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As coastal cities continue to face the potentially expensive threat of increasingly volatile weather, storm surge, and sea level rise associated with climate change, building resilience has become a top planning priority. But resilience has multiple dimensions. It means not only building things, like flood gates and hardened infrastructure, but also keeping natural systems such as wetlands free of development—and, in many cases, deciding not to rebuild in the most vulnerable places. Therein lies an evolving and complex issue affecting private property rights.
From at least the turn of the 20th century, the Supreme Court has wrestled with a basic question: When does land use regulation constitute a taking, requiring compensation for property owners under the 5th amendment of the U.S. Constitution (“ . . . nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.”)? Since Pennsylvania Coal v. Mahon, 260 U.S. 393 (1922) and Euclid v. Amber Realty, 272 U.S. 365 (1926), the essence of the rulings has been that government has considerable leeway in its power to regulate land use. In Kelo v. City of New London, 545 U.S. 469 (2005), the high court affirmed the state’s power to use eminent domain for economic development in the 21st century.
In June 2013, however, a decision on a Florida development project seemed to indicate a subtle shift in another direction. In Koontz v. St. Johns River Water Management District, the justices ruled 5 to 4 that government was overzealous in imposing mitigation requirements on developers as conditions for building permits. Coy Koontz, Sr., who had wanted to build a small shopping center on his property, objected to a Florida water management district’s demands that he pay for off-site wetlands restoration to offset environmental damage caused by the construction. Citing two cases, Nollan v. California Coastal Commission, 483 U.S. 825 (1987) and Dolan v. City of Tigard, 512 U.S. 374 (1994), Koontz claimed that the requirements constituted a taking for exceeding a “rough proportionality” between the requirements and the scope of damages caused by the development. In 2011, the Florida Supreme Court rejected Koontz’s argument, but in June the high court ruled that the mitigation requirements on the builder went too far.
The ruling alarmed some environmentalists and groups such as the American Planning Association, who feared new limits on the government’s ability to control development and impose requirements to restore and conserve natural areas. The concern extended to coastal metropolitan regions preparing for the impacts of climate change, such as New York City, which in May proposed a model $20 billion plan that is a mix of strategies for living with water and keeping it out. Property rights experts speculated that developers could cite the Koontz case as justification to refuse to pay into a fund for such initiatives.
At a broader level, the question remains: After an event like Hurricane Sandy, is government within its rights to forbid rebuilding or to modify regulations in order to prevent new building? The legal answer is essentially yes, according to Jerold Kayden, an attorney and professor at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, who was part of the Lincoln Institute’s Journalists Forum on Land and the Built Environment, held in April.
Particularly as more data become available on sea level rise and storm surge, government has the legal right to restrict owners from building on a vacant lot that is subject to flooding and sea level rise, or from rebuilding a home that has been destroyed. But, Kayden said, “politically, it’s another story.”
New York and New Jersey represented two different approaches to post-Sandy reconstruction. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg called for a mix of rebuilding and “strategic retreat,” while New Jersey Governor Chris Christie focused on allocating money to residents so they could rebuild on parcels battered by the storm—even when the property remained in harm’s way.
The City of Boston, meanwhile, has begun to require waterfront developers to prepare for rising seas and storm surge by relocating mechanicals from basements to higher floors, among other measures. As the Koontz case opens the door for heightened scrutiny of various measures imposed by local government as a condition for building, developers might sue over these expensive, climate-related requirements, arguing that they are too burdensome and may constitute a regulatory taking.
While property rights lawsuits over reconstruction and restrictions on new building in coastal areas will no doubt continue to proliferate, Pratap Talwar, principal at the Thompson Design Group, presented an alternative in long-range planning that could help prevent such conflicts from arising. He detailed for the journalists the case study of Long Branch, New Jersey, which overhauled its planning process several years ago to include tougher standards but also a fast-track process for development that satisfied the guidelines. Long Branch was the one mile of New Jersey shore that weathered Sandy relatively intact, Talwar said.
Journalists Forum on Land and the Built Environment: The Resilient City
Thirty-five leading writers and editors who cover urban issues attended the 6th Journalists Forum on Land and the Built Environment on April 20, 2013, at Lincoln House. The theme was The Resilient City, from coastal municipalities preparing for sea level rise and storm surge to legacy cities trying to evolve despite diminished populations and business activity.
Kai-Uwe Bergmann, principal at Bjarke Ingels Group, opened the forum with a look at urban design innovations that maximize efficiency in land, housing, and major infrastructure projects. Johanna Greenbaum from Kushner Companies, who helped run New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s microhousing initiative, detailed that project as well as other similar efforts around the country to accom-modate singles and couples who can live in just 300 square feet.
Alan Mallach, co-author of the Lincoln Institute’s policy focus report Regenerating America’s Legacy Cities, noted signs of resurgence in places such as the Central West End in St. Louis or Over-the-Rhine neighborhood in Cincinnati, while acknowledging the challenges facing Camden, New Jersey; Flint and Detroit, Michigan; and Youngstown, Ohio. Antoine Belaieff, Innovation Director at MetroLinx, detailed the use of social media to gain citizen input on a $16 billion investment in resilient transportation infrastructure in the Toronto area.
John Macomber, from Harvard Business School, led a session on the global city by recognizing the hundreds of millions of people who continue to migrate from rural to urban areas, requiring large-scale planning for infrastructure. Martim Smolka, director of the Lincoln Institute’s Program on Latin America and the Caribbean, lamented widespread dislocations caused by preparations for the World Cup and the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. Bing Wang, from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, noted that 11 cities in China have populations over 10 million—and yet the rapidly growing nation is only halfway to its expected urbanization.
John Werner, chief mobilizing officer at Citizens Schools, spelled out how urban school systems can ignite passion in students by bringing in outside professionals as teachers and mentors. Gordon Feller of Cisco Systems envisioned a completely connected world and an Internet of everything, joined by Washington Post investigative reporter Dan Keating, who shared his experiences extracting data from various levels of government.
The forum had to be shortened because of the manhunt for the Boston Marathon bombers in the Cambridge-Watertown area—but that event prompted dialogue about the “shelter in place” request by Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, security and public space, and another kind of resilience in the Boston area. Several participants wrote about the events, including Emily Badger at The Atlantic Cities, Donald Luzzatto at the Virginian Pilot, and Inga Saffron at The Philadelphia Inquirer.
The springtime gathering is a partnership of the Lincoln Institute, Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. The mission is to bring journalists together to share ideas and learn about cutting-edge trends in the coverage of cities, architecture, and urban planning. — AF
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El crecimiento de la Red Internacional de Conservación de Suelo
Laura Johnson es abogada y conservacionista de toda la vida, con más de 30 años de experiencia en gerencia de organizaciones sin fines de lucro. En la actualidad es directora de la Red Internacional de Conservación de Suelo (International Land Conservation Network o ILCN), visiting fellow del Instituto Lincoln de Políticas de Suelo y presidente de la junta directiva de la Alianza de Fideicomisos de Suelo (Land Trust Alliance).
Laura fue presidente de Mass Audubon de 1999 a 2012. Anteriormente, trabajó durante 16 años como abogada en The Nature Conservancy desempeñando los cargos de directora de la delegación de Massachusetts y vicepresidente de la región noreste.
Laura obtuvo una licenciatura en Historia por la Universidad de Harvard y un doctorado en Jurisprudencia por la Facultad de Derecho de la Universidad de Nueva York. Entre 2013 y 2014 fue fellow Bullard de Harvard Forest, Universidad de Harvard, donde completó un estudio sobre las iniciativas de conservación de suelo privado alrededor del mundo.
LAND LINES: Su programa, la Red Internacional de Conservación de Suelo (ILCN), se ha creado este año, pero tiene antecedentes en el Instituto Lincoln. ¿Nos puede hablar sobre esta trayectoria?
