Urban land regularisation programmes: state of knowledge

1
Urban land regularisation programmes state of
knowledge

• Edesio Fernandes

2
The structural nature of informal urban land
development

• Gigantic scale of phenomenon of informal access
  to urban land and housing Planet of Slums
• Not new (older than 100 years in some cases)
• Getting worse rule, not exception
• Not only in large cities
• Taking old and new forms in public and private
  areas
• Serious implications social (gender, ethnic),
  environmental (water), political, economic,
  cultural, legal

3
However

• Centrality of the issue has not been properly
  recognised by governments and international
  development agencies and financial institutions
• The process of informal access to urban land
  results from a combination of still little
  understood reasons, and is itself one of the
  underlying reasons of many other serious problems
• One of the main challenges for policymakers
  globally

4
Causes

• From global macroeconomic to local
• Lack of formal options resulting from nature of
  land, urban, housing, and fiscal policies
• Dynamics of formal land markets
• Political clientelism
• Elitist and technocratic planning systems
• Obsolete legal systems and judicial processes
• There is a great deal to be done at the national
  and local levels!

5
Effects

• Informality is not a cheap option expensive
  cities, expensive programmes, expensive land
  prices
• All lose

6
Institutional responses

• Dangerous tolerance (generates rights)
• Institutional responses at all levels have not
  been adequate problems of scale and contents 
• UN Campaign, MDGs, national/regional/local
  programmes only cover a drop in the ocean
• Isolated, fragmented, sectoral, marginal,
  under-funded, and erratic policies and programmes
•  

7
Re-inventing the wheel

• Policymakers are not learning from accumulated
  experiences at least, what should not be done
• African, Asian and transitional countries should
  look at Latin America
•  
• Within the same institutions, no organised
  know-how and contradictory responses
• Need to take stock and critical assessment
•  

8
Main problems

• Programmes do not confront nature and causes of
  the phenomenon generating higher land values
  and further distortions in land and property
  markets
• Do not intervene in land structure vacant land,
  under-utilised properties, lack of policy for
  public land, lack of housing policy, unequal
  concentration of equipment and services
• As such, do not break vicious circle and do not
  promote sociospatial integration
• Need to reconcile with preventive policies
  democratise access to serviced land

9
and more problems!

• Programmes fail to reconcile declared objectives
  with necessary socioeconomic processes,
  institutional mechanisms, financial resources,
  and legal-urban planning instruments
• Programmes are not reconciled with broader set of
  public policies and budgets
• Political utilisation of programmes

10
After more than 30 years

• No adequate assessments, even because there are
  no clear indicators
•  
• Waste of limited resources
• Beneficiaries are not always the urban poor

11
Inevitable lessons

• Take time, no jumping stages, costly, complex
  easier and cheaper to prevent!
• No automatic, magic, simplistic,
  one-size-fits-all answers

12
The need to regularise

• Not to regularise is no longer an option (scale
  and implications)
• Conventions, treaties, constitutions, laws,
  judicial decisions from discretionary policies
  to recognised social rights
•  
• The question is how to regularise

13
How to regularise?

• Format of programmes should reflect answers to
  three questions Why? What is (Concept)? What for
  (Objectives)?
• And take into account need to reconcile scale of
  intervention with technical criteria,
  institutional capacity for action, financial
  resources, and nature of rights

14
Why regularise?

• Determination of distribution of rights and
  responsibilities, onus and obligations
• Measure of involvement of all stakeholders,
  including residents and communities
• Need to discuss financing of programmes planning
  gains, incentives, microcredit and other forms

15
What is regularisation?

• Formulation of concept dispute of paradigms
• Should combine several dimensions to guarantee
  sustainability physical upgrading legalisation
  socioeconomic and cultural

16
What for?

• Declared objectives security of tenure and
  sociospatial integration
• Not the same and not necessarily automatic on
  the contrary
• How to reconcile individual interests and rights
  with public interests and obligations?
• Rather than tying people to land, tie land to
  social housing function

17
The question of legalisation

• Certainly important, but not for the reasons
  usually given
• Not requirement for investment in houses and
  business perception of security (sociopolitical
  pact) is sufficient
• No automatic access to credit as banks do not
  lend access to credit to buy building materials
  even without titles
• Despite betterment, no structural impact on
  poverty

18
Why legalise?

• Provide protection against eviction (pacts are
  precarious)
• Minimise civil law conflicts (family,
  inheritance, neighbourhood, etc)
• Promote economic realisation of rights
• Sociopolitical stability
• Allow for increased taxation
• Clarify legal (land) regimes and facilitate
  investments, etc.

19
How to legalise?

• Take why/concept/objectives into account think
  not only of individuals, but of general interests
  too
• Wide range of legal-political options, individual
  freehold being one
• Individual/collective freehold/leasehold
  permits/licences/authorisations/social rental,
  etc.
• Special zones of social interest
• No continuum of rights

20
The role of the state

• No way to tackle scale of problem only through
  individual ownership
• No reason for that 
• States legal obligation social housing
• Not the same as (individual) ownership
• Especially on public land, not always best option
• Consider collective solutions

21
Need for integrated and articulated responses

• Without other policies, individual security may
  be assured, but not necessarily leads to
  sociospatial integration
• Expulsion by the market and other forces
  speculators, drug dealers
• Need to reconcile with land, urban, housing,
  fiscal policies
• Bottlenecks information, cadastres,
  registration, judiciary capacity to act
• The day after of the programmes follow-up and
  continued state presence

22
The necessary pacts

• If it cannot be left to market forces alone, it
  cannot be left to the state alone either
• Requires national, truly public policies
• Need to involve all sectors and stakeholders
• Intergovernmental articulation
• Private/community/voluntary/academia sectors
• Support from international development agencies
  and financial institutions