El impacto de las regulaciones del uso del suelo en América Latina

Cynthia Goytia es profesora en los programas de posgrado en economía urbana y políticas públicas de la Universidad Torcuato Di Tella (UTDT) en Buenos Aires, Argentina. Es directora de los dos programas de maestría en economía urbana de la UTDT y del Centro de Investigación de Política Urbana y Vivienda (CIPUV) de la misma universidad. Además, ha impartido conferencias en la Universidad de Cambridge y en la London School of Economics.

Desde el año 2009, el Instituto Lincoln ha apoyado la tarea de investigación de Cynthia sobre el impacto de las regulaciones del uso residencial del suelo en la informalidad, la expansión urbana y los valores del suelo en las ciudades de América Latina. En su calidad de asesora profesional, ha trabajado con varios ministerios del gobierno argentino y de otros países latinoamericanos, así como con distintas organizaciones internacionales, tales como el Banco Mundial, el Instituto Mundial de la UNU de Investigaciones de Economía del Desarrollo, y el Banco de Desarrollo de América Latina, entre otros.

Cynthia tiene una maestría en economía urbana y un doctorado en planificación regional y urbana por la London School of Economics and Political Science.

LAND LINES: La regulación del uso del suelo a nivel municipal es un tema difícil de tratar. Aunque la zonificación y otras intervenciones pueden llegar a ser una solución sólida para disfunciones del mercado, también tienen efectos negativos imprevistos. ¿Cómo decidió usted llevar a cabo este tipo de investigación?

CYNTHIA GOYTIA: Comencé a interesarme en el análisis económico de las intervenciones sobre el uso del suelo cuando empecé a reconocer que los mercados del suelo tienen que ver con algo más que el suelo y la ubicación. En los últimos 30 años, aproximadamente, la regulación del uso del suelo y la zonificación se han vuelto mucho más importantes que la tributación del suelo para determinar la calidad de vida de la gente en las ciudades. A lo largo del tiempo, he notado que las intervenciones en el uso del suelo diseñadas para lograr fines sociales positivos a veces han generado consecuencias negativas indeseadas que los planificadores y gestores de políticas no fueron capaces de prever. Por ejemplo, las normas gubernamentales afectan el acceso a una amplia gama de bienes públicos y, como consecuencia, pueden dar como resultado una mayor segregación residencial y un mayor desarrollo informal.

Todo esto me animó a investigar los efectos de las intervenciones del gobierno en el mercado del suelo. También me di cuenta de que parte de la falta de información sobre los efectos regulatorios en América Latina era el resultado de la falta de datos comparables y sistemáticos sobre el uso del suelo. Así, en el año 2005 comencé un exhaustivo programa de investigación sobre este tema, que comenzó como un proyecto de cooperación con el gobierno nacional de Argentina, y que luego obtuvo el sólido apoyo del Instituto Lincoln.

LL: ¿Hasta qué punto son relevantes para América Latina los resultados de estudios recientes según los cuales el exceso de regulación del uso del suelo en países desarrollados incrementa los precios de la vivienda?

CG: Nuestra investigación empírica ofrece pruebas de que, al aumentar los precios en el mercado formal del suelo (y, por ende, reducir la oferta de viviendas sociales para hogares de bajos recursos), algunos aspectos de la regulación del uso del suelo podrían fomentar un mayor desarrollo de la informalidad. Por ejemplo, la Ley del Uso del Suelo promulgada en la Provincia de Buenos Aires hace 38 años definió nuevos requisitos relativos al tamaño mínimo de los lotes y obligaba a los desarrolladores a financiar la infraestructura para nuevas subdivisiones. Estos requisitos empujaron a los hogares de bajos ingresos del mercado legal del suelo hacia el sector informal, debido al aumento de los precios.

Aunque los objetivos generales de esta ley no eran malos, tuvieron consecuencias imprevistas sobre el acceso a la vivienda. Como resultado, el mercado del suelo se vio marcadamente sesgado hacia el segmento de altos ingresos, mientras que el submercado de bajos ingresos (hogares que, anteriormente, habían podido construir sus propias viviendas en lotes residenciales) prácticamente desapareció cuando se promulgaron y entraron en vigor las nuevas normas sobre el uso del suelo. No es de sorprender que estos tipos de limitaciones dieran como resultado la ocupación ilegal de terrenos en casi dos tercios de las jurisdicciones municipales que forman parte de las áreas metropolitanas de Argentina, incluida el área metropolitana de Buenos Aires.

LL: Muchos analistas sostienen que los códigos de edificación que tienden a la exclusión y del uso del suelo son los responsables, en gran medida, de la existencia de la informalidad desmedida en la región. ¿Cómo respondería usted a esta crítica?

CG: En mi última investigación sostengo que la regulación del uso del suelo no sólo se utiliza para corregir las disfunciones del mercado sino que también puede ser una manera de lograr, además, objetivos de exclusión. Nuestros resultados indican que los municipios con grandes proporciones tanto de hogares educados como de poblaciones de menores recursos tienden a imponer una zonificación residencial más restrictiva con el fin de maximizar los beneficios que los propietarios formales reciben de sus gobiernos municipales.

Existen algunas correlaciones interesantes entre el uso de medidas de exclusión en algunas jurisdicciones y las condiciones en las áreas vecinas. Por ejemplo, los municipios de Buenos Aires que poseen políticas estrictas de provisión de infraestructura se encuentran rodeados de municipios con una gran proporción de hogares que carecen de los servicios básicos. De hecho, la escasez de infraestructura es una característica principal de la idea de exclusión urbana. Así, el gobierno municipal tal vez intente regular de forma indirecta el desarrollo informal al no asfaltar los caminos o no proporcionar conexiones a los servicios de agua corriente y alcantarillado. La decisión de proveer pocos servicios a los asentamientos informales tal vez sea una herramienta estratégica para desalentar la migración hacia áreas que están experimentando la presión del crecimiento de la población, las cuales ya poseen un alto nivel de población y de ingresos y no están dispuestas a compartir su base tributaria con migrantes de bajos ingresos.

LL: Entre los diferentes factores que llevan a la informalidad en América Latina, ¿en qué lugar colocaría usted la regulación del uso del suelo?

CG: Nuestra investigación proporciona pruebas de que existe una relación entre la regulación del uso del suelo y la elección de la vivienda por parte de los hogares urbanos en Argentina. Los municipios que han emitido más medidas regulatorias del suelo también poseen sectores informales de mayores proporciones, lo que sugiere que el entorno regulatorio limita en gran manera el desarrollo de los mercados formales del suelo y de la vivienda para hogares de bajos recursos. Por ejemplo, el requisito de tamaño mínimo de lotes establece niveles de consumo de suelo que los hogares de menores ingresos no pueden permitirse. Además, estas regulaciones determinan la cantidad de viviendas que pueden construirse en los lotes, estableciendo alturas máximas, coeficientes de utilización del suelo o asignación de espacios abiertos, lo que provoca un sesgo en la oferta de viviendas hacia el mercado de altos ingresos. Los costos de aprobación de proyectos relativamente altos (tanto en términos de tiempo como de dinero) también tienen un impacto negativo, ya que elevan el costo final de la vivienda y/o desalientan a los desarrolladores a la hora de construir viviendas para hogares de bajos recursos. A la vez; no obstante, las políticas de inclusión (tales como la recuperación de plusvalías o las contribuciones por mejoras, las tarifas de impacto y la conservación de suelo vacante destinado al desarrollo de viviendas sociales) reducen la probabilidad de que los hogares recurran a los mercados informales del suelo.

Uno de los conceptos más importantes que debemos comprender es que la informalidad no es simplemente un problema de pobreza, sino una distorsión del mercado del suelo que afecta a hogares de todos los niveles de ingreso. Por lo tanto, la regulación del uso del suelo debería contribuir al diseño de políticas que logren solucionar las causas fundamentales de la informalidad y mantengan bajos los precios de los terrenos con servicios.

LL: La relación entre la eficiencia y la equidad parece ser el centro de los debates sobre la regulación del uso del suelo. Esta relación se da según diferentes normas, dependiendo de si hablamos de áreas urbanas de altos ingresos o de bajos ingresos, tal como lo demuestran claramente las zonas especiales de interés social (ZEIS) de Brasil, es decir, áreas de bajos ingresos que el estado preserva con el fin de construir viviendas sociales.

CG: Efectivamente. Las normas tales como las regulaciones de zonificación urbana para fines generales son bastante diferentes de las normas en pro de los pobres que se establecen en las ZEIS. La zonificación para fines generales tiene como objetivo mejorar la eficiencia del uso del suelo urbano, especialmente en el mercado formal de la vivienda. La planificación adecuada facilita la inversión oportuna en infraestructura y el desarrollo urbano a gran escala. En general, el uso eficiente del suelo contribuye a una mejor productividad urbana. No obstante, muchas veces la eficiencia no garantiza en sí misma el acceso a la vivienda por parte de los grupos de menores recursos.

Por el momento no contamos con una evaluación rigurosa de los efectos de las ZEIS; sin embargo, es importante considerar dos aspectos cuando pensamos en las normas menos rígidas establecidas para la vivienda destinada a hogares de menores recursos. En primer lugar, el razonamiento para permitir que existan diferentes regulaciones para distintos segmentos del mercado de la vivienda radica en que esta división mejora el bienestar general. En segundo lugar, la solución pragmática de regularizar las áreas informales genera el cuestionamiento hacia los municipios sobre la razón por la cual no permiten mayores densidades desde un principio, siempre que exista la infraestructura apropiada. En teoría, permitir el desarrollo de mayor densidad en áreas formales aumentaría la oferta general de suelo edificable, lo que, a su vez, reduciría los precios y aumentaría la disponibilidad de viviendas sociales.

LL: ¿Existe algún buen ejemplo de regulaciones del uso del suelo políticamente factibles y con inclusión social?

CG: En la mayoría de los países en vías de desarrollo, el desafío radica en diseñar políticas que traten las causas fundamentales de la informalidad y promuevan la inclusión social. Las jurisdicciones que han adoptado e implementado efectivamente medidas de inclusión pueden hoy en día proporcionar opciones de viviendas más asequibles en el mercado formal. No obstante, existen al menos dos tipos de enfoques distintos que adelantan la agenda de la regulación del uso del suelo en nuestras ciudades por caminos diferentes y con distintas implicaciones.

El primer tipo de enfoque tiene que ver con relajar las restricciones del uso del suelo que afectan de manera desproporcionada la oferta de viviendas para hogares de bajos recursos. Somos conscientes de que los costos del suelo más altos debido al “consumo forzoso” dificultan cada vez más la posibilidad de que los hogares de bajos ingresos accedan a la vivienda. Revisar este tipo de normas (tales como permitir unidades de condominio en áreas de baja densidad, que es donde vive la mayoría de los hogares de bajos recursos; aumentar los coeficientes de utilización del suelo; y reducir los tamaños mínimos de los lotes para las subdivisiones en las que la infraestructura se está introduciendo progresivamente) ayuda a mejorar la accesibilidad a la vivienda en el mercado formal. Estas medidas también permiten que el desarrollo de viviendas para hogares de bajos recursos sea más rentable, lo que, a su vez, aumenta los incentivos para ofrecer unidades en este segmento del mercado. Hoy en día existen algunos ejemplos de desarrolladores formales que están construyendo subdivisiones para hogares de bajos ingresos, así como también unidades habitacionales asequibles en algunos municipios donde tanto la población como la demanda de viviendas sociales han crecido mucho, tal es el caso de La Matanza, en el área metropolitana de Buenos Aires.