LAURA JOHNSON: Hay algunas conexiones maravillosas entre esta red nueva y el apoyo brindado por el Instituto Lincoln en el pasado a los esfuerzos innovadores de construcción de capacidad dedicados a la conservación, que en última instancia dieron lugar a la Alianza de Fideicomisos de Suelo.
A comienzos de la década de 1980, Kingsbury Browne, un ilustre abogado de Boston, decidió tomarse un tiempo de licencia de su estudio de abogados y usó su año sabático en el Instituto Lincoln para explorar las necesidades y oportunidades de fideicomisos de suelo privado en los Estados Unidos. Hasta ese momento, no había existido una iniciativa nacional para descubrir los mejores ejemplos de actividades de protección de suelo, para poder compartir estas ideas y buenas prácticas, o incluso para mantenerse al tanto de lo que estaba ocurriendo en el ámbito de la conservación de suelo por todo el país. El estudio realizado por Kingsbury Browne lo llevó a fundar, junto con algunos otros líderes de fideicomisos de suelo de aquella época, una nueva organización llamada Bolsa de Fideicomisos de Suelo (Land Trust Exchange) para conectar a la comunidad de conservación del país, pequeña pero creciente, por medio de un boletín y algunas actividades básicas de investigación y capacitación. El Instituto Lincoln cumplió un papel crucial para ayudar a lanzar la Bolsa, que creció a lo largo del tiempo y cambió de nombre, para pasar a ser la Alianza de Fideicomisos de Suelo, con sede en Washington, D.C. En 1982, cuando se fundó la Bolsa, había menos de 400 fideicomisos de suelo en los Estados Unidos; ahora, la Alianza de Fideicomisos de Suelo comprende 1.200 fideicomisos en todo el país. La Bolsa comenzó como un boletín modesto en la década de 1980; ahora, la Alianza cuenta con un centro de aprendizaje en línea, un programa de estudios completo sobre conservación y gestión de riesgo; y más de 100 webinarios y 300 talleres en los que participaron cerca de 2.000 personas en 2014.
LL: A lo largo de casi toda su carrera profesional, se ha dedicado de lleno al trabajo de conservación de suelo en los EE.UU. ¿Qué la llevó a ampliar su trabajo a nivel internacional?
LJ: Cuando dejé la presidencia de Mass Audubon hace dos años, comencé a hablar con Jim Levitt, un fellow del Instituto Lincoln, director del Programa de Innovación en Conservación de Harvard Forest y exmiembro de la junta de Mass Audubon. Él tuvo la idea inicial de explorar cómo los conservacionistas fuera de los Estados Unidos estaban usando y adaptando las herramientas de conservación que se fueron desarrollando aquí a lo largo de los años. Jim se había involucrado de lleno en las iniciativas de conservación privada en Chile, y existía la oportunidad de fortalecer el movimiento incipiente en ese país compartiendo las medidas adoptadas en los EE.UU., como las servidumbres de conservación. Aproximadamente al mismo tiempo, Peter Stein recibió la beca Kingsbury Browne y una subvención de la Alianza de Fideicomisos de Suelo y el Instituto Lincoln, que le permitieron explorar también la envergadura de las organizaciones de conservación a nivel mundial. A través de estos proyectos distintos, Jim, Peter y yo llegamos a una conclusión similar: que había muchas personas en el resto del mundo que compartían un gran interés por conectarse entre sí y con otros conservacionistas en los EE.UU. Este deseo de una comunidad de practicantes parecía ser una oportunidad extraordinaria de ayudar a construir capacidad para proteger el suelo en forma privada.
LL: ¿Por qué es este rol el desafío más importante para usted en este momento?
LJ: He tenido la increíble buena fortuna de haber trabajado con algunas de las mejores organizaciones y con gente increíblemente talentosa. Como joven abogada que se iniciaba en The Nature Conservancy en la década de 1980, pude crecer profesionalmente en un momento crucial para el movimiento de conservación en los Estados Unidos. Si observamos las tendencias históricas, el movimiento de conservación de suelo en los EE.UU. comenzó a remontar vuelo en esa época, y era muy emocionante poder formar parte de este crecimiento. Después pasé a Mass Audubon en 1999, donde tuve el privilegio de gerenciar Audubon, la mayor organización estatal independiente del país, la cual cumplió un papel de liderazgo no sólo en conservación de suelo, sino también en educación medioambiental y política pública. Ahora tengo el honor de prestar servicio en la junta de la Alianza de Fideicomisos de Suelo, que realiza un trabajo extraordinario aquí, en los Estados Unidos, para generar una protección efectiva del suelo y los recursos. Mi capacitación como abogada fue sin duda útil en esta trayectoria, pero también he aprendido mucho sobre las características de organizaciones que son exitosas y que tienen un impacto positivo. Me siento muy afortunada de tener estos antecedentes y experiencias, y quiero contribuir con ellos a los desafíos que confronta la comunidad internacional para la conservación de suelo.
LL: Usted mencionó un par de veces la construcción de capacidad y creación de organizaciones exitosas. ¿Puede comentar qué significa esto en el contexto de la conservación de suelo?
LJ: Las organizaciones de conservación de suelo necesitan contar con todos los elementos de cualquier organización sin fines de lucro sólida: misión clara, visión y estrategias convincentes, planificación disciplinada y objetivos claros, recursos económicos suficientes y personas excelentes. Pero el trabajo de protección de suelo requiere una perspectiva de muy largo plazo. Para empezar, un fideicomiso de suelo necesita el conocimiento y los recursos necesarios para determinar qué tierras se deben proteger –ya sea su misión la de conservar recursos naturales o escénicos, o valores culturales o históricos– y qué herramientas legales y económicas son las mejores para lograr un buen resultado. Después, quizá haya que trabajar años con un propietario hasta llegar al punto en que todos están preparados para llegar a un acuerdo. Los fideicomisos de suelo necesitan contar con gente que tenga la capacitación, el conocimiento y la experiencia para realizar transacciones legal, económica y éticamente sólidas. Una vez que el suelo está protegido por un fideicomiso, esa organización se está comprometiendo a gestionar el suelo que posee o que está sujeto a restricciones permanentes. Los museos son una buena analogía, pero en vez de Rembrandts y Picassos, las organizaciones para la conservación de suelo custodian recursos vivos invaluables, y el suelo y el agua de los que todos dependemos para sobrevivir.
LL: ¿Por qué es particularmente importante ahora la conservación de suelo privado? ¿Por qué necesitamos una red internacional?
LJ: Nos encontramos en una encrucijada crítica, en la que las presiones del cambio climático, la conversión de suelo y la reducción de los recursos gubernamentales están creando más desafíos que nunca para proteger el suelo y el agua para beneficio público. Por lo tanto, la misión de la nueva Red Internacional de Conservación de Suelo pone énfasis en conectar con organizaciones y gente alrededor del mundo que están acelerando la acción privada voluntaria que protege y salvaguarda el suelo y los recursos hídricos. Nuestra premisa es que la construcción de capacidad y la promoción de conservación voluntaria de suelo privado fortalecerán el movimiento global de conservación de suelo y llevará a una protección de recursos más efectiva y duradera.
El respaldo para una mejor coordinación de la conservación internacional de suelo privado está surgiendo de muchas fuentes. Por ejemplo, la Unión Internacional para la Conservación de la Naturaleza (International Union for the Conservation of Nature, o IUCN) consideró el papel de la conservación de suelo privado en el contexto de las iniciativas globales en el Congreso de Parques Mundiales que tuvo lugar en Sidney, Australia, en noviembre de 2014. El informe Futuros de áreas protegidas privadamente, comisionado por IUCN y dado a conocer en este congreso, hizo una serie de recomendaciones sobre, por ejemplo, cómo desarrollar cursos de capacitación apropiados y mejorar los mecanismos para compartir conocimientos e información, que son sin duda objetivos importantes para la nueva red. Esperamos poder colaborar con socios como IUCN y con las redes regionales y nacionales ya existentes. Y, por supuesto, contamos con el poderoso ejemplo de la Alianza de Fideicomisos de Suelo y todo lo que ha logrado a lo largo de 30 años para construir la capacidad de fideicomisos de suelo en los Estados Unidos.
