Value Recapture: A Rose by Another Name

The fuel crisis, increased federal funding, and urban center development and redevelopment are all increasing the pressure for rapid transit systems in urban areas. As with other publicly funded developments, such systems often lead to an increase in value of privately owned land near transit stations. This is due to the enhanced commercial, industrial, and residential development potential created by superior access and concurrent generation of intense local activity. Such an increase in value is unearned-a windfall, in essence. Arguably, it should accrue, at least in part, to the public agency which incurred substantial expenditures in developing the public facility-the cause of the value increase in the first place. Such an accrual of value could be offset against the public cost of the improvement. This article deals with several proposed methods of such “value recapture”: “excess” or “supplemental” condemnation, tax assessment, intergovernmental cooperation and air rights development.     

United States Responses to the Soviet Suppression of Rebellions in the German Democratic Republic,Hungary, and Czechoslovakia

Under Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Lyndon Johnson, the United States refrained from intervening during the three major Cold War crises in the Soviet bloc in 1953, 1956, and 1968. The uprisings in the German Democratic Republic and Hungary came at a contentious stage of the Cold War. In 1968 East–West relations were again groping towards détente and, the Czechoslovak Communist Party unleashed an ambitious reform agenda under Alexander Dub?ek. On 20 August, a massive military invasion by Warsaw Pact forces squashed the reform spirit. All three challenges to Soviet control on the periphery of its Cold War empire followed power struggles in the Kremlin and intimations of a slackening of the reigns of control in Moscow. Eastern Europe was terra incognita for most Americans, and the United States had never pursued an active policy in Eastern Europe. All three crisis scenarios were overshadowed by crises in other parts of the world—part of larger arcs of crises the superpowers were confronting simultaneously. The three crises also coincided, domestically, with intense presidential election politics. Washington ultimately respected the Yalta arrangements and tolerated the Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. Next to grudging respect for the Yalta outcomes, the ultimate spectre of mutual destruction in a nuclear war “compelled” the superpowers towards co-existence and, ultimately, in 1989, the satellite states had to liberate themselves.     

Russian cultural penetration of Syria‐Palestine in the nineteenth century (PART II)

The Baha'i Faith: The Emerging Global Religion. By William S. Hatcher and J. Douglas Martin. San Francisco and London (Harper &; Row, 1985). Pp. 226. Illus. Index. £11.95.