Urban development and Urban law: topics for a research agenda

Edesio Fernandes

Escalating land prices and demand for housing construction

• The only way is up for London’s skyline as land prices and demand for homes soar

• The stretched middle: can Londoners cope with hundreds of new towers?

• With its skyline about to expand further upward, the city may one day look back on the Shard as the thin end of a vertical wedge

• Sam Jones • The Guardian, Wednesday 12 March 2014 18.13 GMT

Globalisation of land and property markets

• Russians invade London’s £1m-plus homes• Aidan Radnedge Sunday 9 Feb 2014 8:39 pm

Property speculation at global level

• Inside Out London • 03/02/2014• On BBC iPlayer • Duration: 29 minutes • With the capital's house prices at a record high,

Mark Jordan joins first time buyers and cash-rich Chinese investors as they race to buy London homes in a fast, furious and often cruel market.

Growing number of vacant properties

• 'Billionaires Row': inside Hampstead palaces left empty for decades

• On The Bishops Avenue houses worth tens of millions of pounds lay derelict in a spectacular example of waste and profligacy

• Robert Booth • The Guardian, Friday 31 January 2014 19.30

GMT

Growing number of under-utilised properties

• A Slice of London So Exclusive Even the Owners Are Visitors• LONDON — An odd thing was happening, or rather not happening, as

dusk fell the other day across Belgravia, home to some of the world’s most valuable real estate: almost no one seemed to be coming home. Perhaps half the windows were dark.

• Warrick Page for The New York Times April 1, 2013• The door lamps are on, but is anyone home in Belgravia? • It seems that practically the only people who can afford to live there

don’t actually want to. Last year, the real estate firm Savills found that at least 37 percent of people buying property in the most expensive neighborhoods of central London did not intend them to be primary residences.

Growing overcrowding

• Families feel the big squeeze as overcrowding spreads

• One in four London children living in cramped conditions, with problem affecting previously untouched areas of Britain• Help us map overcrowding in Britain

• Randeep Ramesh, social affairs editor • The Guardian, Thursday 12 July 2012 18.04 BST

Growing rental prices and growing number of people sharing

• November 19, 2013 8:12 pm• Young Londoners ‘hutch up’ to curb rental

costs• By Sarah O’Connor and John Burn-Murdoch• Financial Times

Penalising the poor

• Bedroom tax: one in seven households 'face eviction'

• Survey claims two thirds of households in England affected by bedroom tax have fallen into a rent arrears

• Patrick Butler, social policy editor • The Guardian, Wednesday 12 February 2014

Private appropriation of public investment

• 17 October 2012 • Crossrail to boost house prices 'by up to 25%'• Tunnelling began in central London in March • House prices along the £16bn Crossrail route

could rise by up to 25% over the next 10 years, a report has shown.

• The study found the rail link, from Maidenhead in the west to Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the east, could add £5.5bn to property values by 2021.

Planning regulations and land/property/rental prices

• House-building Breaking the stranglehold Ministers are fighting—not successfully—to overcome NIMBYism and planning laws enacted in the 1940s Jan 11th 2014 | Aylesbury | From the print edition - See more at: http://www.economist.com/news/britain/215

Planning regulations and environmental problems

• Thousands of homes planned for flood plains• Developers are planning tens of thousands of

new homes in areas at high risk of flooding, it can be revealed.

• The Telegraph Friday 14 march 2014

Low property taxation

• Property taxes in the UK are very low by international standards. The maximum rates payable even on luxury mansions in central London are generally below £3,000 per year.