El segundo tipo de innovación en cuanto al uso del suelo tiene que ver con realizar cambios en los marcos regulatorios. Las jurisdicciones gubernamentales en todos los niveles actualmente están emitiendo diferentes políticas que cumplen una función más activa en el desarrollo y el financiamiento del suelo y la infraestructura: estas políticas guían el crecimiento urbano y los desarrollos en terrenos baldíos, a la vez que permiten recuperar las plusvalías derivadas de las inversiones públicas a gran escala. Uno de los ejemplos más claros de estas políticas es el caso de la ciudad de Rosario, Argentina. El gobierno otorga derechos de construcción (principalmente en áreas de altos ingresos) siempre y cuando el beneficio se utilice para financiar las inversiones públicas que sean necesarias para edificar en densidades altas y para proporcionar terrenos con servicios para viviendas sociales o asentamientos informales.

Ya he subrayado la importancia del gasto en infraestructura. Durante la última década, las aglomeraciones metropolitanas en Argentina se expandían a razón de un 3,5 por ciento anual en promedio, mientras que la población crecía a razón de un 1,2 por ciento anual. Este ritmo de desarrollo hace que el financiamiento de la infraestructura sea un tema prioritario. Algunos gobiernos municipales han respondido a esta situación implementando contribuciones por mejoras. Trenque Lauquen es un ejemplo de esto. El municipio ha utilizado estas contribuciones no sólo para financiar las inversiones en infraestructura sino también para gestionar el crecimiento urbano y tener terrenos disponibles para diferentes usos, incluido el de la provisión de viviendas para hogares de bajos ingresos. El éxito de esta medida, aunque con un alcance limitado, demuestra que las contribuciones para mejoras son un instrumento factible y flexible que puede ayudar a extender los servicios urbanos. Además, evita que los responsables de las subdivisiones informales del suelo exploten el vacío que queda entre los precios de terrenos formales con servicios y sin servicios.

LL: Según lo que sabemos y lo que desconocemos acerca de la regulación del uso del suelo en América Latina, ¿cuáles son, a su criterio, los temas de investigación que el Instituto Lincoln debería priorizar?

CG: HEl Instituto Lincoln de Políticas de Suelo ha estado realizando una magnífica labor en la generación de conocimientos acerca de la regulación del uso del suelo en América Latina a través del apoyo a las investigaciones, los seminarios y otras actividades, además de fomentar valiosas interacciones entre un amplio público de planificadores urbanos y gestores de políticas en la región. Ahora debemos continuar trabajando sobre estos conocimientos a fin de promover políticas que mejoren el acceso al suelo y a la vivienda e identificar las fuentes que generan distorsiones en la oferta de viviendas y que tienen como resultado un bajo nivel de cumplimiento y una informalidad generalizada.

Esto significa mejorar nuestra comprensión del impacto que tienen las innovaciones en materia de regulación que se están produciendo en la región. Aunque tenemos algunos casos de estudio sobre los efectos de estas nuevas herramientas, debemos llevar a cabo una revisión integral sobre la manera en que las ciudades, los municipios, los estados y los organismos nacionales definen sus marcos regulatorios. La creación de una base de datos integral que contenga esta información en relación con las principales aglomeraciones urbanas en la región permitiría realizar comparaciones a lo largo del tiempo y entre municipios.

Con este fin, el CIPUV ha llevado a cabo una encuesta nacional a funcionarios de planificación acerca de las regulaciones del uso del suelo en las áreas metropolitanas de Argentina. El conjunto de indicadores utilizados en el Índice de Políticas de Suelo del CIPUV (CILP) proporciona información detallada sobre parámetros tales como la existencia de planes de uso del suelo, las autoridades responsables de los cambios de zonificación y de los procesos de aprobación de proyectos residenciales, la existencia de restricciones de edificación, los costos relacionados con la aprobación de proyectos y la implementación de instrumentos de recuperación de plusvalías.

A medida que ha transcurrido el tiempo, nuestra investigación ha comenzado a reformular las actitudes de los planificadores en cuanto a los marcos regulatorios. Hemos iniciado el diálogo con los planificadores y con los funcionarios públicos para comprender mejor la función que cumplen los mercados de suelo en las ciudades, así como también el impacto que tienen las regulaciones. Además, nuestros índices estandarizados han permitido realizar la comparación entre diferentes regulaciones en distintos municipios, así como llevar a cabo un análisis a nivel metropolitano y estatal. Como resultado, algunas jurisdicciones municipales y provinciales en Argentina recientemente han actualizado (o se encuentran en el proceso de actualizar) sus planes y leyes sobre el uso del suelo, algunas de las cuales datan de casi medio siglo.

LL: ¿Sería factible desarrollar una versión internacional del Índice de Políticas de Suelo del CIPUV?

CG: Sí. Desarrollar esta iniciativa tendría dos efectos muy importantes. En primer lugar, permitiría comparar distintas áreas metropolitanas en toda América Latina y mejorar la visibilidad del éxito que algunas ciudades han logrado al aumentar el acceso al suelo. En segundo lugar, brindaría un terreno fértil para que los gestores de políticas e investigadores aprendieran cuáles son las iniciativas que tuvieron mejores reultados. Esta iniciativa no sólo es factible sino también un desafío primordial que debe tratarse en los próximos años.

Una versión más actualizada de este artículo está disponible como parte del capítulo 5 del libro Perspectivas urbanas: Temas críticos en políticas de suelo de América Latina.

¿Es la segregación espacial urbana una consecuencia del funcionamiento normal de los mercados inmobiliarios urbanos, reflejo de las preferencias individuales acumulativas, o es más bien resultado del mal funcionamiento de mercados inmobiliarios urbanos que privatizan los beneficios sociales y socializan los costos privados? ¿Proviene quizás de prejuicios contra ciertas clases o razas? ¿Crean guettos las políticas de viviendas de interés social, o los crean las acciones de agentes y prestamistas inmobiliarios que ponen sus prejuicios personales por encima de toda objetividad, generando y alimentando estereotipos sobre conciudadanos y vecindades? ¿Podrían cambiar los patrones de asentamiento intrametropolitanos si se modifica la política del suelo, o para ello es imperativo que se produzcan transformaciones sociales profundas relacionadas con valores como tolerancia, oportunidad y derechos humanos?

Treinta y siete académicos y asesores de trece países se enfrentaron a éstas y otras preguntas afines en el “Seminario Internacional sobre Segregación en la Ciudad” organizado por el Instituto Lincoln en Cambridge, Massachusetts durante el pasado mes de julio. Los organizadores del seminario, Francisco Sabatini (Universidad Católica de Chile) Martim Smolka y Rosalind Greenstein (Instituto Lincoln) plantearon una amplia gama de aspectos para explorar las dimensiones teóricas, históricas y prácticas de la segregación. Los participantes, procedentes de países tan diversos como Brasil, Israel, Kenya, Países Bajos, Irlanda del Norte y los Estados Unidos, trajeron consigo su formación profesional como juristas, sociólogos, economistas, planificadores urbanos, científicos regionales y geógrafos. A medida que intentaban llegar a un acuerdo sobre el significado de la segregación, las fuerzas diversas que la crean y la refuerzan, y las respuestas políticas posibles, se fue haciendo obvio que no hay respuestas simples y que muchos puntos de vista contribuyen al debate interminable. Este breve informe sobre el seminario ofrece una muestra de esta discusión.

¿Qué es la segregación y por qué es tan importante?

El trabajo de Frederick Boal (Escuela de Geografía, Universidad de Queens, Belfast) es fruto del gran caudal de literatura sociológica sobre segregación y su propia experiencia de vida en medio de los conflictos entre católicos y protestantes en Irlanda del Norte. Boal sugirió que la segregación debe entenderse principalmente como parte de un espectro que abarca desde el movimiento extremista de limpieza étnica hasta el más idealista de asimilación (véase la fig. 1). Tal como pasa con tantos temas vinculados con políticas, para estudiar el problema de la segregación es preciso observarla, más que como una dicotomía, como un continuo de grados o niveles de separación, cada uno con diferentes manifestaciones espaciales.

Para Peter Marcuse (Escuela de Posgrado de Arquitectura, Conservación y Planificación, Universidad de Columbia, Nueva York), la segregación supone la imposibilidad para elegir o la presencia de coerción, o ambas. Marcuse llama “agrupaciones en enclaves” a grupos de diferentes razas o etnias que deciden vivir juntos por voluntad propia. Por otra parte, llama “segregación en guettos” cuando a los grupos se los obliga a vivir aparte, bien sea explícitamente o a través de mecanismos más sutiles. La clave que distingue a estos dos patrones—la imposibilidad para elegir—invita a una respuesta del orden público.

El significado y la importancia de la segregación varía según el contexto histórico. Para William Harris (Departamento de Planificación Urbana y Regional, Universidad Estatal de Jackson, Mississippi), escritor de temas de segregación espacial en el sur de los Estados Unidos, la segregación no puede entenderse ni tampoco enfrentarse sin un conocimiento profundo del papel que ha desempeñado y sigue desempeñando la raza en la historia de los Estados Unidos y del orden público. Flavio Villaça (Escuela de Arquitectura y Urbanismo, Universidad de São Paulo, Brasil) entiende la segregación dentro de un marco conceptual de clases, en donde los factores principales que influyen en los patrones residenciales son el nivel de ingresos y el estatus social, y no la raza. En Brasil y muchos otros países con larga historia de regímenes autoritarios, el estado suele encargarse de prestar los servicios urbanos. En estos países, los patrones residenciales urbanos determinan el acceso a agua y a instalaciones sanitarias (y por tanto, a la salud) así como a medios de transporte, infraestructuras de servicios públicos y otros servicios urbanos.

Según Villaça y otros, en muchos casos la actividad del mercado del suelo y las regulaciones y los códigos urbanos se han aplicado de maneras furtivas o incluso abiertamente para crear vecindades selectas bien dotadas de servicios que separan las clases superiores del resto de la sociedad, al cual prácticamente se le hace caso omiso. Este cuadro tiene paralelismos en los Estados Unidos, en donde el acceso a escuelas de alta calidad y a otras valiosas amenidades lo determinan fundamentalmente patrones residenciales que tienen estrecha relación con la segregación, ya sea por nivel de ingresos, raza u otras características demográficas. Igualmente, los participantes del seminario señalaron la correlación entre las comunidades precarias y la situación de los peligros ambientales. Las zonas de barrios o guettos pobres, habitadas generalmente por personas de raza negra, son el vertedero de los aspectos negativos del mundo urbano moderno, como lo son desechos peligrosos y otros usos indeseados del suelo.

