Urban land regularisation programmes:

state of knowledge

Edesio Fernandes

The structural nature of informal urban land development

• Gigantic scale of phenomenon of informal access to urban land and housing 

• Not new• Getting worse: rule, not exception• Not only in large cities• Taking new forms in public and private areas• Serious implications: social, environmental,

political, economic, cultural, legal

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

Causes

• From global macroeconomic to local• Lack of formal options resulting from nature of

land, urban, housing, and fiscal policies• Dynamics of formal and informal land markets• Political clientelism• Elitist and technocratic planning systems• Obsolete legal systems and judicial processes

Effects

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

• All lose

Institutional responses

• Dangerous tolerance

• 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

 

Re-inventing the wheel…

• Policymakers are not learning from accumulated experiences – at least, what should not be done

• African, Asian and transition countries should look at Latin America

 • Within the same institution, no organised know-how and

contradictory responses

• Need to take stock 

Main problems…

• Programmes do not confront nature and causes of the phenomenon – generating 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, concentration of equipment and services

• As such, do not break vicious circle and do not promote sociospatial integration

…and more problems!

• Programmes fail to reconcile declared objectives with necessary processes, mechanisms, resources, and instruments

• Programmes are not reconciled with broader set of public policies

• Political utilisation of programmes

After 30 years…

• No adequate assessments, even because there are no clear indicators

 

• Waste of limited resources

• Beneficiaries are not always the urban poor

Inevitable lessons

• Take time, no jumping stages, costly, complex – easier and cheaper to prevent!

• No automatic, magic, simplistic, one-size-fits-all answers

The need to regularise

• Not to regularise is no longer an option – from discretionary policies to recognised social rights

 

• The question is how to regularise

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

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, microcredit and other forms

What is regularisation?

• Formulation of concept: dispute of paradigms

• Should combine several dimensions to guarantee sustainability: physical upgrading; legalisation; socioeconomic; and cultural

What for?

• Security of tenure and sociospatial integration

• Not the same and not necessarily automatic

• How to reconcile individual interests and rights with public interests and obligations?

The question of legalisation

• Certainly important, but not for the reasons usually given

• Not requirement for investment in houses and business; perception of security is sufficient

• No automatic access to credit as banks do not lend; access to credit to buy building materials even without titles

• No structural impact on poverty

Why legalise?

• Provide protection against eviction• Minimise civil law conflicts• Promote economic realisation of rights• Sociopolitical stability• Allow for increased taxation• Clarify legal (land) regimes and facilitate

investments, etc.

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”

The role of the state

• No way to tackle scale of problem only through individual ownership

• No reason for that • State’s legal obligation: social housing• Not the same as (individual) ownership• Especially on public land, not always best

option• Consider collective solutions

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

• The “day after” of the programmes: follow-up and continued ate presence

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• Support from international development agencies

financial institutions• Intergovernmental articulation• Private/community/voluntary/academia sectors