Rethinking Land Value: The Interplay of Real Estate and Urban Governance

Dear Colleagues,

Understanding land value is essential to comprehending how governance frameworks allocate opportunities and risks, how cities change over time, and how real estate markets function. Social justice, environmental sustainability, and economic productivity are all defined by the interaction of land regulation, taxes, and market forces. The way societies measure and manage land value has changed recently due to the convergence of automated valuation models (AVMs), real estate market analytics, and urban governance. A new generation of valuation approaches is also emerging—ones that not only calculate value but reshape how property characteristics are semantically described and how valuation information is structured and communicated within decision-making systems. The institutional logics and methodologies that underlie this process, however, continue to be dispersed across disciplines. Additionally, this Special Issue will examine how the estate agency industry is changing and how it contributes to the ethical, efficient, and transparent operation of the land and property markets.

Through the integration of viewpoints from real estate economics, urban governance, and professional practice, this Special Issue seeks to rethink and redefine the concept of land value. Traditional methods of valuation place a strong emphasis on economic factors, but modern issues like digital transformation, governance reform, and sustainability transitions call for a more comprehensive, multidisciplinary viewpoint. The role of land value in shaping tax bases—particularly in the context of ongoing transitions between area-based and ad valorem models—further highlights the need for robust and transparent valuation logic that can underpin fiscally sustainable systems.

The Special Issue looks at how institutional actors, valuation technologies, and market mechanisms—especially estate agents and valuers—interact within governance and policy frameworks to influence how land value is created, perceived, and distributed. This project aligns with Land's objective to support creative research on sustainable development, property rights, and land use, and encourages theoretical and empirical research that connects real estate practice, public policy, and spatial planning, emphasising the function of data-driven valuation systems and professional ethics in ensuring transparent and equitable land markets. We also welcome contributions focused on the infrastructural role of valuation standards and data semantics in improving legal clarity, comparability, and decision-making in land management and taxation.

This Special Issue will welcome manuscripts that link the following themes:

• Land value formation, regulation, and spatial inequality;
• Governance and taxation frameworks influencing land and property markets;
• The evolving role of estate agents and valuers in contemporary property systems;
• The impact of digitalization, data analytics, and AVMs on valuation accuracy and transparency;
• Planning gain, development rights, and fiscal tools for equitable urban growth;
• Cross-national comparisons of land valuation and land administration systems;
• Ethical and professional standards in valuation and brokerage practice;
• Policy implications for sustainable, inclusive, and data-informed land governance;
• The role of property value definitions and descriptors in legal, fiscal, and administrative systems;
• Comparative analysis of area-based vs. value-based taxation and their implications for valuation design;

Standardisation and semantic structuring of property information in valuation, taxation, and public registers.

We look forward to receiving your original research articles and reviews.

Dr. Thomas Dimopoulos
Dr. Martha Katafygiotou
Dr. Małgorzata Renigier-Biłozor
Dr. Frank Harrington
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Land is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• property and land valuation
• sustainability
• land and property markets
• valuation metrics
• AVM
• property and land taxation
• affordability
• land management
• tax base models (area vs. value)
• valuation semantics
• standardisation of property descriptions
• legal and fiscal interoperability
• public finance and land value