Ariel Espino (Departamento de Antropología, Universidad de Rice, Texas) presentó un análisis del uso de la distancia para reforzar desigualdades sociales, políticas y económicas en la vivienda. Cuando las diferencias sociales y económicas están claramente especificadas y entendidas, las élites dominantes “toleran” la proximidad física. Por ejemplo, los sirvientes pueden vivir cerca de sus patrones, incluso en la misma casa, porque las relaciones económicas y las normas de comportamiento dictan la separación por clases.

¿Por qué persiste la segregación?

Una suposición que prevaleció a lo largo del seminario fue la de que todos los residentes de la ciudad (es decir, los ciudadanos) deberían tener acceso a los servicios urbanos, o al menos a un nivel mínimo de servicios. Sin embargo, Peter Marcuse lanzó al grupo la idea de pensar más allá de un nivel mínimo y de considerar el acceso a amenidades urbanas en el contexto de los derechos. Se cuestionó si la riqueza, la herencia familiar, el color de la piel o la identidad étnica deberían ser los factores determinantes en el acceso a los bienes públicos, no sólo educación, salud y abrigo, sino también a otras amenidades directamente relacionadas con la ubicación física. Expresándose en un lenguaje evocador de las ideas de Henry George sobre la propiedad común a finales del siglo XIX, Marcuse preguntó si era justo o correcto, por ejemplo, que los ricos disfrutaran de las mejores vistas de océanos, ríos u otras bellezas naturales, mientras que los pobres estuvieran relegados a zonas menos atractivas.

Robert Wassmer (Departamento de Orden Público y Administración Pública, Universidad Estatal de California) describió los procesos económicos involucrados en la ubicación residencial, tal como los entienden los economistas de la escuela del “public choice” (decisiones públicas). Según esta perspectiva, los compradores de viviendas eligen no sólo una casa y su terreno, sino también un diverso grupo de ventajas que varían según el sitio. Algunos compradores pueden optar por un paquete de conveniencias que ofrece más sistemas de transporte público y menos vistas panorámicas, mientras que otros pueden preferir mayor acceso a autopistas y a escuelas públicas de mejor calidad. Sin embargo, no todos los ciudadanos tienen las mismas oportunidades para hacer esas selecciones. Varios participantes añadieron que este debate forma parte de una discusión más amplia sobre acceso y selección en la sociedad, dado que casi todas las opciones están restringidas hasta cierto grado, y que muchas restricciones varían sistemáticamente entre los grupos sociales.

Otros participantes señalaron las maneras en que las políticas gubernamentales (p. ej., sistemas tributarios, legislación de vivienda) e instituciones privadas (p. ej., agentes de bienes raíces, instituciones prestamistas) actúan en conjunto para influir en el comportamiento de los mercados inmobiliarios, y por consiguiente, en el efecto de las políticas del suelo en acciones públicas y privadas. Greg Squires (Departamento de Sociología, Universidad de George Washington) informó de un estudio sobre el proceso de búsqueda de vivienda en Washington, DC. Sus hallazgos ponen en evidencia el papel que desempeñan los agentes de bienes raíces al “orientar” a compradores e inquilinos hacia vecindades de las mismas razas. Como resultado fundamental, los negros no disfrutan de las mismas oportunidades que tienen los blancos y sus posibilidades de obtener su solución habitacional preferida son menores, lo cual se contrapone al modelo de “public choice”. Entre los hallazgos de Squires está el hecho de que la selección de la vivienda está determinada por el estatus social o económico. Por ejemplo, en el proceso de búsqueda de vivienda, las amenidades más solicitadas por los clientes negros difirieron de aquéllas preferidas por los blancos, en parte porque aquéllos disponían de menos recursos particulares (tales como automóviles) y requerían viviendas situadas cerca de servicios centralizados tales como transporte público.

John Metzger (Programa de Planificación Urbana y Regional, Universidad del Estado de Michigan) examinó la influencia del mercado privado en la perpetuación de la segregación. Metzger presentó investigaciones sobre perfiles grupales demográficos usados por compañías como Claritas y CACI Marketing Systems para caracterizar los vecindarios. Dichos perfiles se venden a una amplia gama de industrias, entre ellas agencias inmobiliarias y financieras, como también a entidades públicas. La industria inmobiliaria se vale de los perfiles para alimentar el proceso decisorio de comercialización, planificación e inversión, y —señala Metzger— para propiciar enclaves de razas y la persistencia de la segregación. Las instituciones de préstamos hipotecarios se valen de los perfiles para determinar la demanda del consumidor. Los planificadores urbanos, tanto asesores privados y del sector público, usan los perfiles para la determinación de usos futuros del suelo, para la planificación a largo plazo y para guiar las actividades de planificación e inversión de distritos comerciales centrales, mientras que los promotores de bienes raíces los usan para definir sus mercados y demostrar las demandas aceleradas de sus productos. Los perfiles en sí suelen estar basados en estereotipos raciales y étnicos, y a su vez refuerzan la separación de grupos raciales y étnicos dentro de los mercados de bienes raíces regionales.

Xavier de Souza Briggs (Escuela de Gobierno John F. Kennedy, Universidad de Harvard) introdujo la idea de “capital social” en la discusión. El término “capital social”, tal como lo emplean actualmente sociólogos y expertos en teoría sociológica, encarna las redes y relaciones sociales dentro las comunidades, que pueden aprovecharse para el logro de metas individuales y comunes. Briggs argumentó que si bien el capital social es, al mismo tiempo, causa y efecto de la segregación en los Estados Unidos, también puede utilizarse para crear cambios positivos. Otros participantes cuestionaron la eficacia de la teoría y las investigaciones en capital social para resolver el problema de la segregación espacial urbana, señalando que éstas tendían a limitarse a la cuestión de “cómo mejorar la situación de los pobres” en vez de estudiar los mecanismos estructurales e institucionales que contribuyen a la segregación residencial y a la desigualdad de la renta. No obstante, los sociólogos opinan que el capital social es justamente lo que necesitan las comunidades para tener cierto control sobre sus ambientes inmediatos, en vez de ser simples receptoras de las consecuencias previstas e imprevistas de la economía política.

Justicia social y política del suelo

Durante el seminario, participantes de distintas partes del mundo dieron ejemplos de casos de segregación espacial utilizada como estrategia política por los poderes estatales:

• El gobierno colonial británico de Kenya instituyó leyes de planificación y de zonificación de exclusión para separar a los africanos nativos de los británicos. Esos patrones residenciales, establecidos hace casi un siglo, se reflejan en la Nairobi de hoy.
• Durante el régimen británico en Palestina, el gobierno militar forzó a los palestinos árabes a vivir en un solo sector de la ciudad de Lod, lo que facilitó la transformación de esta ciudad antiguamente árabe en lo que hoy en día se conoce oficialmente como Israel.
• El régimen militar de Augusto Pinochet desalojó a miles de chilenos de la clase trabajadora de ciertos sectores de sus ciudades para dar paso a pequeños enclaves exclusivos para familias de clase media y alta.
• El régimen del Apartheid de la República Sudafricana creó sectores residenciales separados por raza y mantuvo un aislamiento sistemático de grupos en prácticamente todos los aspectos de la sociedad.

Las conexiones entre estas formas extremas de segregación espacial y las fuerzas de mercados y políticas inmobiliarias de la mayoría de las ciudades modernas son complejas y difíciles de articular. Uno de esos vínculos se refleja en las maneras como se continúan aplicando las políticas inmobiliarias y las instituciones que apoyan los mercados inmobiliarios para brindar legitimidad a las prácticas discriminatorias.

Al imaginarse un mundo de ciudades cuyos habitantes tengan verdadera libertad para escoger dónde vivir, los planificadores del seminario se concentraron en políticas y programas gubernamentales que facilitan la integración, tales como el programa “Moving to Opportunity” del Departamento de Vivienda y Desarrollo Urbano de los Estados Unidos. Sin embargo, Stephen Ross (Departamento de Economía, Universidad de Connecticut) cuestionó los supuestos beneficios de las políticas de integración o repoblación lanzando esta pregunta: “¿Qué pasaría si dispersáramos personas de altos ingresos por toda la ciudad? ¿Qué cambiaría? ¿Nos ayuda esto a considerar con más detenimiento la importancia del espacio?”

Otra pregunta de Xavier Briggs obligó a los participantes a pensar en dónde se producen la mayoría de las interacciones sociales significativas. Específicamente, ¿qué debe pasar —y en qué circunstancias— para ir desde el movimiento extremo de limpieza étnica (según el espectro étnico urbano mencionado por Boal) al extremo opuesto de la asimilación? Briggs sugirió que es posible que instituciones como escuelas y lugares de trabajo estén en más capacidad de facilitar la diversidad en las interacciones sociales, que los vecindarios residenciales.

Al fin y al cabo, los planificadores urbanos desearían que se usen sus herramientas para formar ciudades que ofrezcan justicia para todos. Hablando de las condiciones de los ciudadanos árabes en la ciudad mixta de Lod, Haim Yacobi (Departamento de Geografía, Universidad de Ben-Gurion, Israel), tocó los cimientos de los ideales democráticos occidentales al preguntar lo siguiente: “Si una persona no tiene acceso total a la ciudad, si no puede participar de lleno en la vida de la ciudad, ¿está esa persona viviendo en una ciudad verdadera?”

Value capture instruments are widely considered to be beneficial fiscal planning mechanisms, even though they are difficult to implement. Colombia is notable in Latin America for its unique and long-standing experience with institutionalizing value capture through collecting the Contribución de Valorización, a kind of special assessment, and the Contribución de Desarrollo Municipal (Law 9 of 1989), which preceded the current instrument, Participación en Plusvalías.

Since 1921 when the first such legislation was introduced, Colombia has developed a fiscal culture in which people are aware of and accept value capture instruments as a legitimate revenue-raising mechanism. For example, in 1968, at the height of its use, the Contribución de Valorización accounted for 16 percent of local revenues in Bogotá and about 45 percent in Medellín; in the early 1980s it raised about 30 percent of total revenues in Cali. Nevertheless, because land still plays an important role as a hedge against inflation in places like Colombia, where capital markets are not highly developed, the implementation of such devices still meets with strong political resistance from many constituencies, ranging from powerful landowners and developers to low- and moderate-income families for whom land is an important source of personal savings.

Building on this experience, Law 388 of 1997 creating Participación en Plusvalías decrees that all municipalities must design and approve a ten-year master plan (Plan de Ordenamiento Territorial-POT) and adopt plusvalías as one of the plan’s main sources of income. The revenues raised through plusvalías are to be used primarily for the provision of social housing and infrastructure in under-served neighborhoods, as well as for public works of general interest. The law establishes three administrative conditions for applying the plusvalías instrument as part of the POT:

1. when land changes from one category to another, especially when rural land with low development potential is included within the master plan’s growth boundary and therefore becomes designated as land for urban expansion or as suburban land;

2. when additional development (density) rights are authorized in an area; or

3. when an area changes use, especially from residential to commercial use.

The Participación en Plusvalías is grounded in the legitimate public right to participate in capturing land value increments resulting from administrative actions such as changes in zoning or density that may generate substantial windfalls for the landowner. It is important to note that this instrument is not a tax, a contribution or a fee, but rather a mandated right of the public to ‘participate’ in the value generated by government functions aimed at enhancing urban development. Law 388 and its accompanying decrees define the general parameters for using plusvalías, but the municipalities are required to determine its specific procedures. However, many mayors and other public officials are concerned about the law’s ambiguities and are struggling with the process of applying both the law and the plusvalías instrument.

