issues. André Torre and Frederic Wallet haverecently published two books: one edited book on Proximity
relations, involving contributions by major scholars in Regional
science like Roberta Capello, Roberto Camagni, Bob Stimson,
Peter Nijkamp, Andres Rodriguez Pose, Antoine Bailly, Ron
Boschma, Harald Bathelt…, and one textbook on Regional
Development in Rural Areas, making a broad assessment on this
topic. André Torre and Jean Baptiste Traversac also edited thevery first book on Territorial Governance, involving many
recognized scholars in the field.

5. Meet the Fellows: Jacques Poot
How does one become a regional scientist? In my case my highschool mathematics teacher in Uithoorn, the Netherlands,
recommended that I should study something challenging likeeconometrics. Not having a strong preference for an alternative

discipline, I followed his advice and enrolled in September 1972 in
the Interfaculty of Econometrics and Actuarial Sciences at Vrije
Universiteit Amsterdam (also referred to as VU University, or Free
University Amsterdam). It was a small cohort, as they took in only
the 30 best qualified applicants per year. It was called an
Interfaculty because students were required to take core courses
from the Faculty of Economics and from the Faculty of Science,as well as specialised courses in the Interfaculty itself. Thus, as
an undergraduate student I had to struggle with topics like
topology, measure theory and abstract algebra. The
mathematical models used in undergraduate macroeconomics
and microeconomics looked rather simple by comparison.
I started my Masters in Econometrics
at VU in January 1975 and had tochoosebetweenmathematical
economics,
econometrics
andoperations research. A strong interestin public policy led me to mathematical
economics, where the work of Nobel
Prize winner Jan Tinbergen – who I
met when he was visiting VU – still
strongly influenced the curriculum. My Masters supervisor Arnold
Merkies had previously worked at the Dutch Central Planning
Bureau (now called CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic
Policy Analysis) and offered me a research assistant position in1976 to update and complete a study he had started at CPB on
forecasting the long-run economic growth rate in the Netherlands
under assumed scenarios of population growth and postcompulsory education enrolments. This introduced me not only tothe economic growth theories at the time (and the inadequacy ofthe exogenous technological change assumption) but also to
population projection methodologies and the use of Markov
chains to model transitions. A seminar by Henri Theil, at the
University of Chicago at the time, on modelling social mobility
further inspired me to go in that direction. The Masters thesis was
written in Dutch and sadly not subsequently published, but
triggered a job as research assistant of the VU professors of
economic growth and macroeconomic policy, Steven Huisman
and Bernard Compaijen respectively. With them I contributed to a
Dutch macroeconomics textbook.
By late 1978 I decided to do a PhD abroad and a pamphlet on- 13 -

