Public risk, private profit: Unearned increment and land value capture

When an LGU signals where a new highway will run, where a government center will rise, or where a commercial hub will be zoned, speculators move with predatory speed. They engage in "land banking" by purchasing vast tracts of peripheral land at current prices and simply holding them. They do not build; they do not improve; they do not create jobs. They wait for the public to do the work. This is the central irony of urban planning: the very transparency meant to foster orderly growth is the same tool used by private interests to make that growth unaffordable for the public.