Having impact at a nonprofit research organization requires being both determined and nimble, according to three scholars who retired last year from the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy after decades of service.

The three scholars—geographer and urbanist Armando Carbonell, who led programs in urban planning and land conservation; Daphne Kenyon, an economist studying the property tax and municipal finance; and economist Martim Smolka, director of the organization’s Latin America program—share reflections about their work and the Lincoln Institute in a special edition of the Land Matters podcast.

Though they pursued different areas of inquiry during their time at the organization, they found common themes, like the central task of assembling and convening a network of practitioners, and continually inviting feedback to keep up to date on the challenges and emerging issues in their fields.

One such network formed in the 1980s when Boston attorney Kingsbury Browne brought together a handful of people who were establishing conservation easements to safeguard ecosystems across the United States. The value of exchanging information about tax laws and land conservation was deemed to be so great, the group ended up forming the Land Trust Alliance, which now represents nearly 1,000 land trusts with some 60 million acres in conservation.

Another area of critical importance: communicating in plain terms and being attentive to different audiences, whether the topic is climate migration or informal settlements or the way the property tax pays for essential local services including schools. The interviewees cite Lincoln Institute projects like the State-by-State Property Tax At a Glance website, the Making Sense of Place film series, and a role-playing game that leads participants through the steps of functioning land markets as successful examples of this approach.

The three scholars (bios below) also recall how they first discovered and interacted with the Lincoln Institute—all of them starting more than 30 years ago—and share their experiences putting together extensive programming over that time. They also look ahead to the daunting challenges awaiting future generations working in the nonprofit realm.

Martim O. Smolka, former senior fellow and director of the Program on Latin America and the Caribbean, is an economist. His areas of expertise include land markets and land policy, access to land by the urban poor, the structuring of property markets in Latin America and property tax systems, including the use of land value increment charges to finance urban development and infrastructure. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania (MA/PhD), he is co-founder and former president of the Brazilian National Association for Research and Graduate Studies on Urban and Regional Planning.

Daphne A. Kenyon, PhD, is a former resident fellow in tax policy at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. Her specialty is state and local public finance, with an emphasis on the property tax. She serves as the president of the National Tax Association. Kenyon’s prior positions include principal of D.A. Kenyon & Associates, a public finance consulting firm; professor and chair of the economics department at Simmons College; senior economist with the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Urban Institute; and assistant professor at Dartmouth College. Kenyon earned her BA in economics from Michigan State University and her MA and PhD in economics from the University of Michigan. She has published numerous reports, articles, and three books. Her research has been cited in The New York Times and The Economist, among other publications. Her latest work was writing a major revision of the 2007 report The Property Tax-School Funding Dilemma with co-authors Bethany Paquin and Andrew Reschovsky.

Armando Carbonell served as head of the Lincoln Institute’s urban planning program. After attending Clark University and the Johns Hopkins University, Carbonell spent the early part of his career as an academic geographer. He went on to initiate a new planning system for Cape Cod, Massachusetts, as the founding Executive Director of the Cape Cod Commission. In 1992 he was awarded a Loeb Fellowship at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. Carbonell later taught urban planning at Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania and served as an editor of the British journal Town Planning Review. He has consulted on master plans in Houston, Texas, and Fujian Province, China, and is the author or editor of numerous works on city and regional planning and planning for climate change, including Nature and Cities: The Ecological Imperative in Urban Design and Planning. Carbonell is a Fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners, Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (UK), and Lifetime Honorary Member of the Royal Town Planning Institute (UK).

You can listen to the show and subscribe to Land Matters on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

And for the first time, this episode of Land Matters can also be viewed as a video on YouTube.

Further Reading

Implementing Value Capture in Latin America

Seven Need-to-Know Trends for Planners in 2023

Rethinking the Property Tax-School Funding Dilemma
 

Anthony Flint is a senior fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, host of the Land Matters podcast, and a contributing editor of Land Lines.

Image: (Left to Right): Daphne Kenyon, Martim Smolka, Armando Carbonell, and Anthony Flint.

El impuesto a la propiedad inmobiliaria tiene un gran potencial como fuente de renta para los gobiernos locales en Asia, pero su implementación no ha sido equitativa. El libro nuevo del Instituto Lincoln, Property Tax in Asia: Policy and Practice brinda el primer análisis integral del rendimiento de este instrumento fiscal fundamental en el continente más grande del mundo.

Este libro, escrito por un equipo de expertos líderes y editado por William McCluskey, Roy Bahl y Riël Franzsen, brinda un análisis comparativo y recomendaciones detalladas para académicos y gestores de políticas. Contiene 13 estudios de caso detallados sobre esta región, que es el hogar de casi la mitad de la población mundial, y brinda el análisis más completo a la fecha de las leyes, las prácticas administrativas, las propuestas de reforma, la tecnología y los debates políticos que dan forma a la tributación inmobiliaria en países de todos los tamaños y niveles de ingresos. 

“Mediante los casos de estudio de estos 13 países y regiones, se descubrió que los métodos para modernizar el impuesto a la propiedad inmobiliaria varían en gran medida, por ejemplo, en cómo se aprovecha la ventaja que brinda la tributación como medida para aumentar la renta y convertirla en un instrumento para racionalizar la política de uso del suelo y fomentar la equidad social”, escriben los editores. 