the VU noticeboard advertising a new PhD programme at Victoria
University of Wellington (VUW) in New Zealand led me to apply.
While at the opposite side of the world, New Zealand was not an
odd choice for me as several of my relatives migrated there in the
1950s and I had visited them and hence knew the country.
Additionally, my parents decided to retire there in the same year.
VUW offered me a job as junior lecturer, which was financiallymore attractive than a scholarship offer I received in Australia. I
also met my wife-to-be soon after arriving in Wellington, so that
settled the location question. I decided on a PhD thesis on
interregional population mobility, with labour economist Peter
Brosnan as chief supervisor. Initially I started applying Markov
chain models and could have gone in the direction of Andrei
Rogers’ work, but became particularly intrigued by Bill Alonso’s
general theory of movements. Formal econometric modelling of
this model remained challenging for decades. I did design anestimation method and a New Zealand application, which was
published in the Scottish Journal of Political Economy (a journalthat had a tradition of publishing about labour markets andmigration) in 1986.
My introduction to the regional science network was throughtaking regional, urban and transportation economics as elective
courses during my Masters at VU. That is how I met Peter
Nijkamp and the late Piet Rietveld. In early 1980 I received aletter “out of the blue” from Peter Nijkamp, jointly with Wal van
Lierop, inviting me to participate in a summer institute in
Soesterberg, The Netherlands. There I presented my firstregional science paper on analysing intra-urban residential
mobility with log-linear models. The discussant was Peter Batey.
Roughly at that time I also joined the Australian and New Zealandsection of RSAI, which subsequently awarded me with the 1985
best PhD dissertation medal. Like many others in regional
science, I continued to be active in other networks as well, in mycase the New Zealand Demographic Society (now Population
Association of NZ) and the NZ Association of Economists.
Following completion of my doctorate in early 1984, my family
and I went on sabbatical back to VU in Amsterdam and to theAustralian National University in Canberra. In Amsterdam, I
started my first project with Peter Nijkamp on dynamics ofgeneralised spatial interaction models, subsequently published in
1987 Regional Science and Urban Economics. My firstpresentation of this paper was at the 1985 PRSCO conference
on Molokai, Hawaii, with Walter Isard as the discussant. Walter
liked the paper – which was a pure theory one – and told me not
to be concerned when some New Zealand colleagues had
criticized the paper for having little practical use.
In the second half of the 1980s, I got my first large grant from the
NZ government. The aim was to do a scenario-based impact
assessment of immigration by means of simulations with acomputable general equilibrium (CGE) model. For this, I worked
with VUW’s Bryan Philpott, who had developed several CGE
models for New Zealand, and his PhD student Ganesh Nana. At
that time Australia and New Zealand were well ahead of North
America and Europe in doing integrated impact assessment ofinternational migration. Many of the issues that became
subsequently core topics of immigration economics (such as therole of international trade, fiscal impacts, housing, technologicalchange and population diversity) were already introduced in our
1988 book International Migration and the New Zealand
Economy.
At the same time I continued working with Peter Nijkamp, andalso with Jan Rouwendal, on endogenous economic growth in a
spatial setting, leading to several articles in Annals of Regional
Science and also one in Australian Economic Papers.
In 1994 I was offered an opportunity to spend a few years inJapan at the University of Tsukuba, on the invitation of former
RSAI President and 1996 World Congress organiser Hirotada
Kohno. During this time in Japan I also worked closely with themore recent RSAI President Yoshiro Higano. While my teachingin Japan introduced me to the challenges of environmental
economics and policy, my research remained focussed on theeconomics of migration and endogenous growth. Upon returning
to New Zealand in 1997 (VUW had graciously kept my positionopen), my VUW colleague Philip Morrison and I organised theDecember 1997 PRSCO conference in Wellington which
attracted 250 participants from throughout the world.
After Peter Nijkamp won the 1996 Spinoza Prize, he used thefunds to set up MASTER-point at VU University, a research
centre for meta-analysis in spatial, transportation andenvironmental research and invited me to join MASTER-point as
a visiting professor. Raymond Florax was appointed as director.
Meta-analysis, the quantitative research synthesis of a body of- 14 -

empirical research findings, had become very popular in otherdisciplines such as psychology, medicine and education, but hadreceived relatively little attention in economics. This association
with MASTER-point during the late 1990s and early 2000s turned
out to be a very productive period and led to highly cited
publications. One topic was the labour market impacts ofimmigration, to which Simonetta Longhi, who was doing her PhD
at VU at the time, made a major contribution.
In 2004 I took up, upon the invitation of New Zealand’s
demographer par excellence, Ian Pool, a personal chair in
population economics at the University of Waikato and the
Directorship of the Population Studies Centre. We were very
fortunate to secure during the following decade some large grants
for research on population ageing, immigrant integration andregional population distribution in New Zealand that allowed
participation of around 6-10 researchers. After a three year-stint
as Director, I was happy to pass on that administrative role to mycolleague Richard Bedford, who subsequently transformed PSC
into the National Institute of Demographic and Economic Analysis(NIDEA), where I am at present.
As co-Principal Investigator of the 2009-2013 Migrant Diversity
and Regional Disparity in Europe (MIDI-REDIE) project andhaving several other professional roles and projects in Europe as
well, I became during the last decade one of the world’s longest
distance commuters – spending several months in Europe eachyear, as well as continuing the New Zealand projects. Given thata lot of my work had been concerned with economic policy
analysis, I was very honoured to win the New Zealand Institute of
Economic Research (NZIER) Award in 2013, referred to by theNZ public as “Economist of the Year”.
In recent years I have been doing further meta-analyses,
including with Henri de Groot and Martijn Smit on agglomeration
externalities (with the latest paper recently published in Journal of
Economic Surveys) and with former VU PhD student Ceren
Ozgen (now at the University of Birmingham) on productivity
effects of net migration (in Papers in Regional Science). Work
with Ceren also included several projects on trying to find causal
evidence of diversity impacts on innovation.
It is clearly impossible to mention all research collaborators
around the globe since the turn of the millennium, but I should
acknowledge many interesting projects with former Waikato PhD