To address the need for a forum in which public officials and other experts could discuss this problem, the Lincoln Institute and the Bogotá Planning Department held a seminar in December 1999, before the deadline for approval of the legal master plan (POT) on December 31. The seminar convened practitioners actively involved in the implementation process, including planning directors from major cities, representatives of national public agencies and ministries, representatives of institutions in charge of property assessments, lawyers, and scholars involved in the design of the instrument. One immediate outcome of the seminar was a successful lobbying effort to change the deadline to June 30, 2000, to allow more time to review and revise the problematic POT provisions.

Key Implementation Issues

Application of plusvalías to different situations. Most municipal representatives at the seminar agreed that plusvalías should be used only in those situations that result in a clear and substantial windfall, in order to generate greater citizen approval and a simpler administrative process during the first phase of implementation. The general consensus is that Contribución de Valorización has been accepted because the increase in the value of land that benefited from public investment was clearly understood by the owners, so they have been willing to pay the fee. In Bogotá, for example, Contribución de Valorización has been one of the major means for building new streets since 1969.

By comparison, plusvalías are applied only to situations in which a higher land value is specifically associated with a public land use decision defined in the POT, such as changing the land category, its density or its use. Extending the growth boundary to include rural land that can be developed in subsequent years is an explicit situation in which the change in land price is evident. Most representatives of municipalities felt this was the most obvious scenario for application and should be the main focus of the instrument in its first phase.

Accuracy of land value assessments.

Law 388 suggests that the date for the base land price against which the gain is measured is to be July 1997, the date when Congress approved the law. However, it is not clear whether and how the municipalities can determine that land price in subsequent years. The problem is that the initial base value to be compared to the current value may already be influenced by ‘rumors’ circulating about land designations in the master plans. Should the value be calculated before the rumors of urbanistic changes begin to circulate, or just before the actual decision is made? How should cities treat land value increments generated by actions occurring between that base date and the approval of the POT? For how long is the assessment valid? What happens after, say, 15 or 20 years?

These questions are all the more relevant considering that land use norms established recently in some cities have already been capitalized in land prices, thus reducing substantially the current margins for the application of Participación en Plusvalías.

Furthermore, there are different legal implications about which relevant values should be considered (i.e., current use vs. highest and best use). Should the land value increment be based on the potential or the actual value? Should the legally defined formula for assessments apply to the potential buildable area even if the builder is not requesting a license to develop the site to its full allowable density? What happens when a property that has been assessed on a certain date is not completed? Although the law defines the concept of zones with similar geo-economic characteristics, it is not clear whether the landowner may legally request the assessment to be done on a property-by-property basis or on the basis of homogeneous zones.

The short deadlines established by the law for calculating both commercial prices before the master plan and new reference prices after adoption of the plan also cause serious concerns. For example, the law states that the mayor has only five days after the new POT is approved to determine new prices in the affected areas, and that all calculations must be accomplished within the next 60 days. The legal structure for adopting simplified cost procedures to allow assessments for homogeneous areas of the city rather than for individual plots is not clear on this point.

Definition of land categories.

Differences in land categories between Law 9 of 1989 and Law 388 of 1997 have led to questions of applicability. Law 9 included a suburban land category that could be developed at moderate densities on the outskirts of cities. For example, all of the developable land to the north of Bogotá is now in that suburban category, which permits residential densities of 160 inhabitants per hectare. The zoning proposed by the new master plan permits an increase to between 180 and 220 inhabitants per hectare. Law 388 states that the change from rural to urban use may be taxed, but does not address the suburban category, even though suburban land already has strong development rights. Because of these difficulties, many cities prefer to treat suburban land as similar to urban land in order to avoid further implementation problems.

Exemptions and special cases.

Land for low-income housing is exempted from plusvalías, but the law states that the land value increments must be calculated anyway. This may constitute an unnecessary additional cost, considering that 80 percent of all housing to be built in Bogotá within the next ten years will be low-income housing. How does this affect the fairness of this instrument on the remaining 20 percent of housing? How effective will plusvalías be as a planning instrument seeking to decrease speculation on land designated for social housing?

Another issue deals with wipeouts resulting from master plan designation of conservation zones or areas set aside for environmental protection through transfer of development rights (TDRs). Complaints from private agents of ‘takings’ against their full rights of ownership raise important questions of compensation. Areas that already have been designated for high-density development but are not yet fully built also raise questions about the expectation component of land values.

Political and operational obstacles.

A continuing source of confusion and misunderstanding concerns the technical issues associated with the effective calculation of the land value increment. Can it or should it be implemented in cases when, due to general economic recession, all land values are allegedly declining? If landowners are either selling land at a loss or not initiating development on their properties at all, then, quite simply, no plusvalías would be available to the local administration. Theoretically, all that is needed is to distinguish generating effects (administrative actions) from trends in land markets. In practice, however, it is easy to understand that instruments of value capture are more robust, and more palatable politically, during the upswing of land price cycles than the downswing, as is currently the case in Colombia.

The political overtones of this issue become clearer when considering the substantial land portfolios that developers normally hold for strategic planning motives, including for speculation. In effect, urban planners are hard pressed to be more flexible, if not magnanimous, in relaxing urbanistic norms and regulations in order to motivate developers during times of recession. However, this kind of pressure from developers may be simply an attempt to gain compensation for poor investment decisions in the past.

Sometimes developers complain that the municipality is setting the plusvalías fee too high in times of declining prices when recession may create disincentives for future investments in building improvements. However, a counter-argument based on the experience with Contribución de Valorización suggests that if the amount of plusvalías on the changing land use is considered to be overvalued, it follows that the change is probably not cost-effective and should not be proposed. It is also possible that a mistake was made in the feasibility study or the calculations.

Over and above these practical difficulties are certain implementation requirements in the law that affect its operation, such as the need to directly notify the landowner that the property is ‘liable’ for plusvalías. Should the burden reside with the public administration or with the owner? Similarly, there are legal difficulties surrounding the moment when plusvalías should be charged to the property owner, as in the liquidation of properties or in the request for a license to change the use of land. Some grounds for complaints of double taxation could also be raised if an area to be densified (or receive any change in zoning) has received additional infrastructure on which the Contribuición de Valorización provision was charged. The independence of this instrument from plusvalías, as stated by the new law, is important because of the existing option of calculating and charging the plusvalías for public works designated by the POT.

Adjustments Proposed by Municipal Officials

Public officials at the December seminar in Bogotá suggested a few ways to simplify the implementation of Law 388 by sacrificing precision in the calculation of the plusvalías in favor of expediency, transparency and compliance. This perspective is based on the belief that political will may be more important than technical consistency, at least in the early, transitional stages of implementation, in order to improve the chances of long-term success. A very telling and useful example was given by officials from the city of Cartagena (500,000 inhabitants), which has been applying the Contribución de Desarrollo Municipal effectively since 1992. Their experience shows that the effect of density changes to a new lot should be similar with regard to the generation of plusvalías to the rate generated by the same kind of density change already observed in a different but comparable area of the city.

Participants also proposed restricting the application of plusvalías to the more strategic and dynamic areas of the city where the windfall potential is most apparent and expressive, rather than in areas where the land value increments are small. Furthermore, assessment of plusvalías should be based on homogeneous zones, not on individual plots. The plusvalías instrument also needs to be developed and phased in over time as the municipalities gain greater knowledge and sophistication in valuation and assessment techniques. The established nine-year period for the validation of the assessments of land value increments, therefore, should be subject to more frequent periodic review. Some practical transition rules, absent in the original formulation of the law, also will help facilitate the introduction of a new fiscal system.

Other suggestions were made regarding the adoption of master plans (POTs). Municipalities should use these plans, rather than some other valuation mechanism external to the POT, to identify areas where there will be a change in land use in order to determine whether, in fact, it is a higher use and thus subject to an increase in plusvalías. Before adopting the POT, the municipalities should identify such areas so the valuation and assessment techniques could be worked out ahead of time and the sense of uncertainty could be mitigated. Some participants even suggested using the POT to define the relevant ex-ante situation (or prior value) to determine the net land value increment.

In general, the participants agreed that the concept and aims of the master plan and plusvalías instruments are both acceptable and desirable. Many of the problems and issues discussed at the seminar and throughout the country pertain to the implementation of any value capture scheme, or any new fiscal or normative legislation for that matter. In this case there is certainly substantial room for improving the design of the implementation procedures, since changes to operational aspects are always easier to achieve than changes to the law itself. But, over and above the remaining formal difficulties, it has been clearly demonstrated that political will, accumulated technical expertise and the ethical commitment of the participants are all critical to perfecting this land policy instrument and implementing the highly commendable principles that inspire it.

Carolina Barco de Botero is the planning director for the city of Bogotá. She is also a managing consultant with Ciudades, Ltda. in Bogotá and a member of the Lincoln Institute Board of Directors. Martim Smolka is senior fellow and director of the Institute’s Latin America and Caribbean Program.

Fernanda Furtado, a fellow of the Lincoln Institute, also contributed to this article. She recently completed her Ph.D. thesis (in Portuguese) on value capture in Latin America, at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of São Paulo, Brazil. One of her thesis chapters describes the situation in Colombia.

Pros and Cons of Participación en Plusvalías

Pros

• reduces corruption insofar as it exposes benefits that used to be negotiated under the table;
• reduces speculation;
• generates public revenues that are designated for redistributive purposes;
• reduces distortions in the distribution of urban land value increments;
• contributes to a better understanding of fiscal culture, thereby improving the collection of other assessments and taxes.

Cons

• introduces more red tape into the implementation of master plans and the process of licensing development of the built environment;
• legitimizes private appropriation of land value increments, since it leaves 50 to 70 percent of the plusvalías with the owner;
• incurs high administrative costs compared to the revenues it generates.

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.

En el área metropolitana de Lima, el acceso a la tierra urbana por parte de los sectores populares presenta un historial de problemas que son resultado de la combinación de una ocupación irregular y espontánea de la tierra con políticas de corto alcance para regularizar la tenencia de las tierras. Estas políticas diseñadas para resolver o mitigar la ocupación irregular, en vez de contribuir a una solución, han aumentado el problema.

El seminario, “Los gobiernos locales y el manejo de la tierra urbana: Perú y América Latina”, llevado a cabo en Lima en febrero, reunió representantes municipales, expertos de América Latina y líderes de la comunidad para responder a la siguiente pregunta: ¿Asegura el actual marco regulatorio el crecimiento ordenado y equitativo de Lima y de las otras ciudades peruanas?. El programa fue organizado por el Instituto Lincoln; el Instituto de Desarrollo Urbano CENCA, una organización no gubernamental que basa su trabaja con las comunidades; la Asociación de Municipalidades del Perú, y la Red de Políticas de Suelo de la Coalición Internacional del Habitat (HIC).