LL: ¿Qué tratará de lograr en el primer año para resolver estas necesidades?
LJ: Hemos tenido que organizarnos y resolver temas básicos, como nuestro nombre, identidad visual, declaración de misión, objetivos y estructura de gobierno. Vamos a diseñar y lanzar un sitio web que funcione como repositorio esencial de estudios de casos, investigación, buenas prácticas, eventos y conferencias. En última instancia, queremos poner a disposición de nuestros usuarios un continuo de educación, por medio de herramientas, como webinarios que traten una amplia gama de temas, desde instrumentos legales a buenas prácticas organizativas. También queremos hacer un censo de las redes existentes y organizaciones activas, para crear una línea de base de conocimientos sobre la protección de suelo privado que nos permita medir el progreso a lo largo del tiempo.
LL: ¿Cuáles son los principales desafíos para iniciar esta red?
LJ: Hay muchos. Por supuesto, el dinero es uno de los más importantes. Hemos recibido una subvención generosa para ponernos en marcha de la Fundación Packard, y contamos con el gran respaldo del Instituto Lincoln. Pero nos estamos esforzando por identificar fuentes de financiamiento adicionales, para poder hacer crecer la red y su impacto. Y, por supuesto, todavía tenemos que demostrar que la red brindará información y capacitación útil, importante y práctica para satisfacer una gran variedad de necesidades en la comunidad internacional de conservación de suelo. Sabemos que no podemos hacerlo todo, así que tenemos que ser estratégicos y elegir las actividades de mayor impacto. La escala global también presenta una serie de desafíos culturales y logísticos, y exige navegar por sistemas legales, idiomas, costumbres y husos horarios distintos.
Por el lado positivo, ya contamos con un grupo muy comprometido de practicantes de conservación de suelo que participaron en nuestra reunión organizativa de septiembre de 2014 y se comprometieron con entusiasmo a aportar a la red su “capital humano”: sus conocimientos, pericia, experiencia y sabio consejo. Me queda muy claro que este es un fantástico grupo de colegas que están realizando un trabajo de gran interés e importancia en todo el mundo. Será una aventura construir juntos esta red, y sé que aprenderé mucho.
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The introduction of land titling programs to the informal land market seemed to offer a magic solution to the problem of poverty in third world countries. Various governments breathed a sigh of relief, as the struggle to reduce poverty would no longer require the complex and stressful income redistribution measures that always cause conflicts between social groups and classes. According to this magic formula, all that was required was for informal urban dwellers (about 50 percent of the population in the major cities) to formally register their properties and thus gain access to title deeds, so they could obtain mortgage loans from private banks. Their titles and newfound access to loans would enable them to increase their real estate capital, improve their homes and develop small businesses (de Soto 1986; 2001).
To put this hypothesis to the test, and at the request of Perú’s National Institute of Statistics and Data Processing (Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas e Informática–INEI), I conducted a study of the official real estate registration policy under which more than one million title deeds were conferred in Perú between 1996 and 2000. This policy was implemented by the Commission for the Official Registration of Informal Property (COFOPRI) and the Real Estate Registry of Urban Settlements (RPU). As stated in Perú’s Law Decree 803 of March 1996, the purpose of this policy was to establish a formal relationship between the distribution of land titles, access to formal credit mechanisms and better standards of living. Based on information provided by National Household Surveys (ENAHO) for 1998 and 1999, conducted by INEI, my study analyzed data on housing that either was acquired through invasions or other illegal means and did not have property titles or had obtained titles from COFOPRI through the regularization process. The data base consisted of 913,335 units in 1998 and 1,033,480 in 1999, out of a total of 3,572,091 urban housing units for both years. The financing obtained for housing expansion and other domestic expenses was used as an indicator to determine the access to credit, whereas the structure of the dwelling and the supply of basic services were used to determine standards of living.
Those who advocate the regularization of property in Perú argue that property titles should be granted on a large scale by recognizing informal occupation (that is, legalizing land ownership), awarding registered land title deeds, and thus establishing the links needed to gain access to formal credit mechanisms. Official registration is the legal procedure whereby actual rights to a property result in legal ownership. A particular characteristic of this procedure is the firm resolve to establish connections between the legalization of land and property and the access to mortgages through the private banks. As described by the Path to Property Association, an organization dedicated to promoting these policies worldwide, the basic philosophy behind the formal registration process is that prosperity in countries with market economies is largely achieved because those societies have adequate property systems that enable their markets to operate through exchangeable ownership rights in a wide-ranging market.
To grant landowners indisputable proof of ownership and protect them from fraud and uncertainty ownership rights must be standardized, and universally accessible exchange instruments must be registered in a central government system by legal norms and regulation. Consequently, through the official registration of property, the “energy” of the informal sector can be channeled toward organized and prosperous market economies. From this perspective, informality is merely the inability of governments to make their laws coincide with the real circumstances under which people work and live. Nevertheless, this viewpoint fails to reduce a complex phenomenon to its legal dimension and neglects its economic aspects.
Land Titling Policy and Outcomes
To speed up the distribution of land titles and to avoid troublesome formalities, COFOPRI took over this responsibility from the municipalities. The World Bank supported this policy, granting COFOPRI a US$38 million loan in December 1998. Between 1996 and 2000, 1,134,000 duly registered land title deeds were awarded: 645,165 of them in Lima, 112,631 in Arequipa and 74,180 in Trujillo (the first, second and third largest cities in Perú, respectively). In terms of the distribution and registration of land titles, the success of the formal registration policy is undeniable. However, the fact that municipalities were removed from the process is questionable, since their legal role in the urban system was undermined.
A close connection between the official registration of property and the standard of living was observed in Lima after the policy was implemented. Between 1998 and 1999, regularized (formerly illegal or informal) housing in the capital city showed improved construction of walls, floors and roofing; however, the nonregularized housing units also had improved construction of walls and floors. In the rest of the country, informal housing in urban areas predominates over regularized housing.
While regularized housing units outside Lima increased from 17,929 to 48,869 between 1998 and 1999, the number of units still without property titles increased from 371,005 to 392,436, indicating the persistence of invasion mechanisms. The gaps between different types of improvements on regularized and informal houses outside Lima increased between 1998 and 1999 for most categories (see Table 1).
Looking at the relationship between official land titles and access to credit, the study found that of the 70,725 houses in Lima awarded land title deeds by COFOPRI in 1998, about 23,965 (34 percent) of those homeowners gained access to varied types of financing, such as loans from banks, lending agencies or family members, to improve or renovate their homes. In 1999, the owners of about 23,804 (18.3 percent) out of a total of 129,588 titled houses obtained such financing. Although there is no official information on how many homeowners applied for credit and were denied, this result proves that officially registered households that gain access to loans are a minority and, in fact, the number has decreased. This situation is explained by complex factors including the economic recession, the default rate of 10 percent on private bank loans, fear of giving loans to lower-income sectors, and fear among these residents of mortgaging their houses and land.
Similarly, the number of bank loans to already titled landowners in Lima decreased from 12,750 in 1998 to 8,993 in 1999. In contrast, the use of own resources to finance housing improvements rose from 12,282 in 1998 to 14,811 in 1999. Not only is a larger majority spending their own funds on housing, but they are facing more difficulties in gaining access to credit institutions, despite the formal registration of their properties. A study by COFOPRI-DESCO (Riofrío 2001) identified several characteristics of those who are willing to take mortgages:
Of the 12,750 households officially registered and regularized in Lima in 1998 that also received bank loans for renovations and improvements, 52.6 percent obtained their loans from the Banco de Materiales and 47.4 percent from the National Construction Company (ENACE). In 1999, 8,993 officially registered and regularized households received loans for renovations and improvements, 7,593, or 84.43 percent from the Banco de Materiales and 15.57 percent from the ENACE. Since these are both public entities that grant subsidized loans (at the same annual interest rate of 7 percent), there is no connection between the official registration of property through regularization programs and access to loans from private banks.
