Establishing Land Rights For The Poor?
Establishing land rights for the poor in developing nations was a mostly-ignored issue until the second annual Clinton Global Initiative in Manhattan in late September, 2006.
"Many citizens of developing countries don't formally have title to their land, and many economists -- including Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto, another conference attendee -- see this as a key source of urban poverty. According to Mr. de Soto's research, the value of unregistered land in developing countries totals over $9 trillion."
"...But standing in the way of widespread land-ownership records are insufficient legal frameworks, confusing procedures and corrupt property registries."
[Editor's note: This article is available to Planetizen readers via the link below for a period of five days, then only available to WSJ subscribers.]
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Establishing land rights for the poor?
The report, in my personal opinion is a classic example of the so called 'learned professional seminarians' deliberately ignoring the stark naked and brutal truth to appear to be Mesiahs for the people of the developing countries!
In Mumbai,India only about 35% of the estimated 13m. population resides in formal housing. The rest 65% stay in slums on encroached lands or just on sidewalks or public open spaces! Obviously the occupiers of such land canot have legal rights to the land they forcibly and unauthorizedly occupy! The ultimate folly is to try to prove by simple arithmatic how much of wealth is locked up by way of unregistered mortgages! It is like lamenting the waste of water of a huge lake from a mirrage!
The raging controversy in Mumbai and other places in India arises from a bitter resentment of the law abiding middle class strugling to own a one room tenement at prevailing astronomical prices against the slum dweller encroachers who by a state law get a tenement or legal tenure to the land they forcibly occupy absolutely free!
Those who deliberate on such matters in a high flaunting language with a lot of verbiage and with a gift of the gab are far removed from the realities of the situation. Neither do they want to understand the problem,their only interest being a 2/3 day workshop/think tank/seminar or gobal discussion at the best hotel in a city of a rich country!
Prakash M Apte
Why Not Land Rights For The Poor
If the poor already have de facto ownership of the land they are squatting on, why not let them register and get legal ownership of that land? If they can use this legal ownership to borrow money and start businesses, then the city will be more prosperous and the increased prosperity will benefit everyone, including the middle-class that bought its housing.
In the US, we have a legal doctrine called "adverse possession," which says that if someone openly takes possession of land without permission of the owner for a number of years defined by statute (ranging from a few years to 20 years in different states), then that squatter becomes legal owner of the land.
It seems to me that a similar doctrine would be very helpful in cities where most people are so poor that they have no choice but to be squatters on land they do not own. If they have improved the land by building homes on it and have lived in these homes for many years, it seems beneficial to give them formal ownership of the land.
I am not at all convinced by the argument that this is just a western concept of land ownership. I am sure that the vast majority would prefer to have legal ownership of the land to make their homes more secure and to give them the ability to borrow money against their homes.
This is my initial reaction. I don't have first-hand knowledge of the issue, so I would be interested in more information.
Charles Siegel
Planners at the feeding trough...
Re: "...their only interest being a 2/3 day workshop/think tank/semiar or global discussion at the best hotel..."
Sadly, you are right, and moreover this is a description of how much of the planning profession operates these days. The profession is loaded with "experts," spending their entire well-paid careers behind their desks in distant cities (or university campuses), writing books and reports, full of planning B/S, mixed with generous doses of politically-correct, socio-economic gobbledy-gook, which, of course, very few read anyway.
A case in point is the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina last year, which attracted planning consultants the way rotting garbage down in New Orleans attracts flies. A good number of New Orleans residents could have been rehoused by now for the cost of all planning advice proffered at about half-a-zillion workshops held, so far, by high-powered consultants from out-of-town places like Philadelphia or New York or San Francisco or Miami. Millions spent on consultants, many with no previous experience nor special cultural knowledge of south Louisiana, yet lots of talk about New Urbanism, etc., yet hardly a single unit of housing has been built.
The fact that 2/3 of the inhabitants of Mumbai don't live in formal housing probably doesn't register with many planners in "Western" countries, partly because they haven't been to India, and also because the notion of property ownership, along with all the legal permutations of ownership, is so central to "Western" thinking. That is especially true here in America, where property ownership is supposed to provide some sort of legitimacy as a citizen, as well as being a source for municipal revenue through taxation (so that municipal planners can get their paychecks...!). American planners just seem to assume that this model can be applied to anywhere, including Mumbai.
Conflation
The profession is loaded with "experts," spending their entire well-paid careers behind their desks in distant cities (or university campuses), writing books and reports, full of planning B/S, mixed with generous doses of politically-correct, socio-economic gobbledy-gook, which, of course, very few read anyway.
Your comment appears to be either 'painting all with a broad brush' or 'conflation' or 'arguing from false premises', I can't decide which.
Go to a Planning Commission workshop and let us know what you found. You are conflating academia with applied practice.
Best,
D
Land Rights
Just to enlighten advocates of awarding land rights to those in adverse possession of private/public lands in Mumbai,India; of the around 65% of population not residing in formal housing, 25-30% live on side walks, under rail/road overbridges,along main watersupply pipelines,.About 30% live in slums of make shift tin/plastic shelters on marshes, government lands,lands earmarked for public parks & playgrounds in the development plan of Mumbai( against a modest target of 1 acre of public open space /1000 population Mumbai has 0.03 acres/1000),main open storm water drains, sea beaches, in the approach funnel of the runways at the airports etc.
Will the city prosper by awarding legal rights of land to them?
Prakash M Apte