Reconciling informal and formal land management in developing countries

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ABSTRACT

The proposed paper will develop an agenda for reconciling informal and formal institutions and procedures of urban land management in developing countries based on empirical evidence from African countries . It argues that progress can be made in overcoming the wide-spread deficits of the formal land management system by a gradual integration of the informal sector into decision-making concerned with housing land supply, security of tenure rights, lay-out regularisation and land servicing.

The ailing state
In the least developed countries the public sector will - for many years to come - not be able to provide the resources necessary for "legal" (abiding to the law), "planned" (according to the principles of land-use planning) and "serviced" (in terms of a sufficient range of infrastructural services) urban growth and development. The state will often not even have the power to establish and execute a stable and reliable institutional framework.

The potential of social regulation
In the absence of the state local land management actors, including the poor settlers who invest their dear savings, have to create institutions which can replace the public sector to a minimal degree. Evidence from Tanzania has proven that community based land management systems are indeed able to shape institutions and procedures to secure property rights, to arbitrate land disputes and to devise and guarantee functional settlement lay-outs. They are socially regulated and thus dependent on socially defined resources and limitations.

Reconciling socially and public land management
The potential of socially regulated settlement growth and development is still largely neglected if not suppressed by public authorities in most developing countries. It is considered illegal, interest bound and little effective. In reality, however, it is already partially filling the deficit which the resource-strained public sector is leaving. With a positive attitude, more awareness and proper guidance it could be assigned a functional role in the administrative system and thus reduce the gap in public development control and service provision.
Bridging the deficits of formal land management would require the recognition of existing informal institutions, the statutory decentralisation of land management responsibilities and the extension of current urban planning legislation to cover such situations.
This strategy could be based on the close linkages which already exist between the two sectors. In many countries, local administrative institutions are taking over responsibility in securing property rights, arbitrating land disputes and guiding settlement growth, while the courts of law accept land ownership documents produced under social regulation.

Research tasks
In the light of these observations the agenda for urban research in developing cities would have to be adjusted. Newly emerging issues are e.g. the scope and limitations of social regulation, appropriate interfaces between the formal and informal sector of development control, adequate concepts for their strategic reconciliation, and - last but not least - the resulting needs for training and consultation.

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