ABSTRACT
Conventional wisdom about urban land and public infrastructure in developing countries presents an anomaly to an economist trained in the neoclassical paradigm. The following three propositions contain the anomaly:
(a) Much urban land lacks basic public infrastructure. (b) Provision of basic public infrastructure greatly increases the value of urban
land, usually by much more than the cost of the infrastructure itself. (c) The difficulty of financing urban public infrastructure prevents its
provision.
