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INTERNATIONAL FORUM ON URBAN POVERTY (IFUP)
THIRD INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE on SOCIAL INTEGRATION AND SECURITY FOR
THE URBAN POOR
TOWARDS CITIES FOR ALL
Organised by UNCHS (Habitat), Nairobi, Kenya, 12-14 October 1999
With the support of the Government of Italy, the Government of Switzerland,
The Government of France, The Ford Foundation
Conclusions from a Research Study based on Best Practices Analysis on
Access to Land and Security of Tenure
by Clarissa Fourie, University of Natal (Durban), South Africa
UNCHS Consultant (forthcoming UNCHS publication).
SUB-THEME I: SECURITY OF TENURE FOR ALL SOCIO-ECONOMIC
GROUPS Extract from research study Pages 33-36
1.3 Lessons learned and the way forward Informal settlement
is on the increase and has become one of the most common forms of land
delivery in most developing countries. Informal settlements can no longer
be marginalized or regularized only on an ad hoc basis as this approach
is threatening the environmental sustainability of cities and is being
found increasingly to be politically unwise. The sheer scale of informal
settlement globally, and within urban areas, means that informal settlers
need to be treated as having a right to the city.'
Instruments that have conventionally been utilized to supply tenure security
need to be reassessed, used in more innovative ways, and new and more
appropriate instruments created. This has to done very quickly to avert
even more serious problems. Rights such as freehold and registered leasehold,
and the conventional cadastral and land registration systems (paper or
digital), and the way they are presently structured, cannot supply security
of tenure to the vast majority of the low-income groups and/or deal quickly
enough with the scale of urban problems, and innovative approaches need
to be developed (see section 2.2.6 below).
While secure legal tenure for all socioeconomic groups is the aim, it
is likely that there will always be people who cannot afford any form
of legal tenure. These people need to be able to start with a perceived
form of tenure security and work their way up the tenure ladder in incremental
steps. Perceived tenure can be based on a number of things and these can
be used constructively by local authorities, NGOs and others to manage
urban areas better and supply a form of temporary tenure security.
Anti-eviction laws have been very successful in giving millions of people
tenure security in general. However, if the land is required, anti-eviction
laws are often ignored by land owners, local authorities and others. NGOs
play a critical role in explaining to people their rights when they are
being evicted, mobilizing support, including international and political
support, and assisting those who have been evicted to prove their occupation
rights. The lack of records about occupation hampers those who have been
evicted from proving their rights. The lack of knowledge of occupants
about their rights, the lack of community based para-legals to assist
people and problematic justice systems, make occupants vulnerable to eviction
and exploitation. Anti-eviction laws should be passed by all countries
to protect low-income groups, who should also be given training in their
rights (city, housing, land, non-eviction). Capacity should be built in
NGOs to supply technical assistance to people who have been evicted and
to train communities about their rights. Simple record keeping of those
in occupation should be undertaken at community and/or local authority
level, and training done in this area. It is within the interests of the
local authority to maintain such records both in terms of urban planning,
as well as to protect itself from professional squatters, and a partnership
between the community and local authority should be the way forward.
Adverse possession does not deliver in time or to scale for the poor when
only individual applications are made. That is, having a prescriptive
right does not easily become a secure property right. Applicants also
need legal aid assistance to obtain a secure property right, but even
when this is available it does not deliver in time or to scale. Adverse
possession rights, if the community knows they have them, are a valuable
perceived secure tenure. However, it is critical that residents can prove
their occupation in the area for the correct length of time. Again, the
role of NGOs in educating people about their rights and simple record
keeping, describing those in occupation, undertaken by the community in
partnership with the local authority, is critical. Also class actions
linked to adverse possession claims might well be a way forward which
should supply secure tenure more effectively, especially when used with
other legal instruments such as special interest zones and land readjustment.
The nationalization of the land and the public ownership of all land does
not give tenure security to low-income groups as, if no records are kept,
it is not clear who has rights. Centralized land record systems, such
as those in countries where land was previously nationalized, cause tenure
insecurity for customary and other occupants. Their land is often planned
and allocated by the centralized system without checking to see if anyone
is in occupation, and they have little protection from the encroachment
of neighbors. Records of occupation rights to give tenure security are
critical for any kind of politico-economic system, however to date land
record systems have been based on the privatization of rights. A way forward
is to create records and land information for a range of purposes such
as negotiation, disputed occupation, temporary occupation, for regularization,
and short and long term rights recordal where different partners have
different responsibilities for the creation and maintenance of the information.
