Lab members have studied TAMA 38, documenting its successes and failures. Indeed, conference participants stressed the many urban, social, and economic implications of this policy tool.

Notably, TAMA 38 developers build extra housing units for sale at market value and, in parallel, carry out additional works in order to reinforce the existing building against future earthquakes, renovate the building, and in most cases enlarge existing flats. In other words, the value captured by the sale of development rights is used to provide for a public good that the government views as very important. Public authorities enable this by guiding ‘mom & pop’ owners throughout this process. Value is captured in transactions by private owners as well as public authorities and used to prepare landowners’ properties to face a potential natural disaster.  To date, hundreds of TAMA 38 projects have been built, most of them in areas with high land values. At the same time, peripheral towns exposed to greater seismic threats are still experiencing implementation challenges.