Políticas de Regularización

Por regularización de la tierra se entiende en general el proceso de intervención pública en zonas ocupadas ilegalmente, a fin de proveer mejoras de infraestructura urbana y reconocer títulos de propiedad u otros derechos de ocupación. En muchos países en desarrollo se necesitan políticas de regularización para contrarrestar los patrones irregulares, y a veces ilegales, de desarrollo de la tierra, en que la ocupación del terreno e incluso la construcción de viviendas precede la instalación de obras de infraestructura y la documentación legal.

Desde 1961, el gobierno central de Perú ha apoyado políticas que permitieron que la población de bajos ingresos ocupara las tierras públicas vacantes, consideradas como un recurso natural de “banco de tierras”. La mayor parte de estos terrenos eran arenosos, casi desérticos, ubicados en los alrededores de Lima y de poco valor comercial. Un 34% de la población de Lima vivía en “barriadas” o asentamientos irregulares para 1993.

Ante la ausencia de políticas efectivas para asegurar el acceso legal y organizado a la tenencia de la tierra, la permisividad que llevó al desarrollo irregular de estas áreas periféricas ha llevado a una crisis que domina actualmente la discusión de las políticas relativas a la tierra urbana (Figura 1). Muchos funcionarios gubernamentales y otros observadores reconocen que el sistema en sí mismo fomenta y permite el crecimiento informal e irregular, y que algunas de las políticas diseñadas para regularizar la tierra han contribuido en la práctica a crear más irregularidades.

Problemas del Manejo de la Tierra Urbana

El manejo de las políticas de la tierra urbana en Perú está siendo reexaminado a causa de tensiones entre el gobierno central y el gobierno local. Entre 1981 y 1995, las municipalidades administraron los procedimientos, autorizaciones y políticas relacionados con la regularización de la tierra. En 1996, el gobierno peruano centralizó la administración de los recursos económicos sobre la vivienda y el desarrollo urbano, retomando los temas de regularización. Esta centralización política, administrativa y fiscal ha creado serias ineficacias e ineficiencias, puesto que aún las agencias de los gobiernos locales tienen que responder a las demandas diarias de la población con respecto a tierra y vivienda, y no tiene ya un control integral de esta problemática.

También existen tensiones a causa de las contradicciones entre el marco legal y el mercado informal de las transacciones cotidianas. Esta falta de relación se refleja en la falta de comprensión y desconfianza que existe entre las autoridades y los agentes privados e individuos que operan fuera del marco de las políticas formales.

A pesar de los intentos por parte de municipalidades y organizaciones no gubernamentales por mejorar la coordinación e implementación de las políticas de la tierra que afectan a los mecanismos formales e informales del mercado formal e informal, los líderes políticos todavía toman la decisión final. Esta situación se ve sujeta a la politización de la administración pública, por ejemplo, a través de políticas creadas para satisfacer a los políticos en vez de la comunidad. Al mismo tiempo, esta situación fomenta las perspectivas a corto plazo, puesto que la autoridad gobernante está más interesada en el trabajo inmediato que en el seguimiento detallado de planes de desarrollo que requieren de un plazo más largo para su ejecución. Como resultado, los problemas graves de crecimiento de Lima no reciben una respuesta adecuada por el marco regulador, legal y político actual.

Problemas Comunes

Un resultado importante de este seminario en Perú fue el intercambio de experiencias con otras ciudades latinoamericanas y asiáticas, en las cuales los gobiernos locales pueden utilizar recursos públicos para promover ciudades urbano más ordenadas. Aún cuando los problemas del manejo de la tierra son amplios y complejos, ciertos problemas comunes fueron identificados para ser discutidos en programas futuros:

• El desarrollo de políticas públicas e iniciativas a nivel de la comunidad para capturar el valor de la tierra “intermedia” que se encuentra en proceso de desarrollo y es frecuentemente la más vulnerable a la especulación.
• Programas municipales de vivienda que utilicen el marco legal existente para fomentar la ocupación ordenada del espacio. Específicamente, hay una necesidad de promover la coordinación entre los diversos agentes públicos y privados; así como mecanismos que apoyen créditos financieros para la población de bajos ingresos, la construcción de vivienda, los servicios básicos de infraestructura y las estrategias de participación del vecindario.
• Las políticas de regularización de la tierra y su articulación con políticas de acceso a la tierra, a fin de romper el círculo vicioso de irregularidades que causa los problemas actuales de manejo y de crecimiento urbano.
• Una mayor comprensión de la dinámica de los mercados formales e informales de la tierra, por aquellos encargados de desarrollar e implementar las políticas apropiadas para dirigir las complejas actividades vinculadas al mercado de tierras.

Julio Calderón, investigador urbano y consultor en programas de desarrollo social, está afiliado a Red Suelo, la red de políticas de la tierra de la Coalición Internacional para el Habitat.

Figura 1: Políticas de Regularización de la Tenencia de la Tierra en Lima

Febrero 1961-1980: Se estableció la Ley 13517, responsabilizando a varias agencias del gobierno central para regularizar los procedimientos de tenencia de la tierra, pero sólo se emitieron 20.000 títulos.

1981-1995: La función de emisión de títulos fue transferida a la Municipalidad de Lima y la entrega de títulos de propiedad de la tierra aumentó a unos 200.000. En los años noventa la capacidad de entrega de títulos disminuyó gradualmente hasta generar una crisis en el mercado de la tierra.

Abril 1996: La Comisión del Estado de Formalización de la Propiedad Informal (COFROPI) asumió las responsabilidades que estaban asignadas a la municipalidad. A partir de la promesa presidencial de incorporar la población de bajos ingresos al proceso del mercado de la tierra, se entregaron cerca de 170.000 títulos de propiedad entre julio de 1996 y julio de 1997. Se espera que 300.000 títulos más sean emitidos para el año 2000. Sin embargo, COFROPI afirma que el 90% de los títulos entregados antes de 1995 presentan problemas de registro, de manera tal que muchos de los títulos entregados desde 1996 son revisión de otros entregados anteriormente. En consecuencia, es difícil reconstruir la cantidad exacta de títulos emitidos bajo cada administración.

Algunas Definiciones

Ilegal – Ocupación de la tierra que contradice expresamente las normas existentes, el código civil y la autorización pública.

Informal – Actividad económica que no se adhiere a las reglas institucionales y que no está protegida por ellas, en oposición a la actividad formal que opera dentro de los procedimientos establecidos.

Irregular – Subdivisión que está aprobada oficialmente pero que no ha sido ejecutada de acuerdo con la ley.

Clandestina – Subdivisión establecida sin reconocimiento oficial.

The Lincoln Institute’s Latin America program pursues education and research projects with universities and local governments throughout Central and South America and the Caribbean. These activities are especially salient now given many political and economic changes affecting Latin American land markets. For example, the (re)democratization of the continent is engaging a larger segment of the society in designing viable, innovative programs for local administrations of competing political parties.

In addition, institutional and in many cases constitutional reforms are affecting land values and landownership rights and regulations. Structural adjustment programs to curb inflation and overcome the economic crises of the 1980s are changing attitudes regarding holding land either as an investment or a reserve of value. Frequent speculative switches between land holdings and other financial assets according to the caprices of the prevailing ‘economic environment’ have been a planner’s nightmare in Latin America.

The forces of globalization and urbanization also contribute to significant and changing pressures on the use of land. More and more, Los Angeles-style landscapes can be found in certain suburbs of Sao Paulo, Santiago or Mexico City. While loss of the region’s biodiversity is well documented, Latin America is also at risk of losing its land use diversity.

In spite of these common themes, Latin America is hardly a homogeneous entity. Its diversity emerges clearly when examining the landownership and land market structures of different countries. For example:

The Chilean glorification of land markets contrasts with Cuba’s virtual elimination of land markets and resulting residential segregation.

Mexico had a unique experience with communal (ejido) lands that are now being privatized with important implications for new urban expansion.

In Brazil, frequent land conflicts, many with tragic consequences to the landless, can be attributed to a long-promised land reform yet to be implemented.

In Paraguay, until its recent democratization, land was traditionally attributed by the hegemonic political party, simply by-passing the market. In Argentina, on the other hand, the state uses its considerable stock of fiscal land to facilitate international investments in property developments directly through the market.

Nicaragua’s past land redistribution is probably responsible for the vigor of the recently liberalized property market and the strong land reconcentration processes now under way.

The booming land markets of Ecuador and Venezuela have often been attributed to the ease of laundering drug money from neighboring Colombia, where regulations are stricter.

Given this diversity, the Institute’s Latin America program is focusing its education and research efforts on building a network of highly qualified scholars and policymakers. Representing different countries and a variety of academic and professional backgrounds, they help identify topics of proven relevance for the region. Some examples of current topics grounded in public officials’ actual and anticipated needs are: rekindling the debate on the functioning of urban land markets; closing the gap between formal and informal land markets; and implementing new land policy instruments.

Access to land by the low-income urban population is the issue that best captures the hearts and minds of many researchers and public officials. Two connected research themes are 1) the mechanisms that generate residential segregation or exclusion through the market by private or public agents; and 2) the strategies of ‘the excluded’ to access land and subsequently formalize their ‘inclusion.’ Most of the Institute’s education programs being developed in Latin America to deal with land management and instruments of public intervention are informed directly or indirectly by this issue.

For many public officials in the region, land reform is a sensitive issue and capturing land value increments generated by public action is still seen suspiciously as a subversive idea. Thus, the Lincoln Institute is in a unique position as a neutral facilitator capable of collaborating with Latin American scholars and public officials as well as experts from the United States to provide a comparative, international perspective on land policy ideas and experiences.

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Martim Smolka, Senior Fellow of the Institute since September 1995, is on leave as associate professor at the Urban and Regional Research and Planning Institute at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

In preparation for the 2003–2004 academic year, the Lincoln Institute has made some changes in its departmental structure. We established the Department of International Studies to integrate the Institute’s international research and educational programs that address key land and tax policy issues identified by the existing departments of Valuation and Taxation and Planning and Development. This new department’s work includes the well-established Program on Latin America and the Caribbean and a new Program on the People’s Republic of China, as well as ongoing programs in Taiwan, Central and Eastern Europe and other areas of the world.

Cities in developing nations, and in Latin America in particular, vividly illustrate the contemporary relevance of Henry George’s concerns about progress engendering poverty through constraints on access to land ownership and persistent informality in land markets. The ten-year retrospective article on the Latin America Program (see page 8) provides an overview of the changing context of land and tax policy in the region and a review of the Institute’s current programs.

The new Program on the People’s Republic of China addresses the fundamental problems of land allocation, land taxation and the development of land markets in one of the world’s fastest growing economies. The Institute has an agreement with the Ministry of Land and Resources in Beijing to collaborate on researching and teaching land and tax policy (see Land Lines April 2003). Other partners in this initiative are the National Center for Smart Growth and the Institute for Global Chinese Affairs at the University of Maryland; the Development Research Center of the State Council; the China Development Institute in Shenzhen; and several university and local government departments.

China initiated fundamental and revolutionary land use reforms during the mid-1980s, addressing privately held land use rights, land banking, land trusts, land readjustments, and development of land markets in both urban and rural areas. The Institute will contribute to the implementation of these reform measures by sponsoring educational and training programs for Chinese public officials and practitioners and by supporting research and publications by both international and Chinese scholars. Institute faculty with expertise in urban and regional planning, real estate development, land economics and property taxation will introduce curriculum materials designed for China that build on our work in Latin America and other regions of the world.