Customary areas adjacent to urban areas often supply tenure security to
low-income groups and facilitate the extension of the urban area, albeit
informally. Partnerships between local authorities and traditional leaders,
instead of competition, facilitates the regularization of these customary
areas and their incorporation into the urban area. Such partnerships help
to strengthen weak administrative systems. To do this, national regulatory
frameworks have to be adjusted to merge customary and statutory law, and
traditional forms of land administration have to be allowed. Customary
areas do not respond well to freehold and/or individualized titles, because
of group based relationships and the lack of financial capacity. Locally
administered group based leases are a much more useful tool, linked to
innovative land readjustment mechanisms are the way forward.
The legalization of informal settlements can take many forms, but it has
generally been done by giving individual freehold titles and been accompanied
by individual servicing of the sites. This has led to problems of middle
class down raiding, lack of affordability (especially when legalization
is accompanied by service provision) and slow centralized delivery approaches.
The move now is away from individual titles towards a form of group title,
with individual rights administered by the group themselves, sometime
in partnership with the local authority. This approach can be used both
when settling vacant land and for regularizing informal settlements. Titles
can be upgraded incrementally if so desired. Group titles and the identification
of special zones in the city for low-income people, are complimentary
land delivery instruments. Special zones also work well with anti-eviction
laws as they allow the local authority to intervene in areas of land conflict.
Qualified titles are often considered as a way forward to deliver titles
quickly and they have been used at a certain time in a country's history
very effectively. However, if a country has a weak administrative system,
qualified titles, which have to be upgraded administratively at some future
point, will not solve the problems of large-scale informal settlement.
It is not possible for the majority of the population, and especially
low-income groups, to have tenure security by using centrally registered
rights such as freehold. Instead other approaches need to be considered.
Given the bundle of rights associated with land and the different types
of leases and rights available in different countries, it is suggested
that:-
• Leases become the instrument of choice for
publicly owned land and especially local authority land, rather than
freehold. That is, in urban and peri-urban areas the state should preferably
not transfer the land in freehold to occupants;
• Leases with different conditions of title should be utilized
depending on the human and financial capital of the country, the urban
area and the residents. The lease should be as simple to administer
as possible, while giving the maximum tenure security required for the
purpose intended. All leases should not be automatically designed for
the purpose of mortgages, as this tends to increase the costs of land
delivery and the time taken to deliver;
• Basic leases be used along with group tenure arrangements, whereby
the block is registered in freehold, or under a strong lease agreement
to the group or a local authority. The tenure security of the occupants
is a result of the group right and their own internal land administration
agreements. This approach probably still needs some technical development
in relation to low-income groups, especially as most countries legislation
is not set up to accommodate this approach in an affordable manner;
• Wherever possible the lease contracts between the local authority
and occupiers should be linked to land records kept by the local authority
and/or community. The record keeping should be a partnership between
the local authority together with the community to ensure currency of
the records and accessibility and transparency to the community (see
section 2.2.6 below);
• Private land owners should be encouraged to set up lease contracts
with occupiers which protect all parties, and dispute mechanisms should
be developed which can be afforded by low-income groups;
• Capacity is built in NGOs to:- assist people in assessing and
negotiating their lease conditions, setting up cooperatives associated
with group tenure, assisting people in creating land administration
rules for their group tenure and in sorting out their group tenure land
disputes, and building social cohesion;
When comparing freehold and local leases, leases are
better for mass delivery for low-income people for a number of reasons,
in general:-
• Leases are much cheaper than freehold title;
• Leases can be delivered faster than freehold title;
• Leases are more flexible as they do not necessarily fall under
the national laws of the country and can be negotiated by the parties;
• Not only are delivery costs cheaper, but more importantly transfer
costs are cheaper. Governments often subsidize land delivery but seldom
subsidize transfers;
• Freehold requires a full adjudication and settlement of rights.
