Abstract
Property rights to land do play an important role in influencing
urban development and management, and this is more acute with respect
to public policy to promote efficiency and equity of resource use.
However, more emphasis has been given to the efficient model of
resource use, where property rights would influence the means in
which individuals gain access to services, credit, as well as to
other housing resources. Indeed, titling programmes are a central
policy concern in most developing countries, and in Brazil, it has
been initiated in the late 1970s. However, the process of decentralisation
and devolution in public policy in Brazil has lead the state to
act in a decentralised and demand-driven approach to urban policy
making. As a consequence to this process, municipalities have designed
alternative approaches to deal with the unclear/unwritten codes
of social conduct (with relation to property rights) in the informal/illegal
housing settlements in Brazil, when engaging in clearing title programmes.
Even though some programmes might claim a degree of success in clearing
titles, it can be argued that these are isolated and with limited
impact at a national level. The key issue in most experiences of
titling programmes in Brazil is, as I contend, that these programmes
have gave priority to the relevance of titles to be used as a collateral
for credit markets, and not necessarily have these programmes attempted
to reflect the extant unwritten codes of social conduct in relation
to property rights, as claimed by individuals. The inclusion of
the latter would lead to alternative property rights that might
become protected by the state, in the case where the main concern
of a public policy is the protection of low-income individuals claim
to their perceived property rights. Property rights as advocated
in titling programmes in Brazil appear to mainly reflect the neo-liberal
consensus to benefit the markets, and this needs to be revised.
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