World Urban Forum

If local authorities have the authority and financial capacity to buy up land surrounding the city before it is developed they can then design a public transportation infrastructure, community centers, and designate commercial and residential areas to be developed by the private sector but based on long term leases rather than free hold sale of land to developers. I believe this has been done in Sweden and in Singapore.

Planning cities is so much more challenging exactly because of their economic dimension, whereby land and housing are key commodities. Position, 'exclusive' access to services, exclusive 'social purity', help to set 'high' predictable prices with predictable capital gains. Am i wrong in saying that without a strong public regulatory role, equity will remain an elusive slogan?

one of the greatest challenges for urban planning checks in the cities of developing countries where local governments do not have the ability to track the growth of population together with the basic infrastructure for the community, on the other hand the frequent exodus of rural population to cities in search of better conditions ends up creating a great congestion and making city life more dificil.We need to create a minimum of basic conditions for coexistence in small urban centers to prevent people from migrating to all major urban centers.

the challenge also is how the private sector be part of the process of development not just on the receiving end...

Be carefull with the choice list! Once you click you can't change it :-(

Large scale acquisition of land by public sector should be in Mexico (and Latin America?) the only way to garantee controlled urban expansion and low cost plots and infrastructure offering. In this, private agents or/and social organizations have much to do through PPP, why don't try them?

If in developing countries like Mexico urban planning institutions are not capable to stop speculation, in Italy they often are part of the speculation process itself. Our planning system is built on a masterplan which has been turned into a sequence of procedures and its original aim, supposedly creating the future vision for the city growth, has almost disappeared. This implies that our urban areas are developed or renovated after an usually non-transparent negotiation process between public bodies and private sector, which most of the times is not focused on “equity” and “sustainability” goals. In a context of crisis, I think that a sound framework of regulations and control systems must be associated with effective participatory mechanisms that encourage citizens to be involved in the planning process since the very beginning.

The fundamental issues in urban reconstruction relate to acquiring the land; securing rights to develop it; protecting the land and rights during planning and development; allocating rights to end users; and managing land use and changes in use in the long term. In the reconstruction of Cato Manor (a 2000 ha site well located near the centre of Durban, South Africa), the pooling of land had been part of a negotiated agreement at the outset. The straategic decision taken by the Cato Manor Development Association (an NGO established to redevelop the areaa) was not to take ownership of the land, but rather to plan, develop and allocate it to end users, as an agent of the landowner (the National Housing Board and local government). The critical mechanisms in this were the land availability and agency agreements.

When land market agents and speculative urban developers predominate in institutional planning it's time to demand government authorities and social organizations for a more regulated and controlled intersectorial system that allows participatory mechanisms for general decision-making, specially oriented to the less benefited.

First of all (at least in Mexico) the municipalities have got to own its land in order to be able to manage with urban planning. Secondly, there are some changes that need to be done on the Mexican Constitution and on the General Law of Human Settlements in order to define, more accurately and clearly, the attributions of every each one of the levels of government in Mexico (Federal, State and Municipality). Nowadays there are some ways of obtaining land through federal programs, but these are maybe a bit complicated for the municipalities to acquire in such a short period (3 years). So, in Mexico, we definitely need to strengthen these policies of obtaining territorial reserves for the municipal government and to strengthen the legal background of urban planning.

Large scale aquisition of land may be the best way to garantie sustainable development- but it will stay an unrealistic dream. In Germany municipalities are successful to aquire land on the level of development sites. They have the planning authority and the political oriented city parliament decides about the investor. They can make conditions to be respected via legally enforced "city planning agreements" - but only to that extent, that they will find investors to be able to develop under actual financial situations.
The models of PPP have been practiced videly in the last decade- but from a point of sustainability and the aquisition of public open space (and the architectural quality )they have not been so successful. In Germany we have such an overloaded planning practice with legal bindings, necessary public participation - topped by European Law- that plannig is a complicated long process- too long sometimes. More and more with reference to climate change it is called for " To create city with landscape" ( Mit Landschaft Stadt machen !) In this sense: . Brigitte Schmelzer Landscape Architect

Thank you all for your insightful comments. Let me try and capture the main points raised in this discussion, before we move on.
1. Acquisition, buying in advance, ownership of (at least some amount of) land by public agencies seems to be widely supported, even though this process has many challenges.
2. There should be strong public regulation in the area of land development, allocation, management.
3. Private sector should be made a part of the process, speculation to be prevented as much as possible. At the same time, however, the sustainability and inclusiveness of private sector initiatives, and the quality of public spaces they produce, can by no means be guaranteed.
4. Innovative land management arrangements are needed, especially those involving community ownership.
5. Effective participation by citizens will hold the key when the public and private agencies both seem to be losing sight of the goals of equity, justice and sustainability. Clear and transparent processes and agreements are essential in this process.
I hope I have managed to capture at least some of the main points raised, if not all. I would still like to encourage you to use the poll above to express your views. I have altered the options slightly.
Thanks for a very interesting discussion on this topic (so far).

I would like to come back to an issue rise by Filiep Decorte in his posting, which somehow connects with the ethics and rights approach posted.

Planning regulates access to economic commodities highly valued by our societies - land and housing. Even in countries where housing is a constitutional right - like Brazil - reinforcing its social nature is a very difficult task. This is particularly critical because in a way it limits another constitutional right - property. Those are very political/ideological issues.

Can someone tell me how those issues where tackle in their specific country/cities context?

Hi, compulsory land acquisitions can be highly unjust and unsustainable, as the Indian experience is proving. Please see my detailed post on the topic, under Urban Planning.