Conflicting rights cannot be held on the registry record. Leases agreements
can be made with occupiers of land still under dispute (UNCHS:1996b);
• There are many types of leases, and a range of costs are associated
with their creation, and they can be upgraded incrementally as and when
required. There is normally only one type of freehold;
• Both freehold and leases are amenable to information and communication
technology. However, the technology system to handle leases can be much
cheaper and simpler to use than a system for freehold;The
reason many people want freehold is to protect themselves from the capricious
behavior of landowners. Leases are only useful if the lessor is acceptable
to the lessees. Partnerships, a user-friendly justice system, and the
role of well informed NGOs is critical in the creation of good lessor-
lessee relationships. Without well-balanced lessor-lessee relationships
people will continue to demand freehold, no matter how unobtainable
and unaffordable it is.
With respect to displaced and disadvantaged people
and victims of natural disasters, it is suggested that, in the absence
of available housing, priority should be given to settling them on vacant
land, even if it is not serviced, and then supplying them with service
networks. This should be done, by working with the local community, and
especially the women, and by undertaking participatory planning. Land
administration should be undertaken through partnerships between the community,
NGOs and the local authorities.
With respect to promoting enabling practices regarding women's equal rights
to security of tenure and the equal inheritance of women to land (housing),
the regulatory frameworks of the country should be reviewed as a priority.
This review should be gender sensitive and be done in terms of the range
of international resolutions that have been passed, to establish women's
equality and limit discrimination. One of the first steps in the review
should include the development of a policy on women and land for the country,
taking international resolutions into account as well as local conditions.
Part of the process of policy development should also include research
into best practices in other countries and these should be adapted to
local conditions. Changing the laws of countries is necessary but however
has not been sufficient to bring change to poor women, and campaigns,
both to promote issues and to educate women, have to be conducted. Finally,
women have shown themselves to be vital in participatory planning processes,
especially in the resolution of conflict, and in generating the savings
necessary to undertake regularization.
SUB-THEME II: ENSURING AN ADEQUATE SUPPLY OF LAND FOR ALL SOCIOECONOMIC
GROUPS Extract from research study Pages 79-87.
2.3 Lessons learned and the way forward
At a general level, a number of lessons have been learned about what kind
of approaches block rather than facilitate access to land by all socioeconomic
groups namely:-
• The conviction that formal land delivery
and land registration systems can keep pace with demand has been proven
incorrect. Instead these systems serve to block land delivery to low-income
groups who cannot afford them. Informal rather than formal systems are
delivering the majority of land in the developing countries' cities.
A diversity of land delivery mechanisms should be recognized to ensure
that all socioeconomic groups have access to land;
• Centralized land management approaches limit access to land as
central governments are often focused on political issues and/or are
too weak to intervene successfully to scale at the local level. Land
management functions, powers and responsibilities need to be decentralized,
to enable local authorities to take responsibility for land management.
Local authorities are more responsive to local demand and are more transparent
as they are not at a distance from the communities;
• Centralized top down regularization done on an ad hoc settlement
by settlement basis, where regulations are temporarily adapted to accommodate
individual settlements, lead to more informal settlement as people are
displaced through middle class down raiding and as people invade land
in the hope it will be regularized. City wide regularization programs
should be undertaken using affordable approaches;
• Centralized top down planning creates informal settlement both
by setting up rules which are unaffordable to low-income groups, and
also by planning areas which are already occupied without taking into
account existing layouts. The way forward is to start with the existing
layout and through participatory planning, negotiate a final layout
which is acceptable and affordable to the existing residents;
• Too often planning and servicing standards have created unaffordable
services when areas are regularized. This leads to non-payment for services,
middle class down raiding as low-income people leave the area, poor
maintenance of the services and no sustainability. The way forward is
through participatory planning and the careful design of affordable
services. Focus should be on the supply of service infrastructure and
not individual connections. Individuals can take responsibility for
their own individual connections incrementally, when and if, they can
afford it. Care also needs to be taken to ensure that the service design
of the infrastructure networks uses community based approaches to ensure
affordability of the whole system;
• Service sustainability has not been successful in many projects
largely because the benefiting population has not been part of the design
or implementation, and therefore has little knowledge about the services.
