Modelewska: Financing Public Transport Using Value Capture Finance

Overview

"Financing Public Transport Using Value Capture Finance: An Incremental Assessment Framework for Investments in Transport Infrastructure ('I-FIT')" is a doctoral thesis by Marta Modelewska, submitted at University College London (UCL Bartlett School, supervised in the Value Capture Finance research group led by Francesca Medda) and held in the UCL Discovery repository under a 2017 record.[1] The thesis addresses a practical gap Modelewska identifies in value capture finance (VCF): despite a substantial research literature on the idea that public authorities can recapture the "unearned" land-value increment created by transport investment, VCF mechanisms remained, in her assessment, conceptually and practically underdeveloped for real-world adoption.[1] The thesis pursues three objectives: a synthesis of the existing VCF and rail-capitalization literature, development of the I-FIT assessment framework, and application of that framework to transport case studies.[1] Modelewska had earlier co-authored applied VCF research with Medda, including a 2011 study of the Warsaw metro system, giving this doctoral work a direct lineage in transit finance research at UCL.[2]

Akhil Patel's The Secret Wealth Advantage cites the thesis's literature synthesis as reviewing on the order of 55 individual studies of rail's effect on nearby property prices, using it as supporting evidence that public rail investment reliably capitalizes into land and property values.[3] This wiki has not been able to directly access the thesis's full text to independently verify the exact study count or its findings against the primary source [CITATION NEEDED: direct thesis text confirming the number and findings of the underlying literature synthesis], so that figure is presented here as sourced to Patel's summary rather than as an independently confirmed number. If verified, this thesis would sit alongside Mohammad et al.'s meta-analysis as a second, independent literature synthesis supporting the same capitalization finding.

See Also

• Mohammad, Graham, Melo & Anderson — rail meta-analysis — the wiki's other systematic literature synthesis on rail and property values
• Outcome: Public investment capitalizes into nearby land values — the general claim this thesis's literature synthesis would support
• Land Value Capture — the policy mechanism this thesis's I-FIT framework is designed to help implement
• The Secret Wealth Advantage (Akhil Patel) — the discovery source citing this thesis

Sources

1. Marta Modelewska, "Financing Public Transport Using Value Capture Finance: An Incremental Assessment Framework for Investments in Transport Infrastructure ('I-FIT')" (doctoral thesis, University College London, 2017), UCL Discovery record. discovery.ucl.ac.uk — the record and its abstract were retrieved and verified this session, confirming the title, author ("Modelewska, ME; (2017)… Doctoral thesis, UCL"), and the VCF/I-FIT subject matter: "despite a rich history of research on VCF, a mechanism is elusive and theoretical… the present thesis develops an Incremental Assessment Framework for Investments in Transport Infrastructure ('I-FIT'), which integrates economic theory…". The repository notes "Full text not available from this repository," so page-level details and the exact underlying study count could not be checked against the thesis text; the "~55 studies" figure remains sourced to Patel's summary (source 3), not independently confirmed.
2. Francesca Medda and Marta Modelewska, "Land Value Capture as a Funding Source for Urban Investment: The Warsaw Metro System" (Ernst & Young, 2011) — used to corroborate Modelewska's authorship and prior applied work on rail value capture with Medda's UCL research group.
3. Akhil Patel, The Secret Wealth Advantage (2023), Ch. 2 — the discovery source; cited as reviewing approximately 55 studies of rail's impact on property prices. See this wiki's book page: The Secret Wealth Advantage.