With respect to seeking financing for other kinds of household expenses, only 11,323 (8.7 percent) out of a total of 129,588 households registered in Lima in 1999 resorted to any kind of financial assistance. Since no public entity provides loans for these expenses, most households receive money from friends and relatives (47 percent) or other sources such as lending agencies (25 percent). Only 28 percent of these 11,323 registered households gained access to loans from private banks for household needs.
In other urban areas, the situation of officially registered households is different from Lima’s experience. In 1998, the use of the households’ own funds for housing improvements predominated over bank loans (78.7 percent compared with 21.2 percent), whereas in 1999 bank loans predominated over own funds (51.3 percent compared with 42.9 percent). In 1998, all of the loans were public loans granted by Banco de Materiales, and 93 percent were from that source in 1999. With respect to loans for other household expenses, 6,163 (13 percent) of the total of 47,302 households officially registered during 1999 received some financing. Of this small group, 45 percent received financial assistance from lending agencies and other sources, 34 percent from friends and relatives, and 21 percent from their employers or work centers. None of them obtained funds from private banks.
Conclusions
The study yielded the following conclusions with regard to the relationship between official registration of titles and access to credit:
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Thus, there is no direct relationship between the number of title deeds handed over to informal dwellers and their subsequent access to loans from private banks. This conclusion was confirmed when the transition government that succeeded former President Fujimori (1990-2000) revealed in 2001 that only 12,388 mortgages had been recorded in the RPU throughout the country, which is equivalent to only 5 percent of potential beneficiaries. Although registration facilities may be useful, they are certainly not sufficient to increase access to credit. Effective policies require an in-depth study of a number of different factors, including:
Julio Calderón Cockburn is a sociologist and a Ph.D. candidate at the University of San Marcos in Lima, Perú. He has written many books and articles published in the Americas and Europe, and he currently works as an independent consultant and university professor. He is a faculty associate of the Lincoln Institute, which supported the study reported here and other research and teaching projects in the past. Several of his written works are available on the Lincoln Institute website in the Latin America section under LAC Papers (www.lincolninst.edu).
References
Calderón Cockburn, Julio A. 2001. Comparative analysis of the benefited and non-benefited population by the national formalization plan. In Has the well-being of the population improved?: A balance of the main social policies and programs. Lima: National Institute of Statistics and Data Processing (INEI): 65-92. de Soto, Hernando. 1986. The Other Path. London: I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd.
_____. 2002. The Mystery of Capital. London: Bantam Press.
Fernandes, Edesio. 2002. The influence of de Soto’s The Mystery of Capital. Land Lines 14 (1): 5–8.
Riofrío, G., J. Calderón y M. Zolezzi. 2001. Estudio sobre cultura registral. Lima: COFOPRI-DESCO. Agosto.
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Una versión más actualizada de este artículo está disponible como parte del capítulo 2 del libro Perspectivas urbanas; Temas críticos en políticas de suelo de América Latina.
Mi experiencia al asistir a la conferencia “Who Owns America? II” [¿A quién pertenecen los Estados Unidos?] celebrada en Madison, Wisconsin en junio pasado fue como contemplar un panorama formado por ideas acerca de la tierra y la gente. Desde mi punto de vista, este panorama tenía cuatro características dominantes:
La característica más sobresaliente del pensamiento jurídico estadounidense con respecto a la tierra es la gran importancia de los derechos de propiedad. La tradición jurídica de América Latina, según la doctrina de la función social de la propiedad planteada por el jurista francés Leon Duguit, tiende a considerar los derechos de propiedad como una materia a ser limitada por el gobierno y las leyes a fin de satisfacer las necesidades sociales. Por lo tanto, para mí fue un choque cultural descubrir la popularidad de la teoría de Charles Reich sobre la propiedad, en la que se promueven las ideas igualitarias mediante la defensa de los derechos de propiedad individuales.
En la conferencia se plantearon numerosas maneras distintas de ampliar la noción de propiedad para dar cabida a nuevas demandas sociales. Un ejemplo de ello fue el planteamiento de Eric Freyfogle de que la propiedad debiera tener un lugar privilegiado en la sociedad. Por supuesto, no hace falta que una idea sea aceptada por unanimidad en el razonamiento jurídico estadounidense para que pase a ser un aspecto importante del panorama actual de ideas sobre la propiedad.
La segunda característica se refiere a la distinción entre lo público y lo privado –una distinción que resulta esencial para las sociedades modernas y que suele darse por descontada–. Estamos acostumbrados a reconocer la coexistencia de dos formas separadas de control social sobre la misma extensión de tierra: el del propietario privado y el de las entidades gubernamentales públicas. Sin embargo, debemos recordar que esta separación no es eterna ni universal; es producto de la historia.
Los estudios urbanos han demostrado repetidas veces que las regulaciones de la tierra afectan constantemente las relaciones entre el control privado y el público. Los poderes de planificación y los derechos de propiedad han venido reduciéndose y ampliándose desde los inicios de la gestión urbana moderna, y ese proceso ahora se presenta como normal. Un desafío más marcado para la separación de las categorías pública y privada fue planteado en la conferencia por los reclamos que hacen las poblaciones indígenas sobre sus territorios en los Estados Unidos.
Tales reclamos se refieren a una tercera forma, aún sin codificar del todo, de control sobre la tierra. En general, los pueblos indígenas no buscan controlar los gobiernos locales, es decir, gobernar un territorio por medios convencionales. Igualmente rechazan ser tratados meramente como corporaciones que poseen tierras. Hablan de derechos de índole distinta, con elementos antiguos y nuevos, y lo hacen cuestionando una serie de tratados entre el pueblo y el estado. Un tratado es la forma usual que toma la relación jurídica entre una nación-estado y una fuerza externa. Al parecer los tratados pasados debían ‘resolver’ el problema territorial. Hoy en día esos tratados están siendo cuestionados tanto en términos de la dicotomía de lo público/lo privado como por la formación de una nación-estado que no se concretó.
Asimismo debemos reconocer que el razonamiento jurídico clásico no cuenta con los mecanismos para darle sentido a estos desarrollos, puesto que son los fundamentos mismos de ese razonamiento lo que está en tela de juicio. Es obvio que estas inquietudes también se presentan en Canadá y México, aunque con formas y resultados diferentes. Los estudiosos y profesionales de la teoría jurídica, y especialmente de la teoría constitucional, de estos tres países norteamericanos pueden aprender mucho unos de otros en este proceso.
No debería sorprendernos que surjan nuevas formas de control territorial cuando ha habido tantos cambios en la tierra misma. Se han escrito miles de libros acerca de la transformación de la tierra, sobre todo desde el punto de vista que ahora llamamos perspectiva ambiental. La tierra como ‘objeto’ de las relaciones de la propiedad se ha convertido en un asunto bastante complejo y esa complejidad es la tercera característica que encuentro en este panorama de ideas. Los territorios han pasado a ser un concepto difícil de entender y tal vez el fenómeno más significativo es la disolución de la distinción entre lo urbano y lo rural. No tenemos ciudades en el sentido tradicional de la palabra, sino un conjunto de procesos urbanísticos.
Los mensajeros del ciberespacio nos dicen que las distancias se acortan gracias a las nuevas tecnologías; el espacio y la distancia han perdido relevancia. La verdad es que el cambio tecnológico, aunado al cambio demográfico y social, solamente ha hecho la tierra más compleja. Esto queda claro cuando vemos, como lo demostraron las ponencias presentadas en la conferencia, las numerosísimas disciplinas que describen, analizan y hasta alaban con cantos la tierra. No existe disciplina alguna que pueda englobar la tierra en una única forma de discurso.