En el libro, se pone de manifiesto que, por lo general, los países más ricos, como Japón, Corea y Singapur, tienen sistemas de tributación inmobiliaria que funcionan correctamente, aunque se enfrentan a desafíos, como la falta de información sobre la propiedad de las cada vez más numerosas viviendas abandonadas de Japón. En China y Vietnam, donde no se permite la propiedad privada del suelo, los gobiernos locales recurren en gran medida a tarifas por uso del suelo que se cobran por única vez, pero son menos confiables y estables que los impuestos que se recaudan en forma continua. Además, muchas áreas de menores ingresos se enfrentan a bases imponibles reducidas, subvaluación de los bienes inmuebles, incumplimiento y desafíos políticos. El libro, que reconoce que las condiciones varían mucho, recomienda diez direcciones para la reforma, desde aclarar las funciones gubernamentales hasta aprovechar el poder de la tecnología de la información. 

Property Tax in Asia (Impuesto predial en Asia) es el último título de una serie de libros del Instituto Lincoln en la que se analiza la tributación inmobiliaria en distintos continentes. También conforman la serie Property Tax in Africa (Impuesto predial en África) (2017) y Sistemas del impuesto predial en América Latina y el Caribe (publicado en español, 2016). 

Crédito de la fotografía: yongyuan via Getty Images.

This fall marked the 15th anniversary of the Peking University–Lincoln Institute Center for Urban Development and Land Policy (PLC). Established in 2007, the center has become a leading authority on land policy issues in China, including the property tax, municipal finance, land and housing policies, and land conservation. To celebrate this milestone, the PLC held an event on November 4 that included commemorative remarks, a formal recommitment to the partnership between the two institutions, and several academic presentations on urban development and climate change. 

“The Lincoln Institute works globally on topics largely relating to land policy, and the joint center is an exceptional platform for our China program,” said Katie Lincoln, chief investment officer and board chair of the Lincoln Institute, who delivered congratulatory remarks by video. “During the past 15 years, the center has held numerous conferences, undertaken research and demonstration projects, shared in scholarly exchanges, and happily gained recognition both in and out of China.” 

In addition to Lincoln, several current and former leaders from the two institutions joined the celebration virtually or in person, including Jin Zhang, vice president of Peking University; Jianhua Lin, former president of Peking University; Yansong Li, former vice president of Peking University; George W. McCarthy, president of the Lincoln Institute; Gregory Ingram, former president of the Lincoln Institute; and Joyce Man, former director of the PLC. 

“We are now at a difficult time of Sino-U.S. relations,” said former PKU President Lin. “But I believe that the mutual trust between our two institutions and the confidence about the value of what we do will continue to be a foundation for us to cooperate and move forward.” 

During the event, Zhang and McCarthy signed an agreement for continued collaboration between the two organizations. “In the next few years, the PLC will add a new focus on land use and climate change, in support of China’s ambitious goal of achieving net-zero carbon goals by 2060,” noted McCarthy. “The PLC also will help the Lincoln Institute in its global efforts to address the climate crisis. The unique cooperation between the Lincoln Institute and PKU over the last 15 years has been fruitful for China, the United States, and the world in [finding land-based solutions to] economic, social, and environmental challenges. We are excited to embark on another five-year journey together.” 

The center, which conducts research, training, policy analysis, academic exchanges, advisory services, and demonstration projects throughout China, also invited several scholars, fellowship recipients, and others who have been involved with its work over the years to share reflections.  

“I worked with PLC for more than ten years, from winning the Peking University–Lincoln Center scholarship, to guiding students to participate in the center’s fund application, to becoming a partner of the center’s work and research,” said De Tong, associate professor at Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School. “Scholars at the center have become my inspiring mentors and friends, and colleagues at the center have also become comrades-in-arms at work and friends in life.” 

The center has launched an essay contest open to those who have been involved with the PLC over the years, from scholarship recipients to business collaborators to conference participants. Five winning essays, selected in January, will receive a small monetary prize; a copy of the Lincoln Institute book Infrastructure Economics and Policy: International Perspectives, coedited by José A. Gómez-Ibáñez and Zhi Liu, who leads the PLC as director of the Lincoln Institute’s China program; a copy of Advanced Economic Geography by Canfei He, dean of the College of Urban and Environmental Sciences at PKU and associate director of the PLC; and publication on the PLC website. 

The second half of the day’s events was structured as an online forum on climate change and urbanization in the context of China’s dual-carbon goal, which seeks to reach peak carbon by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. Leading policy makers and scholars from China, Hong Kong, and the United States shared their latest thoughts and studies on topics including green building, urban equity, and urban-rural integration, drawing an audience of more than 600 researchers, planners, and others.  

“The dual-carbon goal is a major challenge for China, but also presents new opportunities for China’s continuing urbanization,” said PLC Director Liu. “Urbanization and carbon net-zero has been a hot topic in China’s policy debates, which have been getting more substantive and concrete over the last two years. I found myself learning a lot from these presentations, which deepened my understanding about the challenges and opportunities that the goal of carbon net-zero will bring to our urbanization for the next few decades.” 

Forum topics and presenters included: 

• the evolution and future of green building, by Dr. Baoxing Qiu, former Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development; 
• carbon reduction models for commercial real estate, by Professor Siqi Zheng of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning of MIT; 
• equity and governance under China’s dual-carbon goal, by Professor Shenjing He from the Department of Urban Planning and Design of the University of Hong Kong; 
• carbon reduction through urban agglomeration, by Professor Ming Lu from Antai School of Economics and Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University; and  
• urban-rural integration and rural revitalization, by Professor Shouying Liu from the School of Economics of Renmin University. 

Visit the “Our Work” section of our website to learn more about the PLC and to find information about how to connect with the center on WeChat. 

Lead image: Lincoln Institute President and CEO George W. McCarthy and Peking University Vice President Jin Zhang celebrate the renewal of the collaborative agreement that established the Peking University-Lincoln Institute Center for Urban Development and Land Policy. Credit: Courtesy of PKU.