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Sustainable urban land governance at the interface between common, public and formerly customarily controlled spaces.
Panel P17 at conference DSA2022: Just sustainable futures in an urbanising and mobile world.
This panel aims to consider and debate key issues raised by research from different disciplines on the interface between common, public and formerly customarily controlled spaces and the urban development process, whether within major cities or as part of rapidly urbanising peripheral zones.
Long Abstract:
Transformation of land and property rights is a feature of urban development processes that remains poorly understood. In contexts of rapid urbanisation and increasing pressures on land for residential and commercial purposes, competing and overlapping land rights and claims can lead to protracted conflicts, hindering poverty reduction and sustainable economic development. Peri-urban ‘transitional zones’, as sites for infrastructure and informal settlement by rural migrants and people pushed out of cities, are changing from agricultural to urban land uses, creating additional pressures on food production and supplies for urban consumption. Informal settlements, are often still constructed without adequate planning and in hazardous areas, creating tensions between environmental protection and secure rights to land and housing. The erosion of public space, and pressures on remaining common resources in and around major cities is compounded by new ecological and environmental challenges. How can the needs for economic development, secure rights and food and environmental security be reconciled, amidst increasing land pressures in urban and peri-urban areas?
This panel considers issues raised by research from different disciplines on the interface between common, public, and formerly customarily controlled spaces and the urban development process, whether within major cities or urbanising peripheral regions. It seeks to reflect on and propose new ideas with the aim of rethinking urban and peri-urban research and policy agendas. Of particular interest are contributions on how overlapping and/or competing land and property rights, and relations between different social groups matter for equitable and sustainable development in these contexts. How do tenure dynamics underpin urban development processes, and who gains and who loses? How do private, customary, or collective rights shape the social, environmental, and economic dimensions of urban development? What types of governance innovations can help to overcome land-use conflicts and contested property rights and promote more sustainable and inclusive outcomes?
This panel would contribute to conference Theme Two (‘Urbanising futures, governance and social movements’), with potential cross-cutting links to Themes One and Four. As a research paper-based panel, in line with guidelines for shorter, more interactive sessions, interested researchers are asked to submit contribution outlines in the form of extracts or summaries of papers, pre-recorded presentations, slide sets, or other suitable formats. Contributors will be selected in coordination with the DSA Land, Politics and Sustainability Study Group, and asked to review one another’s pieces to prepare for the panel discussion and interact in a designated online space. Contributors will have 2-3 minutes to summarise key points, new ideas and insights on governance of land in urban and urbanising areas arising from their own research. To stimulate discussion, each will be asked to respond to questions, compiled after selecting the contributions, to be circulated in advance.
Urbanisation, economic growth and land individualisation often go hand-in-hand. What happens when property cannot be alienated? This paper presents evidence on First Nations reserves in Canada, highlighting key implications for sustainable urban development and implications for titling policy.
Paper long abstract:
Urbanization is a defining characteristic of economic development across the world. Privatisation of land is often understood to play a key role in this economic transformation, but is also linked to the loss of environmental, cultural, and social value. In this context, there are growing calls for legal protection of common property in the Global South. Little is known, however, of the economic implications of this approach: can communities exploit the economic benefits of urbanisation without ceding ownership of property? This paper draws across regional and disciplinary boundaries to provide new insight on this question from Canada, where more than 600 First Nations reserves are located in urban and peri-urban areas. We present results of the first phase of mixed-methods research which brings together census and land registry data to assess determinants and characteristics of economic development in collectively held land, contrasts it with privatised property, and seeks to understand the implications of different approaches for both the economic and social value of land. The findings have direct implications for policy in Canada and beyond, as they shed light on key processes at the heart of sustainable urban development that are pertinent to rapidly expanding cities in the Global South.
Somaliland's pastoral communities have long held land under collective customary ownership with rapid urbanisation driving privatisation, utilising a combination of customary and legal mechanisms to formalise that process. This paper explores those dynamics, drawing on primary research.
Paper long abstract:
Somaliland is traditionally dominated by pastoral communities with a complex system of collective customary ownership, operating within a predominantly oral legal tradition known as xeer. However, urbanisation rates have increased markedly in recent years, with Hargeysa in particular growing rapidly. Urban growth has been predominantly unplanned and in Hargeysa falls outside formal legal arrangements in most cases, navigating instead a somewhat opaque system of privatisation that employs varying systems that make shifting use of xeer, legal courts and Islamic courts to formalise land transfer from collective ownership to private. Transactions are often, though not always, designed to reduce visibility to the tax authorities but also frequently involve notaries to 'formalise' arrangements. Implicit in these systems is a systematic means of transferring ownership from customary, clan-based groups to individual ownership. While individuals are able to profit personally from this transfer, the customary collective often retains a limited right to interfere in land sales should they be unhappy with transfers of ownership at any point. This results in sometimes complicated arrangements in which conflict over tenure is fairly common. This paper will explore those dynamics and will draw on primary research conducted as part of the research project Complex land markets in urban transitions in Somaliland and Uganda.