Tal vez la más interesante de las nuevas maneras de ver la tierra sea el enfoque narrativo, la cuarta característica en nuestro panorama. El relato de historias acerca de la tierra aclara las relaciones de la propiedad mucho mejor de lo que lo hacen tantos otros métodos empíricos porque nos permite reconocer los aspectos subjetivos sin alejarnos demasiado de las ciencias sociales empíricas. En comparación con la rigidez de los enfoques jurídicos y económicos, los relatos personales nos transmiten la fluidez de la propiedad como una relación social, los cambios que suceden en esa relación como resultado de muchas interacciones y los diferentes significados que puede adquirir una parcela de tierra o un vecindario para sus moradores, habitantes nuevos, visitantes y demás.
Reconocer la riqueza e intensidad de las historias de la gente y contrastar esta riqueza con la rigidez de las categorías jurídicas no implica abandonar estas últimas. Tan es así que este enfoque más subjetivo puede constituir una nueva forma de tomar la ley con seriedad. Apenas si existe un discurso social sobre la tierra, ni siquiera en la modalidad más vernácula, que no tenga una connotación normativa. Cuando alguien dice ‘esta tierra me pertenece (me pertenecía o debiera pertenecerme)’, está haciendo un reclamo legal. Las categorías jurídicas son importantes fuera de los círculos profesionales de los abogados, jueces y agentes inmobiliarios porque son parte de las historias personales; más aún, su función es darle significado a las experiencias de la gente.
Cuando las categorías jurídicas no logran abarcar las representaciones normativas que hace un pueblo de la tierra, la ley pierde su significado. Si el razonamiento jurídico tradicional define la propiedad como un cúmulo de derechos, el enfoque narrativo puede enseñarnos a ver la propiedad como cúmulos de representaciones que permitirían ayudar a la gente a darle significado a su relación con la tierra. Quizás es esta la mayor lección que he aprendido de la conferencia “Who owns America?”: usar muchos lentes para observar el panorama y explorar las ideas comparativas acerca del carácter individual y comunitario de la propiedad, de los asentamientos informales y de los marcos jurídicos en todos los Estados Unidos.
Antonio Azuela es el Procurador Federal de Protección al Ambiente del gobierno de México. Es egresado de la Universidad Iberoamericana (Ciudad de México) y la Escuela de Leyes de la Universidad de Warwick (Inglaterra) y se ha desempeñado como asesor jurídico de varios gobiernos estatales y dependencias del gobierno federal en materia de legislación de la planificación urbana. El Dr. Azuela es autor del libro La ciudad, la propiedad y el derecho (El Colegio de México, 1989) y muchas otras publicaciones sobre legislación urbana y ambiental desde una perspectiva sociológica.
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If cynics know the price of everything but the value of nothing, then they may have something in common with contemporary American planners. Constrained by the courts, the planning fraternity sometimes appears to have spent the last decade rationalizing nexuses and quantifying costs without really addressing the social and environmental values that should underpin the planning process. Under assault from those criticizing government, as well as from the property rights movement, the profession seems to have retreated into the land of that dismal science, economics. This allegation has been made in a number of ways over the past few years by critics as diverse as New Urbanist architects and, in England, the Royal Family. Is it really justified?
This article is written from an English perspective and is based on research into the types of planning tools used in the United States to minimize the adverse effects and costs of development or to maximize public benefits. The intention is to adapt the best American practices for future use in the United Kingdom.
A broad analysis of the types of policy processes presently being used highlights an amazing breadth and depth of local policy innovation. The accompanying table outlines the range of policies found, broken down either by the way they have been justified or the process that has been used. This “family” grouping may help in suggesting other types of policies that can be used to achieve similar goals. It may also provide a useful reminder that the policies are always supposed to achieve aims, and that those aims should always be in a constant state of review.
The policies span a wide range. Some are not traditionally thought of as land use or planning policies. Indeed, in many cases the policies are not promoted with any explicit intention of achieving specific land use goals. They are, however, all capable of directly affecting land use patterns and, properly used, can all realize benefits to the community.
Purpose Policies
Harm, quality of life and control policies are all well-accepted planning tools. They work to prevent development in inappropriate areas–on wetlands or in congested districts, for example–or to require development in certain places. For the most part these policies do not offer any new lessons to UK planners. However, their scope is widening. New harms are being defined, such as air quality, lack of public transit accessibility and effects on the water table.
In addition, new, more limited types of land interests, such as easements and deed restrictions, are being used as controls, and new actors are becoming involved. For example, in South Florida the Water Management District is now a major purchaser of land and development rights, working in loose alliance with planning authorities. School boards, forest preserve districts and private utility companies have also become more interventionist.
Nevertheless, the main areas of experimentation are in other family groups. Cost policies are being used more proactively and are being expanded in scope. Fees are being used to either encourage or discourage development in particular locations. In San Diego impact fees in outlying zones have been set at economically prohibitive levels to deter development. In Dade County, Florida, road impact fees are banded and fees increase towards the urban fringe. In Montgomery County, Maryland, certain fees are waived when affordable housing is provided.
Cost policies can also be used to raise revenue to meet off-site costs for nontraditional “infrastructure.” In Boston and San Francisco linkages have been identified between the construction of new offices and the need for housing, justifying the extraction of money sums. In principle the range of these fees could be expanded. The City of San Diego already charges developers for new libraries, fire stations and other community facilities, and includes some future maintenance costs. In rapidly growing areas, the public costs of new health infrastructure, hospitals and clinics might also be considered.
Some municipalities have considered the possibility of charging “disassociation fees” that recognize the cost to the community of development away from central cities. “Historic investment” or “recoupment” fees could account for the cost of past provision of infrastructure. In the case of schools or hospitals, a charge could also be made to reflect the cost of wasted desk and bed capacity in the area from which migration has occurred. Alternatively, fees could be charged for the “softer” social costs of increasing the distance that citizens need to travel to reach open space or to reflect the additional stress that occurs from lengthy journeys through strip development.
Process Policies
Market policies have been described as creating “a currency in the public domain that [can] then be traded.” Unsurprisingly, new markets have developed swiftly, responding to local conditions. These policies generally require zoning that sets limits on development at lower levels than the market would otherwise build. A release from that limitation can then be “sold” or transferred for use either on or off site. Seattle, New York state, Maryland and New Jersey lead the way with policies of this type, creating the necessary currency in the form of bonus floor areas and transferable rights. They also provide “market” infrastructure such as credit banks in some cases. In Florida the private sector has set up profitable “mitigation banks” that reclaim damaged land to create mitigation credits for future use by developers whose projects would threaten wetlands. Private sector sales of “utility credits” also occur.
Fiscal policies are all too often seen as intended simply to raise revenue. Yet they can also guide land uses and capture public benefits from increases in the development value of private land. In some Business Improvement Districts, such as those in Miami Beach and Chicago, increased tax assessment streams have been bonded and the proceeds spent on capital works achieving planning aims. In San Diego’s special assessment areas the cost of new social infrastructure, such as parks and libraries, is borne in this way.
In some areas it is possible to secure contributions towards public works that lead to private benefits, for example when major new transport links or services are provided. In downtown Miami, businesses that benefit from a transit system pay a property assessment that meets the county’s share of the original infrastructure cost.
The final two categories of policies are important for different reasons. Adequate transitionary policies are essential. Politically and legally it is difficult to introduce new policies unless careful attention is paid to minimizing or mitigating the immediate costs. Providing for a lengthy period of introduction, or providing compensating credits, as in Montgomery County, may offer some comfort. In some areas “reversionary” permits have been proposed, where development rights revert back to an earlier or less valuable use if they remain unimplemented for a period of time. The miscellaneous policies provide clear means for enforcement. All too often well-intentioned policies are not rigorously applied. Agreements may allow easier control and greater certainty.