The Institute is also continuing its long-term educational and research programs in collaboration with the International Center for Land Policy Studies and Training in Taiwan, including the annual cosponsored course on “Infrastructure Planning and Urban Development” for public officials from developing countries. Institute faculty associated with the Department of Valuation and Taxation are involved with officials from the public and private sectors in Central and Eastern European countries as they develop and implement land and tax reforms

I believe this new department will help us operate more efficiently abroad and better integrate our international experiences in all areas.

The United States is emerging from a great recession whose major hallmark has been the collapse of national housing prices, which grew by 59 percent from 2000 to 2006 and then fell 41 percent by 2011, all in constant dollars. Nationally, real house prices in 2011 were 6 percent below levels in 2000. The housing price collapse had unanticipated contagion effects that helped produce the accompanying financial crisis and the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression. The share of U.S. mortgages that were delinquent by 90 days or more rose from about 1 percent in 2006 to over 8 percent in 2010. The economic and social costs of this house price bubble and subsequent collapse have been immense.

The benefits of preventing future house price bubbles is obviously great, but realizing such benefits will require that policy makers learn to detect price bubbles as they are forming and then implement policies that will attenuate or mitigate them. A recent Lincoln Institute policy focus report, Preventing House Price Bubbles: Lessons from the 2006–2012 Bust, by James Follain and Seth Giertz, addresses the challenges of diagnosing and treating price bubbles in the real estate market. Their report builds on extensive statistical analysis available in several Lincoln Institute working papers.

While it is common to summarize the recent housing market bust using national indicators (as in the first paragraph above), these national indicators don’t account for great variations in both the levels and changes in housing prices across metropolitan areas. For example, from 1978 to 2011, constant dollar housing prices in Dallas, Texas and Omaha, Nebraska varied by less than 20 percent from their 1978 levels; those in Stockton, California nearly tripled from 1978 to 2006, but by 2011 fell back to their 1978 levels. Local housing markets are all influenced by national economic and financial policies and conditions, but these large differences across metropolitan markets indicate that local conditions play a very important role as well.

A key element of the statistical work by Follain and Giertz is to use metropolitan housing markets as the unit of observation for their analyses, which are based on annual data (for 1980 to 2010) and quarterly data (for 1990 to 2010) for up to 380 metropolitan areas. Their econometric work indicates that house price bubbles can be detected across metropolitan areas and that price changes and the accompanying credit risk vary greatly in size. Stress tests, such as those used to evaluate mortgage credit risk, can be useful indicators of potential price bubbles at the metropolitan level.

Because the levels and changes in housing prices vary greatly across metropolitan areas—with bubble-like price increases in some and essentially stable prices in others—Follain and Giertz conclude that policy measures to mitigate housing bubbles should be tailored to target metropolitan areas or regions rather than be applied uniformly across all metropolitan areas at the national level. Thus monetary policy would be an unattractive intervention to counter house price increases in a few metropolitan areas, because it would affect financing terms across both frothy and stable housing markets. Instead, Follain and Giertz favor policy interventions that would target those metropolitan areas with high price increases. The policy they advance would raise the capital reserve ratio that banks are required to hold against mortgages that they finance in those areas. Such countercyclical capital policies would both dampen house price increases and strengthen the reserves of the issuing banks, improving their ability to withstand any unexpected financial shocks.

Applying prudential housing market policies at the metro-politan level seems to be an obvious thing to do; so why has it not been done before? A major part of the answer is that housing market analysis is benefitting from a revolution in the availability of spatially disaggregated data at the metropolitan, county, and even zip code level. The data required to inform policy interventions targeted at the metropolitan level have only recently become widely available, and such data underpin the empirical work carried out by Follain and Giertz. For more information on their analysis, see http://www.lincolninst.edu/pubs/2245_Preventing-House-Price-Bubbles.

The Impacts of Land Use Regulations in Latin America

Cynthia Goytia is a professor in the urban economics and public policy graduate programs at Torcuato Di Tella University (TDTU) in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She serves as the director of both TDTU’s M.Sc. in urban economics program and its Urban Policy and Housing Research Center (CIPUV). Cynthia has also lectured at the University of Cambridge and London School of Economics.

Since 2009, the Lincoln Institute has supported her research on the impacts of residential land use regulations on informality, urban extension, and land values in Latin American cities. In her consulting practice, she has worked with a number of government departments in Argentina and other Latin American countries, as well as several international organizations such as the World Bank, UN University World Institute for Development Economics Research, and the Development Bank of Latin America, among others.

Cynthia holds a M.Sc. in urban economics and a Ph.D. in regional and urban planning from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

LAND LINES: Local land use regulation is a difficult topic to tackle. Although zoning and other interventions can be a strong remedy for market failures, they can have unplanned adverse effects. How did you come to take on this type of research?

CYNTHIA GOYTIA: I became interested in the economic analysis of land use interventions as I began to recognize that land markets are about more than just land and location. Over the last 30 years or so, land use regulation and zoning have become much more important than land taxation in determining quality of life for people in cities. And over time, I noticed that land use interventions designed to achieve socially desirable ends sometimes had unintended negative consequences that planners and policy makers had totally failed to anticipate. For example, government regulations affect access to a wide range of public goods and, as a result, may lead to increased residential segregation and informal development.

All these facts encouraged me to research the effects of government interventions on the land market. I also realized that part of the knowledge gap about regulatory effects in Latin America resulted from the lack of comparable and systematic data on land use. So in 2005, I began an extensive research agenda on this subject, which started as a cooperative effort with Argentina’s national government and later gained the strong support of the Lincoln Institute.

LL: How relevant to Latin America are the results of recent studies claiming that over-regulation of land use in developed countries drives up housing prices?

CG: Our empirical research provides evidence that by increasing prices in the formal land market, thus reducing the supply of housing affordable to low-income households, some aspects of land use regulation could promote more informal development. For example, the Land Use Law enacted in Buenos Aires Province 38 years ago defined new requirements for minimum lot size and forced developers to finance the infrastructure for new subdivisions. These requirements priced low-income households out of the legal land market and into the informal sector.

While the overall objectives of the law were not bad, they had unintended consequences for housing affordability. As a result, the land market was severely skewed to the higher-income segment, while the low-income submarket—households that previously had been allowed to construct their own houses on residential lots—was practically dismantled by the time the new land use standards were enacted and enforced. Not surprisingly, these types of constraints have led to illegal occupation of land in nearly two-thirds of the municipal jurisdictions forming Argentina’s metropolitan areas, including Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area.

LL: Many analysts assert that exclusionary building and land use codes are largely responsible for rampant informality in the region. How would you respond to that criticism?

CG: My recent research supports the claim that land use regulation is used not only to correct for market failures, but it can constitute a way to achieve exclusionary aims as well. We have found that municipalities with large shares of both educated households and disadvantaged populations tend to impose more restrictive residential zoning to maximize the benefits that formal home owners receive from their local governments.

There are some interesting correlations between the use of exclusionary measures in some jurisdictions and conditions in nearby areas. For example, municipalities in Buenos Aires with stringent policies about infrastructure provision are surrounded by municipalities with large shares of households that lack basic services. Indeed, under-provision of infrastructure is central to the idea of urban exclusion. The local government may thus attempt to indirectly regulate the scope of informal development by failing to pave the roads or provide connections to water and sewerage services. Under-servicing informal settlements may be a strategic device to discourage migration to areas experiencing population growth pressure, which are already highly populated, richer, and reluctant to share their tax base with lower-income migrants.

LL: Among the many factors accounting for informality in Latin America, where would you place land use regulation?

CG: Our research provides evidence of a link between land use regulation and the housing choices of urban households in Argentina. Municipalities that have enacted more land regulatory measures also have larger informal sectors, suggesting that the regulatory environment severely constrains development of formal low-income land and housing markets. For example, minimum lot sizes set up land consumption levels that low-income households cannot afford. Moreover, these regulations determine the amount of housing that can be built on lots by setting maximum heights, floor area ratios, or allocation of open space—skewing the supply to the upper-income market. Relatively high project approval costs (in terms of both time and money) also have negative impacts by raising the final cost of housing and/or discouraging developers from building housing for low-income households. At the same time, however, inclusionary policies—including value capture or betterment levies, impact fees, and setting vacant land aside for affordable housing—reduce the likelihood that households resort to informal land markets.

One of the most important concepts we need to understand is that informality is not merely a poverty issue, but rather a land market distortion that affects households of all incomes. Therefore, land use regulation should contribute to the design of policies that are able to address the fundamental causes of informality and hold down the prices of serviced land.

LL: The efficiency-equity trade-off seems to be at the heart of debates about land use regulation. This trade-off is played out under different rules when it comes to higher-income and lower-income urban areas, as plainly revealed in Brazil’s special zones of social interest (ZEIS)—low-income areas preserved for affordable housing by the state.

CG: You are right. Rules such as general-purpose urban zoning regulations are quite different from the pro-poor standards allowed in ZEIS. General-purpose zoning is meant to improve the efficiency of urban land use, especially in the formal housing market. Adequate planning facilitates timely infrastructure investment and large-scale urban development. Overall, efficient land use contributes to improved urban productivity. But many times, it does not in itself ensure affordability for lower-income groups.

At present, we do not have a rigorous evaluation of ZEIS effects, but it is important to consider two facts when it comes to the less stringent standards set for low-income housing. First, the rationale for allowing different regulations for particular segments of the housing market is that doing so enhances general welfare. Second, the pragmatic solution of regularizing informal areas raises the question of why municipalities do not allow higher densities in the first place, provided that the appropriate infrastructure is put in place. In theory, allowing higher-density development in formal areas would increase the overall supply of buildable land, thereby reducing prices and increasing the availability of affordable housing.

LL: Are there any good examples of politically feasible, socially inclusive land use regulations?

CG: In most developing countries, the challenge is to design policies that address the fundamental causes of informality and promote social inclusion. Jurisdictions that have adopted—and effectively implemented—inclusionary measures are now better able to provide more affordable housing options in the formal market. But there are at least two distinct types of approaches, which push the land use regulation agenda in our cities in different ways and have various implications.

The first type of approach focuses on easing land use restrictions that disproportionately affect the supply of low-income housing. We know that higher land costs due to “forced consumption” make housing less affordable to lower-income families. Revising these types of standards—such as allowing condominium units in low-density areas (where most low-income households live), increasing floor area ratios, and reducing minimum lot sizes for subdivisions where infrastructure is phased in—helps to improve housing affordability in the formal market. These measures also make it more profitable to develop low-income housing, thereby increasing the incentives to supply units for this market segment. There are now some examples of formal developers building low-income subdivisions and affordable housing units in some municipalities where population and affordable housing demand have been growing fast, such as La Matanza, in the Buenos Aires metro area.

The second type of land use innovation involves making changes to regulatory frameworks. Government jurisdictions at all levels are now enacting a variety of policies that play a more active role in land and infrastructure development and finance, guiding urban growth and infill development while also capturing the value of large-scale public investments. Rosario, Argentina, provides a great example. The government there grants building rights—notably in high-income areas—as long as the proceeds are used to fund the public investments necessary to support higher densities and to provide serviced land for affordable housing or for informal settlements.