We study the governance of formal property in urban Tanzania. Through meso-level institutional bricolage, leaders associated with informal institutions are central in making formal property legitimate and operational. Yet, they are not adequately recognised and integrated in land administration.
Paper long abstract:
Drawing on a case-study from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, we explore who governs formal property in African cities, how they make formal property legitimate and functional, and the consequences of these processes. Through the analytic lenses of institutional hybridity and 'meso-level' bricolage, we study the implementation of the Residential Licence programme, which offered a relatively affordable interim property right to the urban poor. We illustrate that formal property is constructed and managed by a hybrid governance of actors within and at the interface of the state - municipalities and mtaa offices. Some fifteen years after the programme start, the mtaa chairperson - an unpaid political figure and community representative, typically associated with informal land institutions - is still central to the governance of formal property. Both municipalities and mtaa offices engage in practices of bricolage, which, transform the RL into a hybrid institution, anchored to both old and new sources of authority and knowledge on property relations. On one hand, these practices lend legitimacy and functionality to the 'new' property right system. On the other, they open up grey areas for discretion and power relations. Therefore, we argue that this hybrid governance be supported by the state through adequate resources and some regulation. By offering a rare analysis of institutional bricolage within and at the interface of the state, our findings are important to advance current understandings on land reform implementation, land governance and land institutions in African cities.
This paper focuses on a process it denotes as 'land laundering' where the illegal appropriation, subdivision and selling of land in the context of Peru takes on a legitimate appearance. It exposes the non-linear and iterative movements that shift communal land into other land tenure types.
Paper long abstract:
This paper focuses on how peasant community land, by definition 'intangible, indivisible and imprescriptible' and therefore non-urbanisable, is seeing an unprecedented rate of urbanization in many Latin American countries. Drawing from Lima- Peru, the paper examines how the illegal appropriation, subdivision and selling of land by organised groups known as land traffickers, undergoes a process of laundering to take on the appearance of legitimate private/public urban land. Multiple shifts occur through different forms of legal and illegal corruption. In the case of land trafficking in Lima, a cyclical movement is evident where communal land is privatised to then be expropriated into government land and finally be privatised again through the land titling of individual plots. Interrogating the shifts within urbanisation and legalisation processes the paper argues for longitudinal methodologies to fully appreciate the mutations that takes place over time. The findings provide an important consideration for urban studies and planning; they bring attention to non-linear and iterative movements that occur between illegality and legality, as well as from one tenure type to another.
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Alexandra Panman (UCL)
Short Abstract:
This panel aims to consider and debate key issues raised by research from different disciplines on the interface between common, public and formerly customarily controlled spaces and the urban development process, whether within major cities or as part of rapidly urbanising peripheral zones.
Long Abstract:
Transformation of land and property rights is a feature of urban development processes that remains poorly understood. In contexts of rapid urbanisation and increasing pressures on land for residential and commercial purposes, competing and overlapping land rights and claims can lead to protracted conflicts, hindering poverty reduction and sustainable economic development. Peri-urban ‘transitional zones’, as sites for infrastructure and informal settlement by rural migrants and people pushed out of cities, are changing from agricultural to urban land uses, creating additional pressures on food production and supplies for urban consumption. Informal settlements, are often still constructed without adequate planning and in hazardous areas, creating tensions between environmental protection and secure rights to land and housing. The erosion of public space, and pressures on remaining common resources in and around major cities is compounded by new ecological and environmental challenges. How can the needs for economic development, secure rights and food and environmental security be reconciled, amidst increasing land pressures in urban and peri-urban areas?
This panel considers issues raised by research from different disciplines on the interface between common, public, and formerly customarily controlled spaces and the urban development process, whether within major cities or urbanising peripheral regions. It seeks to reflect on and propose new ideas with the aim of rethinking urban and peri-urban research and policy agendas. Of particular interest are contributions on how overlapping and/or competing land and property rights, and relations between different social groups matter for equitable and sustainable development in these contexts. How do tenure dynamics underpin urban development processes, and who gains and who loses? How do private, customary, or collective rights shape the social, environmental, and economic dimensions of urban development? What types of governance innovations can help to overcome land-use conflicts and contested property rights and promote more sustainable and inclusive outcomes?
This panel would contribute to conference Theme Two (‘Urbanising futures, governance and social movements’), with potential cross-cutting links to Themes One and Four. As a research paper-based panel, in line with guidelines for shorter, more interactive sessions, interested researchers are asked to submit contribution outlines in the form of extracts or summaries of papers, pre-recorded presentations, slide sets, or other suitable formats. Contributors will be selected in coordination with the DSA Land, Politics and Sustainability Study Group, and asked to review one another’s pieces to prepare for the panel discussion and interact in a designated online space. Contributors will have 2-3 minutes to summarise key points, new ideas and insights on governance of land in urban and urbanising areas arising from their own research. To stimulate discussion, each will be asked to respond to questions, compiled after selecting the contributions, to be circulated in advance.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 6 July, 2022, -