The way forward is to build community capacity to maintain the services
through participatory planning and knowledge transfer;
• With centrally driven regularization projects the community has
been left out of the land administration of the project. This has meant
that the sustainability of the project has been jeopardized, as weak
central administrations have not had the capacity to remain involved
in the area. In many informal settlements people are undertaking informal
land administration and servicing and this capacity should be utilized
and further developed, when regularizing informal settlement to ensure
sustainability;
• Often central government and donor regularization projects have
created unaffordable costs to the community. For example, the focus
of the project has been on capital costs and has not taken into account
maintenance and user costs and/or full services are provided from the
outset creating a cash flow crisis for households. The way forward is
for NGOs working with local authorities to participate in the design
of affordable systems and encourage local savings clubs to save towards
the servicing, rather than having to pay after installation, or take
a loan. Also, incremental servicing allows households to manage their
household finances better. Communities have been able to provide the
necessary funding for regularization even before the local authority
in some instances;
• Land delivery, regularization, land record and service maintenance,
land administration have tended to involve government agencies without
bringing the community into the process. Governments have struggled
to supply these functions at scale and especially to the majority of
low-income people. The way forward to ensure sustainability is to develop
partnerships with CBOs and NGOs. Capacity needs to be further developed,
especially in the NGOs, to facilitate regularization and sustainable
management;
• Conflict is endemic is most countries in regard to land, especially
in urban and fringe areas of the city. Conventional approaches are not
solving the disputes rapidly enough and/or are too expensive for low-income
groups to utilize. New dispute resolution mechanisms need to be developed
whereby local level and simplified dispute resolution mechanisms are
put in place. An aspect of this is to build legal capacity at the local
level;
• Conflict among government departments over the allocation of
land and land use is endemic. Coordinating mechanisms need to be put
in place;
• Regularization has tended to involve the allocation of freehold
and/or individual registered leases. Using local authority leases at
mass scale, rather than freehold, could facilitate affordable dispute
resolution, especially at the local level;
• Ineffective legal instruments exist for the acquisition of land
for regularization. This, together with a lack of political will and
poor financial capacity, means that land acquisition is a serious block.
Privately owned land is especially problematic, with large proportions
of some cities being held under private ownership, often for speculation.
Legal instruments need to be reviewed, adapted, given political backing,
enforced, and new instruments developed where necessary. Land readjustment
is an important legal instrument to supply serviced land in the cities.
It brings competing stakeholders together in partnerships (public-private,
NGO -for profit private) and is a locally driven approach. Different
approaches exist for land readjustment, only some of which are useful
in supplying serviced land to low-income groups. Often governments have
to subsidize some aspect of the readjustment (such as, becoming part
land-owners or financing the servicing) if low-income groups are to
benefit from this approach. Land readjustment works well with special
zones for low-income people, regularization, the development of networks
of infrastructure and the legalization of blocks;
• Land readjustment might not be possible for very poor countries.
However, in an adapted form it could assist with the extension of urban
areas into customary areas, providing there is capacity for planning
and installation of the infrastructure network. Land readjustment is
critical in Asia and densely settled cities;
In terms of the framework developed in sub-theme 2
above, an approach is set out as a way forward for the regularizaion of
informal settlements city-wide and to scale. Regularization approaches
will vary from country to country in terms of the matrix of factors identified
in the introduction to this report. However, based on the above, broad
guidelines are given for regularisation, which take into account:-
• The immediate needs of communities for tenure
security;
• Sound planning principles;
•The long term needs of the public sector custodians of the land
record systems;
• Financial and cost recovery issues;
• The needs of local authorities in relation to service provision;
• The need for individuals to upgrade their services, houses and
land rights in their own time, as and when they can afford it;
• Long term sustainability;
Phase 1.
Firstly, all the major stakeholders in the city should be identified and
brought together in a forum (see section 2.2.5 above), to develop a vision
of how to regularize the city's informal settlements and develop an inclusive
city for all its citizens. Secondly, before informal settlements, either
singly or city wide, can be considered for regularization, a land audit
needs to be undertaken, to assess the legal status of the land that is
occupied by informal settlements (Diacon:1997; de Castro:1999b, Payne:1997:27,48).