students Bill Cochrane, Matt Roskruge, Valente Matlaba, Steven
Bond-Smith and Lynda Sanderson (I should explicitly mention thepaper with Lynda and Phil McCann on relationship capital
published in Journal of Economic Geography, of which I am
particularly fond), with former VU PhD students Masood Gheasi
and Guney Celbis; and with former Purdue PhD student Julia
Beckhusen. Several of the New Zealand projects are jointly with
Senior Fellows Dave Maré and Arthur Grimes at Motu Economic
and Public Policy Research, New Zealand’s leading economic
think-tank.
The European work on the economics of cultural diversity
triggered a 2014-2020 mixed methods project in New Zealand,
entitled Capturing the Diversity Dividend of Aotearoa New
Zealand (CaDDANZ, pronounced cadence). Research on
diversity impacts, immigrant integration and social capitaldevelopment is likely to remain the main focus of my research inyears to come, but new projects on the challenges of New
Zealand’s largest city, Auckland, and on the future of smallerurban areas are on the horizon. This, combined with having
accepted the Presidency of RSAI over the next two years, implies
there is no shortage of interesting and challenging things to do in
the years to come.

6. Letters to the editor
6.1 Women in Regional Scienceby Simona Iammarino (s.iammarino@lse.ac.uk), Brigitte Waldorf(bwaldorf@purdue.edu), Alessandra Faggian (faggian.1@osu.edu),
Elisabetta Marinelli (Elisabetta.Marinelli@ec.europa.eu), Bianca Biagi(bbiagi@uniss.it), Margherita Gerolimetto(margherita.gerolimetto@unive.it), Rachel Franklin(Rachel_Franklin@brown.edu)

Gender – and more general Equality and Diversity (E&D) issues– recently resurfaced in an open debate across different social
science disciplines. This stemmed from the observation of thestrongly biased composition of academic community bodies ofvarious types (e.g. key-note speakers, conference panels,
editorial boards, summer school, policy research groups, etc.). A
strong gender (and race) bias has been observed by groups offemale academics spanning across regional science, economic
geography, innovation studies, international business, and- 15 -

economics. It has been suggested that the gender bias has
increased since the latest financial crisis, which has exacerbatedcompetition in labour markets.
In the Regional Science scientific community of the 1980s similar
discussions were carried out and efforts were made to make thediscipline more inclusive, for example by recruiting women intoroles of responsibility within the community.
It is acknowledged that, since then, the gender ratio has changed
substantially. Evidence of such change was acknowledged, e.g.
Regional
Science
Newsletter,
October
2009:
http://www.regionalscience.org/images/PDF/October_2009_new
sletter.pdf (see, in particular, the article by Brigitte Waldorf“Women in Regional Science: A success story”).
It is realized, however, that the default choice in Regional
Science, as in other disciplinary fields, is still highly ‘white maledominated’. It is believed that this is not a success story for thecommunity as a whole, and it will be a serious mistake to dismiss
it as sorted while heading into the 2020's.
In the latest decades a lot of debate has been around the lack ofrepresentation of women in science, with a presumption thatgender imbalance is a phenomenon affecting mainly STEM.
However, this is also true in social sciences and related policy
debates, although possibly in different ways from STEM (e.g. not
so much lack of participation of women in social science, but lackof representation in the more “visible” areas of the academic andpolicy debate).
The perception is one of women’s “tolerance”, more than realinclusion. In fact, women are even very much appreciated as
their presence makes it harder to point fingers against “old-boysnetworks”. Women are also often sought because they are more
willing to accept time-consuming tasks, like organizing
conference. But, in general, they rarely are involved in decision
making processes: e.g. selection of key-note speakers, genderratio in the number of person-years as editors.
The problem is complex and has a ‘cumulative causation’ nature.
It has been noted, for instance, that women participation in policy‘impact’ of research is negligible across domains (e.g. S&TI
policies, industrial policies, regional policies). Impact is now inseveral academic systems (e.g. UK) one of the area of ‘metrics’
used to assess academic performance. More generally, it is also
recognised that other metrics such as citations or teachingevaluations strongly penalise women, affecting their overall
career progression and public profile. See for e.g. (among
hundreds of others):
https://www.hastac.org/blogs/superadmin/2015/01/26/genderbias-academe-annotated-bibliography-important-recent-studies
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/inside_higher_ed/2016/01/stude
nt_evaluations_show_bias_against_female_instructors.html
http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/04/19/how-to-get-tenure-if-youre-awoman-academia-stephen-walt/
Women are easily dismissed as “endless complaining”: this
distorted attitude makes female social scientists feel often likecensoring their own writing and apologize for speaking up. This
does not encourage serious evaluation and representation of the
problem, particularly in social sciences.
Also, and most importantly, many academic women in senior
positions are already the first to be called upon for service workwithin their own academic institutions. Many academic women atadvanced stages of career have and are increasingly called indecision making roles on the basis of gender ‘quotas’. It is not an
imposition but women often have no choice, internal regulations
on E&D fix quotas for female in management within universities.
There is then a problem with overload, as women are still much
fewer at present among the high levels of career because of thelong-term glass ceiling, so this ends up by creating an impossible
triad: more internal admin, more external engagement in thecommunity, same skewed balance of tasks in professional andprivate life (particularly for women with young children).
There is a clear mismatch between the demand for womencolleagues and the stock of women colleagues (especially at thesenior level of career). This has led to an informal perception of‘she is there because she is a woman’, in most cases very
explicitly communicated. The latter is a severe form of
discrimination; women are acknowledged on the basis of theirgender, rather than for their capabilities and qualities.
A few decades of awareness is plenty of time to move womencompletely through the pipeline from students to settled
academics. Looking around and not seeing those women, should
be regarded as a failure and an urgent and pressing need toadjust the approach.
Blatant discriminatory behaviour is enduring on this topic.
Behavioural change (including support to women self-confidence- 16 -