I have already underscored the importance of infrastructure spending. Over the last decade, metropolitan agglomerations in Argentina were expanding 3.5 percent annually on average while the population was growing by 1.2 percent annually. This development path makes the financing of infrastructure imperative. Some municipal governments have responded by implementing betterment levies. Trenque Lauquen is a case in point. The municipality has used the levies not only to finance infrastructure investments, but also to manage urban growth and make land available for different uses, including low-income housing. Although limited in scope, this success shows that betterment levies are a feasible and flexible instrument that can help expand urban services. It also prevents informal land subdividers from exploiting the gap between the prices of raw and fully serviced formal land.

LL: Based on what we know and do not know about land use regulation in Latin America, which research priorities do you think the Lincoln Institute should pursue?

CG: The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy has been doing a great job in generating knowledge about land use regulation in Latin America through its support of research, seminars, and other activities, and by encouraging valuable interactions among a broad audience of urban planners and policy makers in the region. Now we need to build on this knowledge to promote policies that improve land and housing affordability, and to identify the sources of supply distortions that lead to low compliance and widespread informality.

This means improving our understanding of the impacts of regulatory innovations now taking place in the region. Although we have some case studies about the effects of these new tools, we need to carry out a comprehensive review of the ways cities, municipalities, states, and national offices define their regulatory frameworks. Creating a comprehensive database of this information for the main urban agglomerations in the region would allow comparisons over time and across municipalities.

To this end, we at CIPUV performed a nationwide survey of planning officials about local land use regulations in Argentina’s metropolitan areas. The set of indicators assembled in the CIPUV Index of Land Policy (CILP) provides detailed information on such parameters as the existence of land use plans, the authorities involved in zoning changes and residential project approval processes, the existence of building restrictions, the costs related to project approvals, and the implementation of value capture instruments.

Over the years, our research has started to reshape planners’ attitudes about regulatory frameworks. We have initiated a dialogue with planners and public officials in the hope of gaining new insights about the role of land markets within cities and the impacts of regulations. In addition, our standardized indices have enabled comparisons of regulations across municipalities as well as analysis at the metropolitan and state levels. As a result, some municipal and provincial jurisdictions in Argentina have recently updated, or are in the process of updating, their land use plans and laws, some of which date back nearly half a century.

LL: Would it be feasible to develop an international version of the CIPUV Index of Land Policy?

CG: Yes. Taking up such an initiative would have two important effects. First, it would allow comparisons of metropolitan areas throughout Latin America and increase the visibility of successes that some cities have had in increasing land affordability. And second, it would provide fertile ground for policy makers and researchers to learn which initiatives lead to better outcomes. It is not only feasible, but a central challenge that should be addressed in the coming years.

Is urban spatial segregation a consequence of the normal functioning of urban land markets, reflecting cumulative individual choices? Or, is it a result of the malfunctioning of urban land markets that privatize social benefits and socialize private costs? Is it the result of class bias, or racial bias, or both? Does public housing policy create ghettos? Or, do real estate agents and lending officers substitute personal bias for objective data, thereby creating and reinforcing stereotypes about fellow citizens and neighborhoods? Can changes in land policy lead to changes in intra-metropolitan settlement patterns? Or, do such changes come about only from deep social changes having to do with values such as tolerance, opportunity and human rights?

Thirty-seven practitioners and academics from thirteen countries struggled with these and other related questions at the Lincoln Institute’s “International Seminar on Segregation in the City” in Cambridge last July. The seminar organizers, Francisco Sabatini of the Catholic University of Chile and Martim Smolka and Rosalind Greenstein of the Lincoln Institute, cast a wide net to explore the theoretical, historical and practical dimensions of segregation. Participants came from countries as diverse as Brazil, Israel, Kenya, the Netherlands, Northern Ireland and the U.S., and they brought to the discussion their training as lawyers, sociologists, economists, urban planners, regional scientists and geographers. As they attempted to come to terms with the meaning of segregation, the various forces that create and reinforce it, and possible policy responses, it became apparent that there are no simple answers and that many viewpoints contribute to the ongoing debate. This brief report on the seminar offers a taste of the far-reaching discussion.

The papers presented by all participants in this seminar are posted on the Lincoln Institute website.

What is Segregation and Why Is It Important?

Frederick Boal’s (School of Geography, Queen’s University, Belfast) work is informed by both the rich sociological literature on segregation and his own experience of living in the midst of the troubles between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. Boal suggested that segregation was best understood as part of a spectrum that ranged from the extreme approach of ethnic cleansing to the more idealistic one of assimilation (see Figure 1). As with so many policy issues, segregation will not be solved by viewing it as a dichotomy but rather as a continuum of degrees or levels of separateness, each with different spatial manifestations.

For Peter Marcuse (Graduate School of Architecture, Preservation and Planning, Columbia University, New York) segregation implies a lack of choice and/or the presence of coercion. When racial or ethnic groups choose to live together, he calls that clustering in enclaves. However, when groups are forced apart, either explicitly or through more subtle mechanisms, he calls that segregation in ghettoes. It is the lack of choice that distinguishes these patterns and invites a public policy response.

The meaning and importance of segregation varies with the historical context. For William Harris (Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Jackson State University, Mississippi), who writes about spatial segregation in the U.S. South, segregation can be neither understood nor addressed without fully appreciating the role that race has played and continues to play in American history and public policy. Flavio Villaça (School of Architecture and Urbanism, University of São Paulo, Brazil) understands segregation within a class framework, where income level and social status, not race, are the key factors influencing residential patterns. In Brazil and many other countries with long histories of authoritarian regimes, urban services are generally provided by the state. In these countries, urban residential patterns determine access to water and sewer facilities (and therefore health) as well as transportation, utility infrastructure and other urban services.

In many cases, Villaça and others assert, land market activity and urban codes and regulations have been used, both overtly and furtively, to create elite, well-serviced neighborhoods that segregate the upper classes from the rest of society, which is largely ignored. This view has parallels in the U.S., where access to high-quality schools and other valued amenities is largely determined by residential patterns that are closely associated with segregation by income level, ethnic background and other demographic characteristics. Seminar participants also cited the correlation between disadvantaged communities and the location of environmental hazards. People segregated into low-income ghettoes or neighborhoods comprised primarily of people of color confront the downsides of modern urban living, such as hazardous waste sites and other locally unwanted land uses.

Ariel Espino (Department of Anthropology, Rice University, Texas) presented an analysis of how distance is used to reinforce social, political and economic inequality in housing. When social and economic differences are clear and understood, ruling elites tolerate physical proximity. For example, servants can live close to their employers, even in the same house, because economic relations and behavioral norms dictate separation by class.

Why Does Segregation Persist?

Prevalent throughout the seminar was an assumption that all residents of the city (i.e., citizens) ought to have access to urban services, at least to a minimum level of services. However, Peter Marcuse challenged the participants to think beyond a minimum level and to consider access to urban amenities in the context of rights. He questioned whether wealth or family heritage or skin color or ethnic identity ought to determine one’s access to public goods—not only education, health and shelter, but also other amenities directly related to physical location. In language reminiscent of Henry George’s views on common property in the late-nineteenth century, Marcuse asked whether it was fair or right, for example, for the rich to enjoy the best ocean views or river frontage or other endowments of nature while the poor are often relegated to the least attractive areas.

Robert Wassmer (Department of Public Policy and Administration, California State University) described the economic processes involved in residential location, as they are understood by public choice economists. In this view, house buyers do not choose to buy only a house and a lot; they consider a diverse set of amenities that vary from place to place. Some buyers may choose an amenity bundle that includes more public transit and less lakefront, while others may choose greater access to highways and higher-quality public education. However, not all citizens have equal opportunities to make such choices. Several seminar participants added that this debate is part of a larger conversation about access and choice in society, since nearly all choices are constrained to some extent, and many constraints vary systematically across social groups.

Other participants drew attention to the ways that government policy (e.g., tax codes, housing legislation) and private institutions (e.g., real estate agents, lending institutions) interact to influence the behavior of land markets, and thus the effects of land policies on public and private actions. Greg Squires (Department of Sociology, George Washington University) reported on a study of the house-hunting process in Washington, DC. His research findings emphasize the role of real estate agents in steering buyers and renters into same-race neighborhoods. As a consequence, blacks simply do not enjoy the same opportunities as whites and are far less likely to obtain their first choice of housing, thus challenging the public choice model. Squires also found that housing choice is determined by social or economic status. For example, priorities for neighborhood amenities among black house-hunters tended to differ from those of whites, in part because they had fewer private resources (such as an automobile) and were more dependent on a house location that provided centralized services such as public transportation.

John Metzger (Urban and Regional Planning Program, Michigan State University) examined the role of the private market in perpetuating segregation. He presented research on the demographic cluster profiles that companies like Claritas and CACI Marketing Systems use to characterize neighborhoods. These profiles are sold to a range of industries, including real estate and finance, as well as to public entities. The real estate industry uses the profiles to inform retailing, planning and investment decisions, and, Metzger argues, to encourage racial steering and the persistence of segregation. Mortgage lenders use profiles to measure consumer demand. Urban planners—both private consultants and those in the public sector—use profiles to determine future land uses for long-range planning and to guide planning and investment for central business districts. Real estate developers use profiles to define their markets and demonstrate pent-up demand for their products. The profiles themselves are often based on racial and ethnic stereotypes and in turn reinforce the separation of racial and ethnic groups within regional real estate markets.

Xavier de Souza Briggs (John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University) brought the idea of “social capital” to the discussion. As the term is being used today by sociologists and social theorists, social capital embodies the social networks and social trust within communities that can be harnessed to achieve individual and group goals. Briggs argued that social capital is both a cause and an effect of segregation in the U.S., but it can be leveraged to create positive change. Others challenged the extent to which social capital theory and research helps to address urban spatial segregation. These participants argued that it tended to frame the policy question as “How do we improve poor people?” rather than addressing the structural and institutional mechanisms that contribute to residential segregation and income inequality. Yet, the sociologists’ view is that social capital is the very element that communities need to exert some element of control over their immediate environments, rather than to be simply the recipients of the intended and unintended consequences of the political economy.

Social Justice and Land Policy

Seminar participants from around the world shared examples of spatial segregation enforced as a political strategy through the power of the state.

• The British colonial government in Kenya employed planning laws and exclusionary zoning to separate native Africans from the British, and those residential patterns established almost a century ago are reflected in Nairobi today.
• The military government at the time of the British mandate in Palestine forced the Arab Palestinians to reside in only one sector of the city of Lod, facilitating the transformation of this once Arab city in what is now Israel.
• The military regime of Augusto Pinochet evicted thousands of working-class Chileans from certain sectors of their cities to make way for small, elite middle- and upper-class settlements.
• The Apartheid regime of South Africa created separate residential sectors based on race and systematically kept groups isolated in virtually all aspects of society.

The connections between these extreme forms of spatial segregation and the land policies and market forces at work in most cities today are complex and challenging to articulate. One link is in the ways that land policies and the institutions that support land markets continue to be used to legitimize discriminatory practices.