It has to be ascertained whether the land is in public or private ownership,
or both (see section 2.2.3.2 above) and the legal status of the ownership.
An assessment then has to be made prior to regularization as to which
combination of instruments (see section 2.2.3.2 above) can be used to
sort out cloudy titles and persuade landowners to become involved in regularization.
The administrative processes should be put in place to be able to carry
out the procedures (Banerjee:1999b:17). These will vary from country to
country and city to city. The affected communities and NGOs can also strengthen
the local authorities' hand by putting pressure on landowners to come
to the negotiating table.
An assessment of the resources of the stakeholders and partners involved
in the process should be made to establish the extent of their human and
financial capacity to undertake the regularization. Plans should be put
in place to increase this capacity where necessary. Land banking should
be started where land for relocation/resettlement of informal settlers,
is identified and acquired.
Phase 2.
A set of general incremental steps are proposed. Firstly, through the
stakeholders' forum, with the low-income communities and NGOs setting
the pace, special zones should be identified and designated for low-income
people throughout the city. These zones should already contain the informal
settlements that have been identified for regularization and/or vacant
land where people can be relocated/resettled from over crowded or unsafe
areas. Secondly, these special zones should be large areas or blocks (and
super blocks containing a number of blocks -UNCHS:1999b). If they are
large areas, the area should also be broken down into blocks (and super
blocks) to improve social cohesion and management. Thirdly, the boundaries
of these areas, special zones, blocks and super blocks, should be negotiated
among the stakeholders, especially the low-income people living in the
area. Every attempt should be made to include public and privately owned
land into the designated areas, and enable the infrastructure network
to be coordinated throughout the city, using the range of legal and administrative
instruments outlined above, to ensure city wide coverage and economies
of scale.
Fourthly, the block boundaries should be recorded in all the national
and regional land record system/s, indicating that no dealings and land
use allocations can be undertaken in these areas without consulting the
local authority and its partners in the regularization. This should give
immediate security of tenure to occupants with respect to the state, which
can no longer allocate this land to other people. It would also mean that
private landowners could not evict people easily, especially if there
were anti-eviction laws in place. It would also mean that the landowners
could not change the land use of the area, thereby strengthening the existing
low-income land use arrangements. This approach is unlikely to give occupants
sufficient tenure security to be able to obtain a mortgage either for
individual sites or the whole block. Occupants would not have security
from other individuals forcible removing them from their land.
Individual security would only be obtained once a local land record system
had been created. Such a system would need to identify occupants and their
land use, but not their spatial extent. It should be tied to a 'starter
title' giving short term, or perpetual lease rights, issued by the local
authority, to a site within the block, though not necessary the site presently
occupied. This title, or some other form of group title such as those
associated with housing associations, while strengthening the tenure security
of individuals, does not break down the social cohesion of the group.
Fifthly, up to this point the only planning required is to identify informal
settlement areas that would not be regularized and potential vacant land
for resettlement, and to roughly plan the infrastructure networks. No
detailed infrastructure network level, settlement level, or site level
planning (or surveying) has to be undertaken to give informal settlement
occupiers security of tenure in this phase.
Sixthly, the land administration of the blocks in this phase is extremely
critical. Processes should be put in place to build capacity in the informal
settlement areas to be able to transfer knowledge between the community
and professionals/local authorities. This knowledge will relate to land
information, land development requirements, servicing options, the building
of social cohesion and leadership. Para-legals and local land administrators
should be trained in the community (Banerjee:1999b), and community training
undertaken in the area of rights (human, land, housing) (de Castro:1999b)
and dispute resolution mechanisms set up, both within the community and
for the stakeholders and partners.
Land administration should also include the creation of a land information
system, shared by the community and the local authority, both to increase
the individuals' security of tenure, as well as to build information for
the planning and servicing of the community. Housing consolidation is
not advised in this phase as no planning has been undertaken. It should
be actively discouraged until the infrastructure networks are in place,
for cost effectiveness and conflict management. Seventhly, savings schemes
should be put in place to prepare to fund servicing and further regularization.
Phase 3.
