A difference exists between public and private governance approaches to land development, also called ‘active’ and ‘passive’ approaches. These approaches change over time and interact with institutional, financial and environmental factors. This article evaluates how these factors influence governance approaches and compares the results of different approaches by analysing how they capture the economic value increase that accrues from urban development and how this affects the governances' intrinsic rationales. After categorising value capture tools, this article investigates the embedment and functioning of these tools into three different governance approaches in three different countries (England, Spain, and the Netherlands), ordered from more passive to more active approach: developer obligations in private land development and in land readjustment, and public land acquisition and development in public governance approaches. The studied cases suggest a general trend towards passive approaches and a sharpening and regularisation of the public value capture instruments embedded in them.