and fight against unconscious bias) and transformation in informal
attitudes and collective perceptions are really difficult tasks: incomparison, putting the demand for equality on the agenda andmaking it part of the discourse using simply metrics and quotas is,indeed, very easy. Thus, as said also above, many respectable
universities in the US and Europe are now obliged to have afemale representation of at least 30% on ANY Committee, andANY kind of procedure involving HR, such as recruitment,
promotion, reward, etc. has to adhere to strict formal E&D rules.
There are, however, other (typically male) mechanisms, such as
lobbying and bargaining, that are hidden, informal and highly(unconsciously or consciously) biased.
There is the firm belief that raising awareness is a first step in
introducing changes. Reacting to specific unbalanced situations –as it is increasingly done but groups of female academics inRegional Science and other fields) is a first step, but there is still alarge proportion of the academic world that believes that there isno such thing as discrimination in academia in general and in ourfield in particular.
An emblematic example of dismissal of problem that then led tosome reaction is the following in Nature with respect to the STEM
sciences:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v488/n7413/full/488590a.ht
ml
As a result of the turmoil that that article generated, Nature (whofirst denied any discrimination) actually revised substantially thepolicies to commission articles, assign editors, and the numbers
today (4 years later) are much more balanced.
Similar links with reference to all fields of science:
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2016/03/08/genderbias-in-academe-an-annotated-bibliography/
What is also needed is for academic men to step forward andchampion gender equality for the health of the Regional Science
discipline, and for other interrelated fields. Increasing inter- andmulti-disciplinarity can help liaise with other communities andstrengthen actions. Asking only women to take the lead makes
this a "women's problem" as opposed to a social science andsocietal challenge: thus, a real effort at equality might beassigning some of this work to male academics. It has been
noted that the help of senior men in start making gender equalitya priority, raises the chances to address effectively this huge

issue, that necessarily require a steady and long-term concerted
effort.

6.2 A brief report on the perspective ofRegional Sciences among the young
researchers in India
by Vijay Pandey, University of Delhi (vijay.dse15@gmail.com)