Planning the detailed infrastructure network of the city, with informal
settlements as the major focus, can now be done utilizing:- land and other
information gathered from the communities, based on the existing informal
layouts, site sizes, floor ratios of the informal settlements as much
as possible, using the Master Plan if one exists, but not as the key instrument
for planning. The design should allow for individual self-funded incremental
service connections and affordable capital, maintenance and user costs
for services. The infrastructure network would need to be planned to extend
outside of the city limits, to assist in the management of peri-urban
growth. By planning at city level the bulk supply of services should be
done automatically and to scale.
The planning should be done in a participatory way, using forums of stakeholders,
and especially the community and NGOs, to make choices about whether to
have, for instance, cheap straight line service corridors, which will
involve the relocation of existing houses. The affordability of the various
services, relative to the responsibility of the community in the upkeep
of the services, would also need to be negotiated as part of the planning
exercise. The role of professional knowledge is also a key input, as it
is more difficult to plan regularized settlement than developments on
vacant land.
Funding should be found for the infrastructure networks (sewerage, roads,
electricity and water), with individual households taking responsibility
for funding their own connections. Donor funding, cross subsidies, central
and/or local government taxes, community funding, all different types
of funding should be harnessed through partnering for the infrastructure
networks. Communities tend to respond better to pre-savings than to post
cost recovery for installation, either by governments of formal financial
institutions.
The construction of the infrastructure networks, according
to planned layouts, would involve the relocation of some individual households,
either within the block or to vacant land in another block. This relocation
should be done as a partnership between the communities, NGOs and the
local authority. This partnership should also be responsible for ensuring
that communities know how to make the individual connections to the networks
and for maintaining the systems, both the service system and the land
information system. The local land information system put in place in
the second phase should also enable the local authority to cost recover
on user charges.
Once the planned layout had been put in place, it would be possible to
upgrade the tenure security of individual households, by giving more individualized
titles, as sites could be surveyed and land leased in perpetuity for specific
sites. All upgrades to individual title should be self-funded and would
have to be with the agreement of the majority of the group. The consolidation
of housing by individual households should be encouraged as soon as the
planned layout and services are put in place.
Finally, regularization is an ongoing process using this approach as individual
connections to services, housing consolidation and the upgrading of tenure
to individual rights would take place incrementally. Also, it would involve
the progressive servicing of informal settlements in the city and in the
growing peri-urban areas. In addition, this form of regularization relies
on community involvement for sustainability, both during the development
and the ongoing maintenance of services and land records. This ongoing
process would alter conventional city governance approaches.
This approach could also be used with vacant land or land only lightly
occupied such as customary land. Essentially once the service network
was completed blocks of land could be delineated by the primary and secondary
networks and sold, rented or leased to other public or private developers
(whether formal or informal). These people would then proceed with the
details of the sale to individuals and/or the subdivisions and individual
connections (FIG/Habitat:1998:11).
Aside from the detailed regularization approach outlined above, another
vital area that needs to be addressed are the national regulatory frameworks,
including the cadastre and land information system. Regulatory frameworks,
instead of promoting access to land, have rather limited access to land
and served to block market mechanisms. This is because these frameworks
have created centralized structures with poor government coordination,
inappropriate and unaffordable master plans and building codes, inflexible
and costly standards, regulatory complexity, ineffective enforcement and
long delivery times. Regulatory frameworks need to be reviewed and made
more simple, efficient, flexible, transparent and participatory. Also,
standards should be lowered so that low-income areas can participate in
the life of the city and not be excluded.
It is critical that a start is made to review all regulatory frameworks
associated with land markets such as planning, building, justice, cadastre
and land registration, financial, urban laws, including a gender sensitive
analysis. The role of different institutions and their functions also
needs to be reviewed to facilitate decentralization and the coordination
of different government departments and levels of government. Also, many
countries have more than one set of laws in place (statutory and customary)
or more than one regulatory framework (some former Soviet Union countries)
and these have to be drawn together to give simple guidelines for land
development. Regulatory frameworks also need to be adjusted to allow the
private sector, both the community and 'for profit' private sector (informal
and formal), to become involved in land development, through public-private
partnerships.