Conclusion
It is clear that a large number of policy tools are available to and used by American planners. The opening criticism questioned their fixation with economics. While economic issues are and always should be part of the planning process, the scope of planning policies itself shows that planning is about more than economics. However, it has also become apparent that planners tend to use only a limited range of instruments, even when alternative approaches might better achieve their policy goals.
For a variety of legal and institutional reasons, municipalities understandably concentrate on those policies that they have already used and that have worked. Notwithstanding that, to an English planner the American system as a whole offers a mouthwatering array of policy feasts. It is a shame that so many planners operating within the system only nibble at the corners of a table that is groaning with the weight of possible delights.
Stephen Ashworth is a visiting fellow at the Lincoln Institute and a Harkness Fellow in a program sponsored by the Commonwealth Fund of New York. In the United Kingdom he is a partner in the firm of Denton Hall, Lawyers. This article is drawn from his research on “Harnessing Land and Development Values for Public Benefit.”
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Urban land management policies and land market operations have taken on greater status in the debate on urban public policy in Latin America, and they are given increased attention in academic research and the development agendas of many countries in the region. Over the past 10 years the Lincoln Institute’s Program on Latin America and the Caribbean has supported a network of Latin American scholars and practitioners who have developed seminars, promoted research, organized public debates, consulted with decision makers and published their findings on these timely issues. Members of this network met at a conference in Buenos Aires in April 2004 to assess their activities and prepare this summary declaration of core land policy issues crucial to the search for more sustainable urban development programs in the future.
Urban land policy in Latin America and the ways that land markets operate tend to produce cities that are economically unequal, politically and socially exclusionary, spatially segregated and environmentally unsustainable. The consequences of these policies can be seen in the high and often irrational prices for land, due in part to the absence of effective urban land management practices.
The Current Situation
Land markets are structurally imperfect. However, the functioning of urban land markets depends on social relations, just as the outcomes of land market operations affect those relations, making it both possible and necessary to influence the markets. Instead of removing the imperfections, many instruments and policies have in fact helped to distort urban land market operations even further. Moreover, many established policies have kept the “rules of the game” in urban real estate unchanged, and apparently untouchable.
A more comprehensive reading of the problem reveals that, rather than being the result of inconsistent rationalization, the current dysfunctional land market is the result of missed opportunities for socially sustainable development in Latin American cities. Yet there are promising and innovative alternatives that can overcome the existing bottlenecks evident in inadequate and destructive national government policies, the enduring difficulties in financing urban development, and poor management practices.
One of the most glaring negative outcomes of the current situation is the relative persistence, weight and importance of informal urban land markets dominated by many exclusionary practices, illegal titling, lack of urban services, and other problems. Deregulation in places that should be regulated (poor outlying areas on the urban fringe), overregulation of wealthy regulated areas, and privatization policies that disregard social criteria are factors that help to drive these negative processes, particularly the spatial concentration of the urban poor. Although the majority of regularization programs are well-intended, they instead cause perverse effects, including increased land costs for the poorest sectors.
Traditional urban planning processes and urban standards have lost importance and effectiveness as instruments for guiding urban development, especially the existing mechanisms for land management. Yet this situation offers opportunities to think about innovative ways to deal with land management and urban planning strategies. This opportunity has already been seized in some places, where new experiments and proposals are causing intense debates by questioning the predominant traditional approaches.
Creating new practices within this framework requires making one unavoidable step: rethinking urban land taxation by incorporating new methods and keeping an open mind regarding alternative fiscal instruments that must be intended as tools to redirect current urban development and discipline the operation of the urban land market. These new tools should not only collect funds in order to build infrastructure and provide urban services, but also contribute to a more equitable distribution of benefits and costs, especially those associated with the urbanization process and the return of recovered land value increments to the community.
Proposals for Action
Recognize the indispensable role of the government. It is critical that the government (from local to national levels) maintains an active role in promoting urban development. The local level should be more committed to structural changes in land management, while the national level should actively foster such local initiatives. Government must not ignore its responsibility to adopt urban land market policies that recognize the strategic value of land and the specific characteristics of how land markets operate, in order to promote the sustainable use of the land by incorporating both social and environmental objectives and benefiting the most vulnerable segments of the urban population.
Break the compartmentalization of fiscal, regulatory and legal authorities. Lack of cooperation among local authorities is responsible for major inefficiencies, ineffective policies, waste of scarce resources and inadequate public accountability. Furthermore, incongruent actions by different public authorities send misleading signals to private agents and create uncertainties if not opportunities for special interests to subvert government plans. The complexity and scale of the challenges posed by the urban social reality of Latin American cities require multilateral actions by numerous stakeholders to influence the operation of urban land markets (both formal and informal), thus insuring the achievement of joint objectives: promoting sustainable and fair use of land resources; reducing land prices; producing serviced land; recognizing the rights to land by the urban poor; and sharing the costs and benefits of urban investment more evenly.
These authorities must also coordinate urban development policies with land taxation policies. They should promote a new urban vision with legislation that recognizes the separation of building rights from land ownership rights, with the understanding that land value increments generated from building rights do not belong exclusively to landowners. Urban managers must also devise creative mechanisms whereby these land value increments may be mobilized or used to produce serviced land for low-income social sectors, thereby offsetting urban inequalities.
Recognize the limits of what is possible. Transforming the current regulatory framework that governs the use of urban land requires new legal and urbanistic thinking that recognizes that inequalities and socio-spatial exclusion are intrinsic to the predominant urban development model. Even within the current model there is substantial room for more socially responsible policies and government accountability. Urban regulations should consider the complexity of land appreciation processes and enforce effective traditional principles such as those that restrain the capacity of government agencies to dispose of public resources or proscribe the “unjustified enrichment” of private landowners.
Break vicious cycles. Alternatives to existing regularization programs are needed to break the vicious cycle of poverty that current programs help to perpetuate. It is important to recognize that these programs are only a stopgap measure and that urbanization, housing and land taxation policies must also be integrated into the process. Reliance on housing subsidy policies, although inevitable, can be nullified if there are no mechanisms to prevent these subsidies from being translated into an increase in land prices. City officials should give priority to the creation of more serviced land rather than new regularization programs, since the right to a home is a social right to occupy a viable “habitat” with dignity. It is also important to understand that the low production of serviced land per se contributes to withholding the supply and, therefore, to higher prices affecting all aspects of urban development.
Furthermore, individual solutions (such as plot-by-plot titling processes or case-by-case direct subsidies to individual families) ultimately result in more costs for society as a whole than broader, collective solutions that incorporate other aggregate values such as public spaces, infrastructure investment and other mechanisms to strengthen social integration. Many Latin American countries have witnessed subsidized housing programs, often supported by multilateral agencies, where the land component is overlooked or dismissed. Such programs seek readily available public land or simply occupy land in intersticial areas of the city. This disregard of a broader land policy compromises the replicability, expansion and sustainability of these housing programs on a larger scale.
Rethink the roles of public and private institutions. Land management within a wide range of urban actions, from large-scale production of serviced land for the poor to urban redevelopment through large projects, including facelift-type actions or environmental recovery projects, requires new thinking about how public institutions responsible for urban development can intervene through different types of public-private associations. Redeveloping vacant land and introducing more flexibility in the uses and levels of occupancy can play a crucial role here, provided such projects fall under the strategic guidelines of public institutions, are subject to monitoring by citizens, and incorporate a broadly shared and participatory vision of urban development.
Showcase projects such as El Urbanizador Social (The Social Urbanizer) in Porto Alegre, Brazil, the Nuevo Usme housing project in Bogotá, Colombia, and that country’s value capture legislation are examples of sensible and creative efforts that recognize the importance of adequate urban land management and new thinking on the role of land, particularly the potential of land value as an instrument for promoting more sustainable and equitable development for the poor in our cities. Creative and balanced new thinking is also exemplified by the joint ventures of public land and private capital in Havana, Cuba, with value increments captured for upgrading densely populated historic areas.
