Promoting secure land tenure for low-income groups in urban and peri-urban areas

Concept note

BackgroundCompetition for urban land and urban space is growing within and around all categories of urban centres, from large cities to small towns. Increasingly, conflicting interests pitch low-income residents against governments and private investors, as urban centres expand and different visions emerge and collide of how cities should be spatially organised, and who should live where. Poverty, vulnerability and inequality are exacerbated by the lack of secure tenure and the possibility - often reality - of eviction.

The close relationship between access to land and access to basic services in most contexts increases the costs associated with insecure tenure.

Professionally designed and implemented land policy and administration has been shown to be distant, expensive and inaccessible for low-income groups.

Women and other groups (for example, in-migrants) are particularly affected by titling procedures which exclude their rights and needs; equally the very poor may sell new rights at times of crisis resulting in their displacement. Formal systems tend to lack legitimacy since they are not based on an understanding of how people act in often partly-commercialised informal land systems; and, as settlements consolidate and density increases, the rules and relationships governing transactions and regulating disputes become strained. At the same time, important lessons can be learnt from innovative experiences and initiatives that support land acquisition for urban poor groups.

Objectives Land is central to all aspects of urban development, from poverty reduction and service provision, to urban expansion, infrastructure development and environmental issues, including adaptation to climate change. To highlight such centrality, this project seeks to:

document changes in land tenure and livelihoods in selected urban centres,

identify more effective land acquisition strategies and land administration to support sustainable livelihoods and adequate shelter

promote findings in local, national and international policy forums.

Through shared activities on land, we will look at a number of critical themes in equitable and sustainable urban development that are also significant in our other work. This themes may include, for example, the relationships between local authorities and the urban poor, community development processes, collective and individualised versions of the land development process, required changes at different levels of government.

ActivitiesWorking papersThese will explore and document the implications of specific land tenure systems for urban and peri-urban poverty, including their impacts on livelihoods, income generation, access to services, environmental quality, etc. Of particular interest will be papers that document initiatives to represent and promote the rights of marginalized groups, and that may offer potential for replication. The suggested themes for the papers (which in many cases are likely to cover more than one theme) include:

changes in the ‘vision for cities’ and what drives them; the legal and administrative aspects of changes in land tenure; the individual and collective strategies of low-income and marginalized people; the responses of local governments and development agencies to these strategies.

Practicalities Support for partners in writing the papers will be UK£ 2,000. An international workshop bringing together all the authors will be held in September-October 2008, and in preparation of this meeting we ask authors to submit a draft of their paper by June 2008. It is anticipated that a special issue of Environment and Urbanization on urban land will include papers from this project.