However, experience has shown that land development should not wait for
the review and adjustment of regulatory frameworks as this can take years.
A two pronged approach is suggested whereby, through some form of stakeholders'
forum at national level, an understanding is developed of the regulatory
framework in place and a start made on reforming it. At the same time,
local authorities and their partners should adapt the regulations wherever
possible to facilitate land delivery; and also focus on improving coordinating
links between the different institutions involved in land delivery.
One of the most important blockages in land delivery is the cadastral
and land information system. Yet at the same time it is seen to be critical
for land development. Cadastral, land registration and land information
systems are too centralized, expensive and not geared to the urban poor
who are in the majority, as procedures are unaffordable, often based on
colonial approaches, complex and not transparent. Countries all over the
world, South America, Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa are struggling to
improve their cadastres and land information systems. Few can claim to
be at the point where their systems are good enough to service the majority
of the urban poor.
The way forward is to focus land records, land information and land management
at the local level and limit high level coordination and intervention
requirements. In this way land information can be available at local level
to facilitate regularization of informal settlements and the subsequent
maintenance of the area. Local authorities generally have no land information
about informal settlements as they are outside of the cadastre. Therefore
a land record system needs to be developed where the community and the
local authority are partners. This should also include the training of
a community member as a land administrator to create and maintain the
local records. Based on this approach, these land records can be used
by the community to negotiate with other stakeholders in the area. Also,
they can be used by the local authority to regularize the area and to
maintain it, including cost recovery. This approach facilitates sustainability.
Such a land record system should be set up to increase the tenure security
of those in occupation and could also be useful in the case of eviction
as a proof of occupation.
Aside from this approach, a range of innovative practices
exist which could alter, improve and extend the cadastre and land registration
system. Some of these practices include the adaptation of technology so
that information and tenure security can be created in a more affordable
fashion. Others relate to the development of more simple legal and institutional
procedures, including more decentralized forms of land administration.
Others again relate to the re-structuring of functions within government
for better efficiency, including the restructuring of information flows.
The general national review and reform of the regulatory frameworks should
also focus on the cadastral and land information system of the country,
and a stakeholders' forum should also address this issue. Land information
records, the management of information and the flow of land information
between different departments, and to the public and market, has been
seriously problematic. This aspect needs to be urgently addressed, by
bringing together technical and non technical people to review the existing
system, assess its affordability and gender sensitivity, reduce overlaps
in government responsibility, find ways of decentralizing land information
flows, improve the information and mapping system and undertake a user's
requirement analysis to reorient the system.
Finally, another blockage to land delivery has been the public sector
monopoly over land delivery. The private sector, including the community
sector, has traditionally not been considered as part of the land delivery
process. Yet most land delivery in developing countries' cities is being
undertaken by the private sector, albeit informally. The way forward is
for government to accept a diversity of land delivery approaches, including
the informal and/or customary, adapt the regulations so that the formal
and informal approaches can merge, and facilitate private sector land
delivery, through the creation of public-private partnerships. The focus
of government attention should be on the facilitation of the private sector's
variety of land delivery approaches rather than on the supply of land
through public sector delivery mechanisms.
The traditional public sector focus on land delivery has also meant that
insufficient attention has been paid to maintenance issues. The public
sector has not been able to deliver land to scale let alone deliver land
record and service maintenance to scale. The private sector, especially
community involvement, in the supply of land and the subsequent maintenance
of the records and services, is critical to the sustainability of low-income
areas. That is, an efficient sustainable land market for all socioeconomic
groups requires community involvement and the opening up of land delivery
opportunities to a range of private sector actors. NGOs have a critical
role to play in the process as:- mediators between different stakeholders,
supplying technical assistance to communities, building social cohesion,
building the awareness of rights, and facilitating public participation
in the regularization and maintenance process.
3. CONCLUSIONS
3.1 Conclusions/lessons learnt/ way ahead /achievements and shortcomings
A range of lessons have been learned:-
• Governments should not focus on public housing
and land delivery. They should instead facilitate the private sector
(formal, informal, community, customary) to deliver land and housing.