Empower the role of land taxation in public finance to promote urban development. National, state or provincial and local governments must share responsibility for promoting property taxation as an adequate and socially meaningful method of financing and fostering urban development. The property tax should be sensitive and responsive to Latin American cities that have a strong legacy of marked economic and socio-spatial differences. There may be good reasons to tax land at a higher rate than buildings, in a rational and differentiated manner, especially in outlying areas subject to urban speculation and lands offered ex ante to low-income sectors of society (making certain that paying the tax also helps to build citizenship in these sectors). As already noted, it is also critical to create innovative fiscal instruments appropriate to special situations and other methods for capturing the value generated.
Educate stakeholders in the promotion of new policies. All actors involved in these processes, from judges to journalists, from academics to public officials and their international mentors, need in-depth training and education in the operation of land markets and urban land management in order to achieve the above objectives. We must identify the “fields of mental resistance,” particularly in urban and economic thinking and in the legal doctrines that represent the obstacles to be overcome. We must recognize, for example, that an “informal right” exists and operates in many areas to legitimize land transactions socially, if not legally, and to create networks and spaces of solidarity and integration. It is urgent that we take steps to introduce these themes and proposals into political agendas at the various government levels, in political parties, social organizations, academia and the mass media.
Latin American Network
Pedro Abramo, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
Oscar Borrero, Bogotá, Colombia
Gonzalo Cáceres, Santiago, Chile
Julio Calderón, Lima, Perú
Nora Clichevsky, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Claudia De Cesare, Porto Alegre, Brasil
Matilde de los Santos, Montevideo, Uruguay
Diego Erba, São Leopoldo, Brasil
Edésio Fernandes, London, England
Ana Raquel Flores, Asunción, Paraguay
Fernanda Furtado, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
Alfredo Garay, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Silvia García Vettorazzi, Guatemala City, Guatemala
Ana Maria González del Valle, Lima, Perú
Samuel Jaramillo, Bogotá, ColombiaCarmen Ledo, Cochabamba, Bolivia
Mario Lungo, San Salvador, El Salvador
María Mercedes Maldonado, Bogotá, Colombia
Carlos Morales Schechinger, Mexico City, Mexico
Laura Mullahy, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USARicardo Núñez, Havana, Cuba
Sonia Rabello de Castro, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
Eduardo Reese, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Francisco Sabatini, Santiago, Chile
Martim Smolka, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Alvaro Uribe, Panama City, Panama
Ricardo Vanella, Córdoba, Argentina
Maria Clara Vejarano, Bogotá, Colombia
Isabel Viana, Montevideo, Uruguay
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One of every three urban citizens lives in slum conditions across the world today. According to the United Nations Human Settlement Programme, in 2006 there were nearly 1 billion people who could find housing only in slum settlements in most cities of Latin America, Asia, and Africa, and a smaller number in the cities of Europe and North America (UN Habitat 2006).
The rapid and intense urbanization in Latin America over the last 50 years is often contrasted in the literature with an inadequate urban planning system as a way to explain many resulting social problems: high land prices and property speculation, rampant informality, extreme sociospatial segregation, inadequate urban infrastructure and services, environmental degradation, and the like. The literature is largely silent, however, on the role played by national legal systems, which have both contributed to this situation and reacted against it. The pivotal role of the legal order cannot be underestimated.
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En vista de que, en los Estados Unidos, existen más de 25.000 gobiernos municipales involucrados en el análisis y aprobación de cambios propuestos en referencia a la zonificación, planificación y desarrollo de propiedades, la cantidad de decisiones sobre el uso del suelo que se toma a nivel municipal por año probablemente ronda los millones. Si bien la gran mayoría de estas resoluciones siguen el curso normal, los cambios en el uso del suelo y la zonificación que resultan más complejos y conflictivos con frecuencia implican conflictos amargos y duraderos. El exceso de derechos de desarrollo en la región intermontañosa del oeste de los Estados Unidos (página 4) es un ejemplo de este problema tan complicado sobre el uso del suelo.
Los conflictos sobre el uso del suelo y el desarrollo inmobiliario están clasificados entre los tipos más comunes de desacuerdos civiles en los Estados Unidos y, por lo general, involucran a muchas partes, propiedades e intereses. Estos conflictos generan costos para todas las partes directamente implicadas, así como también para el público en general. Sin embargo, una larga experiencia en la resolución de conflictos sobre el uso del suelo indica que los cambios en el proceso de toma de decisiones sobre el uso del suelo pueden producir mejores resultados a un costo menor.
Los gobiernos municipales por lo general tienen una junta encargada de tomar las decisiones referentes a los cambios en el uso del suelo, para lo cual emplean un proceso de cuatro pasos. En primer lugar, la parte que desea obtener un cambio o permiso para desarrollar una propiedad debe presentar una solicitud ante dicha junta. En segundo lugar, la junta analiza la solicitud y puede requerir al solicitante respuestas adicionales o modificaciones. En tercer lugar, se da la oportunidad al público para que realice comentarios, lo que puede derivar en un diálogo más entre la junta y el solicitante, así como en nuevas modificaciones a la solicitud. Finalmente, la junta emite su decisión. Este proceso funciona bien en la mayoría de las solicitudes que se procesan con una celeridad razonable. No obstante, la junta invierte la mayor parte de su tiempo en aquellos casos, una minoría, que involucran muchos intereses y numerosos derechos que pueden superponerse o ser contradictorios o imprecisos.
El proceso típico de cuatro pasos se centra en la adjudicación de derechos; así, cuando se trata de pocas cuestiones simples y los derechos se encuentran bien definidos en relación con las propiedades en cuestión, este método funciona bien. Sin embargo, en los casos más complejos, resulta más prometedor utilizar un enfoque más amplio centrado en el beneficio mutuo de todas las partes involucradas. El enfoque de beneficio mutuo resulta más productivo cuando se dan las siguientes condiciones: existen muchas partes interesadas; la junta que toma las decisiones posee algún nivel de discreción en la decisión en particular; el impacto de la decisión es de largo plazo y largo alcance; y es probable que todo resultado que no sea colaborativo finalmente sea apelado por una o más de las partes interesadas. El enfoque de beneficio mutuo no debe considerarse como una alternativa al proceso normal de los cuatro pasos, sino como una ampliación del mismo, básicamente, mediante la suma de pasos adicionales o la ampliación de los pasos existentes en el proceso estándar.
La clave para utilizar con éxito el enfoque de beneficio mutuo es lograr descubrir los intereses subyacentes de las partes interesadas, es decir, de aquellos intereses situados tras la posición adoptada públicamente, y, luego, desarrollar nuevas opciones o soluciones que den respuesta a dichos intereses. La situación ideal se da cuando este paso tiene lugar en las primeras etapas del proceso cuando las posiciones de las partes interesadas todavía son flexibles.
Este proceso de investigación y detección es un elemento de la primera etapa del enfoque de beneficio mutuo, la cual implica identificar a las partes interesadas, escuchar atentamente sus motivos de preocupación y tomar como base sus intereses. En el proceso habitual de cuatro pasos, estas actividades probablemente tendrían lugar en una fase previa a la solicitud, en la que se considerarían los conceptos de desarrollo y diseño antes de formular las propuestas definitivas. La segunda etapa del enfoque de beneficio mutuo consiste en diseñar un proceso de colaboración que involucre a todas las partes interesadas y ofrezca oportunidades para que dichas partes compartan información y aprendan unas de otras. La tercera etapa consiste en promover un diálogo exitoso entre las partes interesadas, por lo general mediante la intermediación de un buen facilitador que logre generar relaciones y confianza entre las partes involucradas. La etapa final consiste en implementar los acuerdos que se hayan logrado, garantizando que las soluciones propuestas incluyan los acuerdos que se hayan alcanzado entre los participantes, a la vez que cumplen con los requisitos que establezca la junta encargada de tomar las decisiones.