• February 3, 2014 5:17 pm• UK tax take on wealthy ‘non-doms’ rises 6%• By Vanessa Houlder

The need for land taxation

• Land tax is fair, and it's not just a fringe issue• Not even the cleverest tax lawyers can avoid it

- that's why it's gaining more and more support– David Cooper – The Guardian, Friday 6 May 2011

New stage of urban development, in London and elsewhere

• Global scale: over 54%, and growing• Cities as commodities, not only the place of economic

production, but also the object of post-industrial capitalist production

• Growing land, property and rental prices • Widespread land and housing crisis• Crisis in provision of services, infrastructure and

equipment• Sociopolitical unrest• Socioenvironmental impact• Fiscal crisis, especially at local level

A perverse pattern

• Sociospatial segregation• Political exclusion• Land and housing informality• Energy crisis• Environmental time bombs – sanitation, air pollution

and water• Opportunities and growth, but also inefficiency,

irrationality, pollution, insecurity, injustice, and illegality

• Unfair distribution of costs and benefits

New wave of Urban studies: a multidimensional, transdisciplinary field

• Multiple causes, factors, dimensions, and implications

• UK universities and departments widely recognised

• Planning, geography, environmental studies, politics, sociology, anthropology, economics, development, etc.

• And yet... little, if any, attention by the law schools

Law and the pattern of urban development: a central link

• Nature of prevailing, exclusionary land and property laws

• Not lack of planning, but kind of planning• Elitist planning regulations• Lack of recognition of housing rights• Cumbersome and costly urban management• Lack of popular participation in law- and decision-

making processes• Lack of proper land and property taxation• Law has determined growing illegality

Legal reform

• Sociospatial segregation and informality have largely resulted from the exclusionary nature of the legal system

• How to make legal system a factor of sociospatial inclusion?

• Legal reform necessary to support urban reform• New urban/land/planning laws being enacted in

several countries/cities• Growing investment towards legal reform, and

inclusive legal system

New questions

• What can be expected of the new land/urban/planning laws?

• What does it take for them to be enforced, and effective?

• What are the nature, possibilities and constraints of progressive laws vis-a-vis the broader sociopolitical process?

• Need for new legal paradigm: Urban Law, a new, growing field of Public Law

Urban Law: an agenda for research

• Land and property rights: individual rights vs. the social function of property/social value of land

• Legal principles of urban policy: what city, for whom• Urban regulations and dynamics of land markets• Legal conditions of urban management• Sociopolitical quality of decision-making process and participatory

processes• Informal development: rule, not exception – solution, but also

problem• Financing of urban development: who pays, and how, who benefits,

and how• Urban land governance framework• The Right to the City: habitation and participation

Professor Patrick McAuslan MBE: a British pioneer

A wealth of academic literature

• Law, land and planning; • The ideologies of planning law; • Land policy for the urban poor; • Urban land and shelter for the poor; • Bringing the law back in, • Land Law reform in Eastern Africa, • not to speak of countless articles and reports, etc.• And yet...not a single Urban Law course in the UK

Urban Law• “Law in the context", as opposed to law as a closed system• Social, political, economic and cultural forces historically

determined/been determined by the legal system• Inter/transdisciplinary, sociolegal, critical approach• Law as a problem of academic knowledge – never taking it for granted • Nature and roles of law in development, as opposed to law and

development• Importance of comparative studies and analysis• Law is at once an instrument, a process, and another sociopolitical

arena where conflicts are expressed, take place and are sometimes resolved

• Possibilities and constraints of promoting social reform through the law, albeit a redefined legal system

A new discipline

• Own object, principles, institutes, rules and instruments• Broader than Administrative Law and private law tradition• Centrality of the discussion on property rights• Roles of law in the production of urban space• Integrated land, urban and housing law, policy and planning• Law and management walk hand-in-hand• Planning as a sociopolitical battleground, not a mere

technical exercise• Unmask ideological uses of law and the planning system

Pro-poor perspective

The challenge of implementation and enforcement

• Legal reform to support urban reform abd democratisation requires bringing the law back into the agenda of policy- and law-making

• Legal education and capacity building• New generation of collective and social rights • Democratising the access to judicial system • Finding an elusive balance between legal

reform, institutional change and sociopolitical mobilisation

Urban Law Day...

• ...should be every day in all UK Law Schools and other academic departments where the several intertwined aspects of urban development have been discussed, taught, and researched