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Contribution short abstract:

I will discuss the preliminary steps of my recent research project, which develops a new epistemology of land to understand how informal land institutions work for local communities across urban and rural contexts, with a view to incorporate local regulations and perspectives in policy-making.

Contribution long abstract:

Informal settlements worldwide experience inadequate housing, infrastructure, and services. Communities engage in informal practices of land transfer, use, development, etc., underpinned by complex institutional configurations beyond the official (de jure) realm. These de facto regulations are hybrid, diverse and dynamic: often, they result from the encounter of rural and urban social orders, cutting across social, customary and statutory systems. Yet, limited understanding of the de facto regulation of informal land jeopardises the achievement of effective policies. Current efforts to establish formal institutions of property rights and town planning remain ineffective in much of urban and rural Africa because they fail to recognise how existing informal institutions work for residents. This presentation will discuss the preliminary steps of the research project ‘De facto regulation of informal land: opening the black box of African cities’, which will draw on interdisciplinary scholarship on social norms to develop an institutional archelogy (Ho, 2018) of land, examining how de facto regulations shape informal land practices for diverse local actors. Collaborative research will apply this framework in two African cities with distinctive informal land governance, involving actors such as local leaders, residents, brokers. Findings will advance an institutional approach to informal land institutions and support inclusive policy-making to incorporate existing regulations and local actors’ perspectives. While current conflicts and crises in the Anthropocene unsettle given conceptions of land, rights and governance, a new epistemology of land is proposed to leverage local knowledge and actions in policy-making, towards more just, equitable and sustainable futures.