El nuevo libro publicado por el Instituto Lincoln, Land in Conflict (Suelo en conflicto), escrito por Sean Nolon, Ona Ferguson y Pat Field, que contiene una descripción más detallada del enfoque de beneficio mutuo, junto con estudios de casos informativos. Está disponible tanto en formato impreso como electrónico.
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Growing the International Land Conservation Network
Laura Johnson is an attorney and lifelong conservationist with more than 30 years of experience in nonprofit management. She is currently director of the new International Land Conservation Network (ILCN), a visiting fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, and chair of the Land Trust Alliance board of directors.
Laura was the president of Mass Audubon from 1999 to 2012. Prior, she worked for 16 years at The Nature Conservancy as a lawyer, Massachusetts state director, and vice president of the northeast region.
Laura received a B.A. in history from Harvard University and a J.D. from New York University Law School. From 2013 to 2014, she was a Bullard Fellow at the Harvard Forest, Harvard University, where she completed a study on private land conservation efforts around the world.
LAND LINES: Your program, the International Land Conservation Network (ILCN), is new this year, but it has some antecedents at the Lincoln Institute. Can you tell us about that history?
LAURA JOHNSON: There are some wonderful connections between the new network and the Lincoln Institute’s past support of the innovative, capacity-building effort devoted to conservation that eventually became the Land Trust Alliance.
In the early 1980s, Kingsbury Browne, a prominent Boston lawyer, decided to take some time away from his law firm, and he used a sabbatical at the Lincoln Institute to explore the needs and opportunities of private land trusts in the United States. Up until that point, there was no nationwide effort to seek out the best examples of land protection activities, to share those ideas and best practices, or even to keep track of what was happening in land conservation around the country. Kingsbury Browne’s study led him, along with several other land trust leaders at the time, to start a new organization called the Land Trust Exchange, which connected the country’s small but growing conservation community through a newsletter and some basic research and training activities. The Lincoln Institute played a crucial role in helping to launch the Exchange, which grew over the years and changed its name to become the Washington, DC–based Land Trust Alliance. There were fewer than 400 U.S. land trusts in 1982 when the Exchange got started; now the Land Trust Alliance serves 1,200 land trusts all over the United States. The Exchange started out with a modest newsletter in the 1980s; now the Alliance provides an online learning center, a full conservation and risk management curriculum, and more than 100 webinars and 300 workshops that served close to 2,000 people in 2014.
LL: Throughout most of your career, you have been deeply engaged in U.S.-based land conservation work. What attracted you to expand your efforts on an international scale?
LJ: When I stepped down from the presidency of Mass Audubon two years ago, I began talking with Jim Levitt, a fellow at the Lincoln Institute, the director of the Program on Conservation Innovation at the Harvard Forest, and a former Mass Audubon board member. It was initially his idea that I explore how conservationists outside the United States were using and adapting conservation tools that had been developed over the years here. Jim had become very involved in private conservation efforts in Chile, and there was an opportunity to strengthen the very new movement there by sharing U.S.-based measures such as conservation easements. At about the same time, Peter Stein received the Kingsbury Browne fellowship and award from the Land Trust Alliance and the Lincoln Institute, which allowed him to explore the breadth of worldwide conservation organizations as well. Through our different projects, Jim, Peter, and I came to the similar conclusion that many people around the globe shared a strong interest in connecting to each other and to U.S. conservationists. This desire for a community of practice seemed like a remarkable opportunity to help build capacity for privately protecting land.
LL: Why is this role the right challenge at the right time for you?
LJ: I have had the incredible good fortune to work with some great organizations and wonderfully talented people. As a young lawyer just starting out at The Nature Conservancy in the 1980s, I was able to grow professionally at a pivotal time for conservation in the United States. Looking at the historic trend lines, the U.S. land conservation movement took off then, and it was very exciting to be a part of that growth. Then when I went to Mass Audubon in 1999, I was able to run the nation’s largest independent state Audubon organization, which provided leadership not just with land conservation, but with environmental education and public policy as well. Now, I have the honor of serving on the board of the Land Trust Alliance, which does such remarkable work here in the United States to enable effective land and resource protection. Along the way, my legal training was certainly useful, but I have also learned a tremendous amount about what makes organizations successful and likely to have a positive impact. I feel very fortunate to have this background and set of experiences, and I want to bring it to bear on the issues facing the international land conservation community.
LL: You’ve mentioned capacity building and creating successful organizations a few times. Can you comment on what that means in the context of land conservation?
LJ: Land conservation organizations need all the elements of any sound nonprofit organization—a clear mission, a compelling vision and strategy, disciplined planning and clear goals, sufficient financial resources, and great people. But working on land protection requires a very long-term outlook. To start with, a land trust needs to have the knowledge and resources to assess what land should be protected—whether the mission is to conserve natural resources or scenic, cultural, or historic values—and what legal and financial tools are best suited to achieving a good outcome. Then it can take years of working with a landowner to get to a point where everyone is ready to agree on a deal. Land trusts need to have people with the training, knowledge, and experience to carry out transactions that are legally, financially, and ethically sound. Once land is protected by a trust, that organization is making a commitment to manage the land it owns or has restrictions on forever. Museums are a good analogy, but instead of Rembrandts and Picassos, land conservation organizations are stewards of invaluable living resources, and the land and water we all depend on to survive.
LL: Why is private land conservation particularly important now? Why do we need an international network?
LJ: We are at a critical juncture as the pressures of climate change, land conversion, and shrinking government resources are making it more challenging than ever to protect land and water for the public benefit. Therefore the mission statement of the new International Land Conservation Network emphasizes connecting organizations and people around the world that are accelerating voluntary private action that protects and stewards land and water resources. Our premise is that building capacity and empowering voluntary private land conservation will strengthen the global land conservation movement and lead to more long-lasting and effective resource protection.
Support for better coordination of international private land conservation is emerging from many sources. For example, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) considered the role of private land conservation in the context of global efforts at its November 2014 World Parks Congress held in Sydney, Australia. The Futures of Privately Protected Areas, an IUCN-commissioned report released at that conference, provided a number of recommendations, such as developing relevant training and improving knowledge sharing and information, which are certainly important goals for the new network. We expect to work in collaboration with partners such as the IUCN, and with the existing regional or countrywide networks that are already in existence. And of course we have the very powerful example of the Land Trust Alliance and what it has been able to accomplish over 30 years to build the capacity of land trusts in the United States.
LL: What will you try to accomplish in the first year to address these needs?
LJ: We’ve had to get ourselves organized and deal with basic issues such as our name, visual identity, mission statement, goals, and governance structure. We will be designing and launching a website to serve as the essential repository of case studies, research, best practices, events, and conferences. Eventually, we want to have a continuum of learning available on the website through tools like webinars that address a range of subjects, from legal instruments to organizational best practices. We also want to carry out a census of existing networks and active organizations, to start building a baseline of knowledge about private land protection that will help measure progress over time.
LL: What are the greatest challenges to starting the network?
LJ: There are many. Money is a big one, of course. We’ve received a generous start-up grant from the Packard Foundation, and we have great support from the Lincoln Institute. But we are working hard to identify additional sources of funding, in order to grow the network and increase its impact. And of course we are still proving that the network will provide useful, important, and actionable information and training to meet a tremendous variety of needs within the international land conservation community. We know that we can’t do everything, so we must be strategic and choose activities that will have impact. The global scale also presents a host of cultural and logistical challenges, requiring us to navigate different legal systems, languages, customs, and, last but not least, time zones.
On the positive side, we already have a very committed group of land conservation practitioners who came together at our organizing meeting in September 2014 and enthusiastically signed on to be the “sweat equity”—to provide the network with knowledge, expertise, experience, and wise counsel. It’s already very clear to me that this is a wonderful group of colleagues who are doing interesting and important work around the globe. It will be an adventure—and I know I’ll learn a lot—to grow this new network together.
