Regularising informal settlements in Brazil: legalisation, security of tenure and city management

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ABSTRACT

The paper discusses the advantages of innovative land tenure policies for the promotion of security of land tenure in urban areas in Brazil vis-a-vis traditional legalisation policies in which full freehold titles are recognised. Following a general presentation of the main aspects of regularisation programmes in Brazil over the last two decades focusing on their legalisation policies, I shall analyse the findings of a recent research project involving four case studies in two Brazilian cities, Porto Alegre and Recife, in which both traditional and innovative land tenure policies have been used within the broader context of regularisation programmes.*

For the assessment of the efficacy of the tenure policies adopted in the four case studies, the following aspects have been considered: promotion of sociospatial integration; impact on the land market; access to (formal and informal) credit; perception of security of tenure; gender implications; and impact on poverty eradication policies. Special emphasis has been placed on the dynamics involving (official and unofficial) property rights, (formal and informal) land markets and (representative and direct) political participation in land and city management. As a conclusion, it will be argued that the innovative tenure policies in Recife and Porto Alegre in which the legal instrument of the "Concession of The Real Right to Use-CRRU" has been employed - within the context of programmes in which regularisation policies, urban planning regulations and city management strategies are combined in a progressive manner - have been, or are more likely to be, more successful than the traditional policies in urban, social and political terms.

This seems indeed to be a potentially winning combination: a technically adequate regularisation programme based on consistent legal-political framework; the combination between the regularisation programme and the broader urban planning legislation; and the combination of both with progressive politico-institutional mechanisms enabling the effective participation of the affected communities in the city's urban management process, especially when it happens through the ground-breaking participatory budgeting process as has happened in Porto Alegre.

I shall also argue that the failure of legalisation policies has been one of the factors determing the worsening conditions of the process of sociopatial exclusion in urban areas in Brazil. Although there has been a widespread perception of security of tenure even in some cases where the legalisation process has not been completed, I would argue that this perception is in fact falsely supported by a fragile political pact which can change, and has indeed changed in some cases, to the detriment of the interests of the residents. The experience of land regularisation by means of the utilisation of the CRRU is likely to be more successful than the traditional approach favouring the transfer of full freehold titles, in that it can provide housing rights, recognise individual security of tenure and promote sociospatial integration in a combined manner.

ESF/N-AERUS: International workshop - Leuven and Brussels, Belgium, 23-26 May 2001

N-AERUS: Network-Association of European Researchers on Urbanisation in the South
http://www.naerus.net