As many countries pursue private financing for urban public infrastructure, the tools for public value capture (PVC) gain prominence. This paper analyses Polish PVC tools in general, and spotlights a specific type: developer obligations (DOs). The authors conclude that the tools are ineffective for a series of reasons: negligence in the elaboration of pragmatic rationales (to mitigate the negative impacts of urban development), a lack of feasible (affordable) coercive land policy tools, and legislation (which puts Poland in sharp contrast to other countries) that prohibits municipalities from requiring DOs in exchange for approval of a land-use plan or planning permit, as well as the general ban on securing such obligations in a planning agreement (except for specific situations introduced by recent laws that have not yet been applied). As a consequence, new urban development in Poland neither includes sufficient urban public infrastructure, nor does it provide for social/affordable housing.

Paper presents a comparison of instruments to oblige developers to free transfer land for public infrastructure in Canada, USA, Australia, Germany, and Poland in following dimensions: form, procedure, and an extent of obligations, documents defining obligations, public objects included in obligations, and utilization of exacted land. Compared instruments were evaluated according to their: simplicity, operability, and transparency as well as their role for creation of high quality urban tissue, equality of developers before the law, and complexity of urban transformations.

After four years from funding of The Cultural park “Old Town” in Wrocław, before elaboration of required by law plan of protection for it, basing on large experience from time of its functioning, three factors of its effectiveness in cultural midtown landscape protection are examined: quality of construction of selected bans and limitations binding in the Park, ability of teams responsible for implementation, and kinds of procedures being applied in the park.