The contested nature of public value capture for capping the ring road in Antwerp, Belgium

Contemporary urban development places growing emphasis on integrating high liveability standards into infrastructure design to improve residents’ quality of life. This shift is associated with increasing costs, leading public authorities to seek alternative funding mechanisms. Public value capture (PVC) is therefore widely being explored as a funding instrument for public infrastructure. While instrument design and rationale are gaining increasing attention, empirical insight into legitimization of PVC in practice remains limited. This study examines stakeholder perceptions of the proposed use of PVC for the planned capping of the R1 South ring road in Antwerp, Belgium. Interviews with project stakeholders reveal that the legitimacy of PVC is not only determined by the formal characteristics of the PVC instrument, but is also constructed in practice through perceptions on the context-sensitive interactions between project characteristics and the socio-economic reality of the neighbourhood, communicational aspects, political feasibility and historically shaped fiscal expectations. Moreover, the case introduces a reparative dimension to PVC: project stakeholders perceive property value increases as compensation for prolonged environmental nuisances rather than it being perceived as windfall gains, making value increments ineligible PVC targets.