Critical Planning

This paper examines how lobbying redirected Land Value Capture (LVC) during Mexico City’s 2016 constitution-drafting process by acting at procedural margins and legislative stages. Using process tracing of drafts, committee reports, floor records, temporary provisions, and media, it reconstructs the sequence: the committee added LVC duties tied to areas of influence; early floor debate removed them; a late compromise adopted weaker mitigation language; a temporary article reset thresholds to existing regulatory limits; later, criteria were delegated to executive agencies. It also shows that the participatory phase expanded input but did not carry into bargaining, limiting citizen influence when decisions were made. The findings indicate agenda control by organized real estate interests that converted enforceable capture into mitigation and shifted the fiscal burden away from redistribution, with disproportionate impacts on renters and low-income districts at the urban fringe.