Week 11 Studio: Reading the Land-Value Curve

Read the district's land-value history since Week 1 against everything that curve does not record — who moved, who could not, and who was never modelled.

17 May 2027

Before you come#

Bring <student ID>-w10 — your own district, which Week 10 branched and did not alter, because the fire ran on the issued checkpoints and not on yours — and all ten weekly saves from w01 to w10. They are a recovery path, not the default extraction method. Bring the evidence pack’s pre-extracted land-value series, the issued Week 4 Pelling Cross checkpoint or your w04 save, Week 6’s Wickstead file, and Week 10’s fault sheet and exposure statement. Bring squared paper and a pencil.

Plotting the curve#

Plot the district mean by hand on the sampling sheet’s 0–100 scale: 14, 17, 24, 31, 34, 33, 34, 31, 36, —, 39 (reference-scenario values from the pack; reconstruct a missing row from your own save, not the whole series). Leave Week 10 as a gap and draw the Week 9–11 segment dashed.

On the same axes, add the last four blocks at the southern end of the Kerrow corridor: 12 in Week 1 and 61 today (reference-scenario values from the pack, or the matching count from your own save). The district mean rose from 14 to 39, or 179%; the corridor blocks rose by a factor of five. Today creates <student ID>-w11, the eleventh weekly save.

What the curve is associated with#

Read the rise as an achievement first. Land value responds to service coverage, transit access, parks, plazas and density, and falls with noise and pollution. Those are inputs the district installed with public money. The curve is a useful ledger of the capital programme.

At the board, annotate each segment with the studio move it is temporally associated with: separation, the Pelling Cross core, the bus spine, widening, or the Ockley Green sequence. Write “hypothesis” or a question mark where the connection is not supported. Several changes occurred together; the curve does not isolate a single cause.

What it does not record#

Open the land-value view over the last four corridor blocks beside the household and rent readouts. The overlay assigns a value to every tile but no owner to any of them. The model cannot say who captured the uplift created by the district’s investment.

Compare the Week 4 Pelling Cross household mix with Week 11. Record the two counts and the difference. The model may show some homelessness, but it does not record every household replaced as rent rises, nor exclusionary displacement or displacement pressure. A count of the people present now is not a history of those who could no longer remain. Unzoned land staying empty is also a limit on what the save can say about unmet housing need.

Then write the Wickstead objection. Who might object to the Week 6 widening, on what grounds and at what stage? The save contains no notice, hearing, vote, appeal or owner with an interest. This does not invalidate the traffic reading; it limits the planning claim that reading can support.

The four blocks#

Choose whether to hold the four medium-density corridor blocks or upzone them inside the existing transit catchment. Upzoning can raise ridership and the model’s livability reading while replacing the population over which livability is computed. Holding them declines a measurable mobility gain and leaves the spine subsidy in place.

Write the choice by hand. Name the metric, its direction and the population the decision moves for. Either position is defensible; an unrecorded trade is not.

The appendix#

Draft half a page under four headings before leaving: who holds the land whose value rose; what the Week 4–11 household counts cannot establish about departures; which claims use a computed field rather than observed behaviour; and what an objector would say, with the plan’s answer. Put this omissions appendix at the front of the capstone memo. Upload the studio record by Tuesday at 12:00.

Before the Friday memo#

Finalize the Week 8 reserve-versus-link forecast and its numeric qualifier before Friday 21 May 12:00. Lodge that decision with the omissions appendix in the A3 jury memo; Monday is rehearsal and defence.