A number of countries have adopted public-private sector approaches
in relation to land delivery with much success;
• Centralized systems of planning, conflict management and land
administration are not delivering secure tenure and serviced land to
the majority of urban people in developing countries. These functions
should be decentralized, together with the powers and resources that
will enable them to be undertaken. Often decentralization takes place
without the necessary powers and resources being decentralized;
• A focus on individual informal settlements has not made it possible
to solve the problem of informality, either city wide or globally. Also,
ad hoc approaches do not encourage inclusive cities. New approaches
which lower standards, spread resources and are designed at scale have
been developed, which create inclusive cities;
• There are too few NGOs with sufficient technical knowledge in
the field of urban land. Where they exist, they have been shown to be
critically important for land delivery for low-income groups. Capacity
needs to be built in NGOs to facilitate sustainable urban land management;
• Often public land delivery systems exclude the involvement of
the community. More and more countries are involving the community in
order to make development more sustainable, affordable and useful to
the low-income groups;
• Regulatory frameworks designed for the middle class and commercial
sector are excluding the majority of urban people in the city. The adaptation
of regulatory frameworks is a slow process often with no apparent outcome.
Resources and pressure need to be brought to bear in these situations;
• Often countries with weak administrations also have complex and
contradictory legislation, often left over from the colonial period.
This is a major block to formal land delivery and causes informal land
delivery. Regulatory frameworks in these countries need to be reviewed
and simplified, but this has not always proved easy;
• A lot of effort has gone into creating equal rights for women
in relation to land and inheritance. Some legislative success has resulted.
However, there are too few success stories of where poor women at the
local level have been able to overcome discrimination either in terms
of the law and/or custom in relation to land and/or inheritance. One
area of success has been with cooperative savings;
• Centralized planning has proven unsuccessful. A number of countries
have adopted participatory planning approaches which have proved successful;
• Service design is critical for affordability
and cost recovery. Too often the focus has been on full servicing and
titling without taking into account maintenance and user costs. A number
of countries have opted for the development of only infrastructure networks.
Individual connections are made incrementally and self funded. Also
the design of the system is premised on user involvement with service
maintenance (both individual connections and the infrastructure). This
approach has been successful as it has made servicing both affordable
and sustainable;
• Cadastral systems are not coping with demand throughout the developing
world. Appropriate land information systems, and local land record systems
are under development;
• It has not been possible to deliver freehold and/or registered
leasehold rights to the majority of people in the developing world.
Local authority leases are the way forward;
• Individual titling is costly, time consuming and often not sustainable
for low-income people, where full surveying and registration is involved.
A way forward is to use group registration, blocks and a form of individualized
lease right managed by the group in conjunction with the local authority;
• Most local authorities have not been able to regularize and manage
their informal settlements because of a reliance on cadastral information.
A number of local authorities are using non cadastral land information,
such as sketch maps, to regularize these areas;
• Where there are no land records and land has been nationalized,
central governments frequently allocate land/land use to developers
even when the land is occupied. Land information systems are under development
which include all land information, formal, informal and customary;
• Conflict over land is endemic. Partnerships have gone some way
to overcome this, and land readjustment partnerships have been particularly
successful in some countries;
• Privately owned land remains one of the largest blockages to
urban land management and regularization. In many countries local authorities
are adapting legal instruments to regularize these areas;
• Adverse possession laws do not deliver to scale on their own,
but need legal aid and/or the use of class actions to make them useful;
• Anti-eviction laws have given some tenure security to millions
of people but they are a long way from completely secure. NGOs have
played a critical role in fighting eviction in many countries;
• Compulsory land acquisition by the state
is not delivering to scale, especially in relation to the extension
of the city into agricultural areas. Public-private partnerships and
the innovative use of legal instruments for dealing with cloudy title
on private land has been found in a number of countries to be more useful;
• While a lack of human capacity remains one of the major problems,
capacity building through stakeholder forums has made possible some
technical transfer, as has the formal training of staff;
• While a lack of financial capacity remains one of the major problems,
many projects have shown the ability of communities themselves to generate
income, to scale, for regularization;
• While donor funded projects have often created unaffordable service
costs to beneficiaries in the medium to long term, there is a movement
towards managing this aspect better in project design, through increased
community participation, incremental designs, co-financing, sweat equity
and increased project ownership by the community;
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