b"SYDNEY - BOSTON - FUKUOKA 2018 - 2019to attract workers to less interesting locations. but it is not a city centre. As described by thecreating an imagewill generate positive Committee for North Sydney, it is an officeimpacts for most if not all pieces of land park with through traffic (Committee for Northnearby, the geographic extent of the impact Sydney 2018). being a function of the scale and nature of the investment.Urban change and value captureClaiming that they can give the city centreThese numberless impacts, from all land a heart and bring public life to the streets,parcels to all land parcels, drives the urban the North Sydney Council is promoting theproperty market. A creative and effective redevelopment of a peripheral site within thedeveloper sees the world as a turbulent sea Ward Street block in the northern sector ofof positive and negative forces on property the CBD. Sydney Metro, on the other hand,values, but it seems that most participants in claims that a massive commercial tower builturban development and management have a over a new underground Metro station on aflatter, more static, less spatial sense of the city key central site will transform the city centre,and allow their plans, ideas and accounting shaping North Sydneys future and addingto be confined within the boundaries of their Figure 1: North Sydney and environs (SGS 2016,P8) to the vibrancy of the area. The third voicesite. Unfortunately, this describes the aspatial in this debate is that of the Committee formindset of most economists and certainly of The attractiveness of North Sydney as a placeNorth Sydney, which aims to facilitate publicthe NSW Treasury officials who have the most to work is largely due to its proximity to the realand expert contributions to the progressiveinfluence over executive government in the centre of the action: Sydney CBD. Most whoimprovement of North Sydney, throughState of NSW.work in the North Sydney city centre live onvisionary strategic planning, good public policy the North Shore (SGS 2016), so their journeyand imaginative urban design (Committee forUnder strong private property rights, the to work takes them closer to the SydneyNorth Sydney 2019). increases in the market prices of affected CBD. There is little else to attract them. Theland parcels belong to the land owners. judgement given at the beginning of this article,These three entities have differentThey all benefit from investments by others, that the North Sydney centre is appalling andunderstandings of value capture. V aluewithout making any contribution at all. Of that it has not received the level of planningcapture is a mechanism in urban managementcourse, when the impacts are negative, land and care and attention over the decades that itthat planners have been advocating for twoowners have to accept a loss in value without should have had was made in 2000 by Jeremyor three decades, with not much take-up byreceiving any compensation. To own urban Bingham, lawyer, property developmentgovernments in Australia. land is to participate in a lottery, a game of consultant and a former Lord Mayor of the Cityluck, in which the value of the asset goes of Sydney. He had more to say about the NorthThe concept of value capture is based on aup and down according to external factors Sydney city centre. simple fact that has shaped land use and landover which the owner has no control. This is management from antiquity, and has drivenwhy these impacts are called externalities. Nobody has ever cared much about thethe emergence of cities, even though it is aAll societies, from prehistory, have regulated North Sydney CBD and it's always beenfact that is extraordinarily difficult for mostland use impacts between neighbours, and a very deficient CBD in terms of publicpeople to hold ontoperhaps because anhave introduced sufficient certainty into urban amenities and open space, public facilities,internalisation of this fact requires a dynamicdevelopment to enable an urban property out-of-hours activities It has no heart. Itspatial imagination. Any activity (includingmarket to function, but none has removed the18has no central point. It has no civic spaces.doing nothing) on every piece of land hasbasic elements of the property lottery in which It has no style. It's a mish-mash (Jeremyimpacts on each piece of land in the vicinity.gains from externalities are retained and losses Bingham in Park 2001, p.15). These impacts are experienced as positiveare uncompensated.and negative effects, which in turn affect the A 2016 study found that the weaknesses ofvalue of land for different purposes, and thusIncentives to invest in major urban projects the North Sydney city centre included lack ofincrease or decrease its market price. Anare influenced by the distribution of positive higher order retailing, limited entertainmentinvestment that strengthens an urban areaimpacts that raise property values, and the options, poor pedestrian amenity and lackin some wayfor instance, bringing moreextent to which the increases in value can be of night time economy (SGS 2016, p.27). Inpeople to the area, increasing local services,retained, recovered or captured by the investor, short, it might be a Central Business Districtenlivening public life, increasing accessibility,and thus internalised. Where a developer has a Master of Urban Development & Design 2018-2019INTRO 8pt.indd 19 26/11/2019 4:11:26 PM"