Over the past three decades the process of globalization has
brought forward major changes in the regional and economic
landscape. Since the 1980s, the unprecedented expansion involumes of international trade and capital mobility acrosscountries has dramatically altered the pre-existing equilibrium
based on the strong role of nation states in regulating, orienting
and/or restricting such flows. Therefore, globalization has
gradually frayed nation-state level regional and economic
institutions as they were known in the post world war-II period. At
the same time, globalization has contributed to the progressive
evolution of the regional science paradigm shift of mass
production towards more flexible and successful production
systems as a way to respond to the increasing competitive
pressure of international markets. Improvements incommunication technologies and the fall in transportation costs
reduce the importance of physical distance in the location of
productive activities. Consequently, regional development canvirtually occur everywhere without any role being played by
local\spatial factors. Convergence in incomes across regions andcountries would thus be the ultimate result of globalization.
In general, regional science (basically the result of globalization)highlights that development potential and competitive advantage
are strongly localized elements. Therefore, what regional sciencestrategies should aim at is basically to adopt balanced policies
which build upon local strengths and try to alleviate local
weaknesses as the only way to root economic activity in territories
in a sustainable manner (Pike et al., 2006).
Indian perspectives: inventory and prospects
The growing awareness about the relevance of regional sciencein shaping regional and local development path is reinforced by
the increasing demand for power decentralization from national toregional governments in the last decades. Decision-making at the
local level could be extremely positive for regional development
by encouraging collective action and tailoring strategies to local- 17 -

needs, although some drawbacks also exist in terms of equity
and efficiency.
Regional science has become the priority area in government
policies especially after 1991 (new era of globalization). After
China's model of growth, the Indian Government feels theinclusive and sustainable development of the remote andunprivileged regions to be the growth engine for the country's
regional and economic development. Since 2007 various
schemes and projects have been started in different sectors of theeconomy and the focus has shifted towards research anddevelopment in the field of regional science. Now, India's big
challenge is to speed the momentum of regional science as amajor discipline across the universities and to create interest
among young researchers.
Regional Science has still not defined its occupational scope inIndia. People in India cannot understand the real concept ofregional science yet. This has created an ambiguity in themindsets of many. But if we consider the government’s missions
and policies, we are increasing the importance of decision making

which is good news for regional planners. The trend should
increase and the authorities should realize the importance of aplanner or the importance of the view that planner has. There is
still a long way to go. But India is slowly realizing it. If we decide to
get more into planning, I suggest it is a good time to get involved.
Though initially we will find a few ups and downs, it will be worth
the effort.
At the same time, regional science has tremendous scope forregional planning graduates/degrees but the focus should beaimed at providing students with a sound education in regional
science and planning. As a career, planning offers a realopportunity to play a key role in shaping places and localities
across the globe.
In my view the future of regional science is quite bright andfavorable in India especially among young researchers andscholars, but this needs to be enhanced through teaching,research, training and extensions in this innovative field, which
would definitely give a new path and directions to regional
science and of course to regional planners in India.

J OURNALS OF THE REGIONAL S CIENCE A SSOCIATION I NTERNATIONAL
Papers in Regional Science

Regional Science Policy & Practice

Edited By: Roberta CapelloOnline ISSN: 1435-5957
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1435-5957

Edited By: Michael Carroll
Online ISSN: 1757-7802
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1757-7802

RSAI M EMBERSHIP I NFORMATIONAll RSAI members have online access to the Papers in Regional Science (PiRS) and to the Regional Science Policy
and Practice (RSPP): Journals of the Regional Science Association International. Members will need to log in to access fulltext articles Online.
RSAI NEWSLETTER, the newsletter of the Association, appears two times a year and contains information about upcoming
conferences and meetings, recent publications and a periodic guide to graduate programs in regional science. Please send
all electronic submissions of material for the RSAI Newsletter directly to andrea.caragliu@polimi.it and/or
G.P.Clarke@leeds.ac.uk.
In addition to the RSAI publications, members are offered an opportunity to purchase other regional science journals at
reduced rates and participate in the national and international conferences at reduced rates.
For details on how to become a member, contact the Executive Director at rsai@apdr.pt or visit www.regionalscience.org.

- 18 -

1. Introduction
1.1 Welcome from the President
1.2 Welcome to the 2016 NARSC Congress
1.3 Welcome from the Editors

2. News from the RSAI Council
2.1 Major events
2.2 ANZRSAI network linking with other "southern cone" sections

3. Current issues in land rent policy
3.1 Value Capture: The Latin American Toolbox
3.2 Land markets: market failure, policy failure – which dominates, where?
3.3 Why a taxation on development rents?

01
01
02
03

03
03
05

05
05
07
09

4. Centres of Regional Science:
Proximity team, University Paris Saclay, Agroparistech, INRA

10

5. Meet the Fellows: Jacques Poot

13

6. Letters to the editor

15

6.1 Women in Regional Science
6.2 A brief report on the perspective of Regional Sciences among the young researchersin India15
17