By envisioning cities where citizens have real freedom to choose their residential locations, the planners in the seminar focused on government policies and programs to facilitate integration, such as the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Moving to Opportunity Program. However, Stephen Ross (Department of Economics, University of Connecticut) questioned the assumed benefits of resettlement or integration policies by asking, “What if you dispersed high-income people across the city? What would change? Does this idea help us to think more carefully about why space matters?”

Another query from Xavier Briggs challenged participants to think about where the most meaningful social interactions actually occur. Specifically, what needs to happen, and in what circumstances, to move from the extreme of ethnic cleansing on Boal’s urban ethnic spectrum toward assimilation? Briggs suggested that institutions such as schools and workplaces might be better suited to foster more diversity in social interactions than are residential neighborhoods.

Ultimately, the urban planners wanted the tools of their trade to be used for shaping a city that offered justice for all. Haim Yacobi (Department of Geography, Ben-Gurion University, Israel), while referring to the status of the Arab citizens in the mixed city of Lod, touched the foundations of western democratic ideals when he asked, “If a citizen does not have full access to the city, if a citizen is not a full participant in the life of the city, is he or she living in a true city?”

Allegra Calder is a research assistant at the Lincoln Institute and Rosalind Greenstein is a senior fellow and cochairman of the Institute’s Department of Planning and Development.

Few places in Latin America, or in the rest of the world, have dared to implement such radical urban land policy reforms as Chile has over the last 20 years. In 1979, the government began initiating deregulation policies by releasing a document that stated that the scarcity of land was artificially produced by excessive regulation, which resulted in the virtual elimination of urban growth boundaries.

Since then much has changed in the morphology and internal structure of Chilean cities, but the assessment of these changes varies greatly according to one’s ideological position. Explicit socially oriented urban policies have allowed for significant improvements in access to housing by the poor, but some argue that the spatial segregation impacts of such policies have imposed a high toll on society by indirectly lowering quality of life, impeding access to jobs and aggravating social alienation.

Even before the 1973-1990 period of military government, Chile was recognized as a unitarian and centralist political system, characterized by the strong presence of the state in economics and politics. It is a society with a relatively homogenous culture and is unique among Latin American countries in its strong legalist tradition. Chilean cities also present a sharp contrast to their counterparts in Latin America. There are virtually no informal land markets; land tenure has been almost completely regularized by strong public programs; and the majority of the urban poor live in areas where the main streets are paved and sanitary services are provided. Urban violence, in spite of growing trends, is still minimal compared to the rest of the continent.

Deregulation Policies and Problems

Among the most innovative aspects of Chilean urban policy are the following:

• Elimination of urban growth boundaries while maintaining the planning designation of sensitive areas for environmental protection. This measure had two goals: to delegate a leadership role in urban development and land use to market forces and to reduce land prices.
• Establishment of a subsidy system aimed at reducing the housing deficit. Considered by many to be the pillar of Chile’s housing policy, the subsidy system is widely perceived as the original and most innovative synthesis of liberalization policies with Chile’s state-dominated tradition. The program channels substantial subsidies to families-based on income, family structure, demonstrated saving capacity, and current housing condition-in order to finance housing provided by the private sector according to certain pre-established standards. As a result, Chile has emerged as the only country in Latin America where, since 1992, new housing has been provided at a faster rate than the formation of new households, gradually eliminating the housing deficit.
• Eviction of poor settlements from well-to-do areas and other overt segregationist policies. Few other countries would dare to implement such policies today, as they would surely meet strong resistance in less autocratic societies where the rights of poor occupants are recognized as legitimate.

Although some of the achievements of these deregulation policies are widely recognized as positive-particularly in regard to legal and physical or urbanistic regularization and the quantity of social housing provided-many Chileans believe that the policies of the past 20 years have only caused new problems. Some of them are:

• Urban sprawl and its relation to increasing traffic congestion and dangerous levels of air pollution. For example, Santiago’s air pollution levels are matched only by cities three times its size, such as Mexico City and São Paulo, even though car use is relatively low.
• The formation of ill-equipped and socially segregated low-income neighborhoods. In a context of increasing economic and employment insecurity, these areas become a breeding ground for social problems such as drug addiction, juvenile delinquency, youth apathy and alienation.1 Even a casual visitor to the capital city, Santiago, is struck by the contrast between the flamboyance of wealthy, master-planned comunas2 such as Las Condes and the monotony of neighborhoods produced by private developers in fringe comunas such as Maipú and La Florida.
• Continued increases in land prices. Contrary to the predictions of those responsible for the deregulation policies, land prices in Chile have increased, absorbing an ever-larger share of the housing subsidy program.3 Some analysts have claimed that land prices already correspond to between 60 and 100 percent of the subsidy. This is seriously jeopardizing the sustainability of the voucher system, and is pushing the poorest sectors out of the program. These increases in land prices should come as no surprise, however; similar escalation has occurred in other countries where deregulation policies have influenced future demand expectations of ‘cheaper’ urban fringe development as an alternative to the congested centers.

It is unclear whether these urban changes can be attributed directly to the effectiveness of market-oriented land policies or to the strong overall performance of the Chilean economy. The steady growth in gross domestic product (GDP), averaging about seven percent a year since 1985, was interrupted only recently due to the Asian economic crisis.

Expanding the Debate

The liberalization of urban land markets in Chile represents an intriguing and innovative experience from an international perspective, yet internal public debate has been limited. Recently, the achievements and problems of liberalization have reached a point of such undeniable importance that they have stimulated broad concerns. Furthermore, the government has proposed modifying the current “Ley General de Urbanismo y Construcciones” (Law of Urban Planning and Construction), which would result in a number of significant changes. Among the most important are:

• broader responsibilities for urban planning, which would have to account for all local space (not only the urbanized areas within each municipality, as at present), and
• the application of a series of economic or market regulations, such as the issuance of special “construction certificates” designed to conserve the country’s architectural heritage, and the creation of “conditional urban development zones” to favor mixed-use schemes. Despite the importance of these potential modifications to future planning, they have not been debated widely, and the legislative proposal has not included theoretical considerations or an explanation that justifies the proposed changes.

To facilitate a focused discussion of these issues, Carlos Montes, President of the Chilean House of Representatives, invited the Lincoln Institute to participate in a seminar coordinated with the Institute of Urban Studies of the Catholic University of Chile. Titled “20 Years of Liberalization of Land Markets in Chile: Impacts on Social Housing Policy, Urban Growth and Land Prices,” the seminar was held in October 1999 in Santiago. It brought together members of the Chilean Congress, the business community (developers, financial leaders, etc.), officials of public agencies (ministries, municipalities, etc.), academics and representatives of NGOs to engage in a lively public debate. The discussion highlighted a clear ideological polarization between “liberal” and “progressive” approaches to understanding and solving deregulation issues (i.e., “more market” versus “more state”).

From a liberal point of view, these problems emerge and persist because land markets have never been sufficiently deregulated. Some liberals, in fact, insist that public intervention never disappeared; they believe that regulation actually increased after Chile’s return to democracy in 1990. For example, liberals cite various means, often indirect, by which the state restricts the free growth of cities, such as when it attempts to expand environmentally protected areas that are closed to urban uses or to impose an official and almost homogenous criterion of densification to all urban space. They also assert that citizens should be free to choose different lifestyles and that the authorities should limit themselves to informing citizens of the private and social costs of their options, with the implicit understanding that such costs are reflected in market prices when urban land markets are functioning efficiently (i.e., when they are fully liberalized).

The principal explanation offered by the liberals for the problems of equity and efficiency facing Chilean urban development today are insufficient advances in the application of criteria to “internalize the externalities,” particularly negative externalities, by those responsible for them. As passionately argued by some representatives of this group, private agents should be allowed to act freely, as long as they are willing to compensate society for the implied social costs incurred.

On the other hand, the progressives believe that liberalization has gone too far in its market approach and has left many problems unsolved: the increase in land prices; problems in the quality and durability of housing; the conditions under which land is serviced; social problems associated with urban poverty; and problems of efficiency and equity derived from the growth patterns of cities, such as the mismatch between areas where services are provided and the locations chosen for private developments.

These criticisms recognize the imperfect nature of urban markets and the need for greater levels of control and intervention. Among the forms of intervention recommended by many progressives are value capture instruments, which have rarely been used or even contemplated in financing programs for the public provision of new urban infrastructure and services. The creation of such mechanisms would be consistent with the idea of internalizing the externalities, a point of relative consensus between the progressives and the liberals. The main difference is that the liberals would restrict value capture to the public recovery of specific costs, whereas the progressives would consider the right to capture the full land value increment resulting from any public action, whether resulting from investment or regulation.

In more general terms, the progressives argue that not everything can be considered in strictly monetary terms. There are urban values and objectives related to public policy that cannot be achieved through the market, or for that matter by law, such as the sense of community. Although largely disregarded in the new housing options provided by private developers to low-income families, such as the voucher system, community solidarity is of tremendous importance to counteract the social problems that spatial segregation tends to exacerbate. Environmental conservation is another example of an urban policy objective for which “price tags” are seen to be of questionable effectiveness.

With regard to the free growth of cities and the idea of respecting the options of their citizens, the progressives react by noting that steep social and environmental costs tend to go hand-in-hand with sprawl. They also point out that the only group that can truly choose its way of life through the marketplace is the wealthy minority. While seeing benefits in concentration, progressives also voice concerns about extreme density. Some Chileans have expressed an interest in a metropolitan authority to deal with regional issues, and in the use of public infrastructure investment as a means of guiding growth.

Adequate responses to these issues and perspectives involve more than technical or fiscal solutions, such as the extent to which developers actually pay for the full cost of the changes they impose on society (let alone the problem of accurately assessing the costs) or the sustainability of the demand-driven voucher system which constitutes the core of Chile’s housing policy. The solutions also involve broader and more value-related concerns, such as the environmental costs of sprawl and the importance of maintaining local community identities and initiatives. Discussion in the Congress and other settings is still expanding, but is expected to take some time before the opposing perspectives reach consensus.

Martim O. Smolka is a senior fellow and the director of the Lincoln Institute’s Latin America and Caribbean Program. Francisco Sabatini is assistant professor of the Institute of Urban Studies at the Catholic University of Chile in Santiago. Laura Mullahy, research assistant, and Armando Carbonell, senior fellow, both of the Lincoln Institute, also contributed to this article.

Notes:

In contrast to the rest of the continent, drugs were not a major problem in Chile until recently.

2 Metropolitan Santiago is comprised of 35 independent political-administrative jurisdictions called comunas.

3 See Gareth A. Jones, “Comparative Policy Perspectives on Urban Land Market Reform,” Land Lines, November 1998.

4 Our use of the term “liberal” corresponds to its connotation in Chile, which refers to the strong influence of the economic principle of freeing market forces to their limits, as espoused by the “Chicago School.”

Sources: Francisco Sabatini, et.al., “Social Segregation in Santiago, Chile: Concepts, Methods and Urban Effects” (monograph, 1999) and Executive Secretariat of the Planning Commission for Investments in Transportation Infrastructure (SECTRA), “Survey of Origin and Destination of Trips in Santiago”(1991).