The Latin America region faces formidable challenges in education and training on urban land policy, planning, and taxation issues. For nearly 20 years the Lincoln Institute has been offering programs on these topics in 17 countries in continental South America, and several others in the Caribbean. These countries have different legal frameworks (some unitary and others federal), approximately 400 subnational governments (states, provinces, departments), about 15,000 municipalities representing a wide range of local conditions, and more than 100,000 public officials responsible for land-related policies and management.

As part of the Department of International Studies, the Program on Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) identifies partners, convenes appropriate audiences, advises on strategy, promotes research, and develops materials for education and training on key topics related to land policy. These include mitigation of rampant informality, reinforcement of self-financing through land value increments resulting from local public investments recovery, improving the performance of the property tax, and impacts of public interventions.

To reach out to its diverse audience, the LAC Program has developed a wide range of in-person classroom courses, seminars, and conferences for practitioners, including legislative and executive policy officials and their senior technical staff, as well as scholars, university students, and citizens. Traditionally, most of these programs have been weeklong professional development courses, offered once a year to 30 to 50 international participants from multiple countries, or ad hoc international or national conferences designed for hundreds of participants. However, the diversity of the Latin America region precludes tailoring the in-person model for different jurisdictions, and limited resources often prevent public agencies and private institutions from being able to send their personnel to the large cities where the events normally occurred.

As the programs became better known and the number of public officials seeking to participate in them grew, the Institute had to reevaluate its strategic approach to its mandate to improve the quality of debate on land policy issues through educational programs. Thus, to complement continuing in-person programs for targeted audiences in specific cities and countries, in 2004 the LAC Program began to develop other educational formats and media to reach key policy makers and professionals in government and academic institutions who were interested in urban land policy issues but unable to participate in one-time events.

The still-evolving LAC distance education offerings (Educación a Distancia, EAD) encompass many alternative approaches, including self-paced online courses; moderated courses that incorporate multiple interactive media formats; and graduate-level courses in partnership with Latin American universities and other institutions. These courses use a variety of tools and materials, ranging from simple, downloadable written materials to multimedia platforms such as Moodle, Blackboard, and eTEACH.

Pedagogical Strategies

Beyond the technological solutions to disseminating educational materials, a pedagogical problem remained. The pedagogical strategy adopted by the LAC Program for distance education is represented by an inverted triangle (figure 1). Users can remain at the general level, taking self-paced courses to obtain cross-topical but somewhat basic knowledge, or they can go deeper in one topical area through moderated courses or specialized, graduate-level university programs.

Working closely with pedagogical experts and guided by the Lincoln Institute mandate, the LAC staff and adjunct faculty gradually developed an EAD model based on the principles of constructivism, a psychological theory of knowledge developed by Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget, which argues that humans generate knowledge and meaning from their experiences. Constructivism can be considered in contrast to positivism, in which scientific knowledge comes from positive affirmation of theories through strict scientific methods, such as quantitative research. Given the diversity and complexity of the subjects involved in land policy, the LAC Program has explored both approaches in creating its distance education courses. In this context, constructivism applies more often to knowledge associated with policy alternatives, while positivism is used in more technical courses based on the application of tools.

The LAC Program organizes courses within the constructivist framework, encouraging a broad discussion about the issues related to urban land policy without preconceived notions. The distance education courses on the Moodle platform allow for the creation of virtual communities and wide-ranging discussion environments, with participants from many Latin American countries contributing concerns and experiences that may be quite different from those of the faculty. The LAC Program also offers courses that are instrumental to the development of quantitative and (geo)statistical tools used in urban land policy, in this case applying the principles of positivism and learning-by-doing.

Over the years, we have developed two products with different features, applications, and goals: restricted-access courses (moderated, graduate-level, and in-person support courses); and unrestricted, free-access, self-paced courses. All of these online courses are offered in Spanish for practitioners from public and private institutions involved in urban issues, and some materials are now being translated to and from Portuguese.

Moderated and Self-Paced Courses

Moderated courses were our first choice to address the challenges of informing and preparing public officials to expand the scope of their policy alternatives, because they provide a strong educational foundation based on readings, discussion, and reflection. All of our moderated courses are free; however, applicants are selected through a competitive application process. Classes have about 45 participants each, normally including at least one representative from each of the region’s countries. The courses are developed over nine weeks, each with a designated professor responsible for teaching and/or orienting participants; the third, fifth, and ninth weeks are available for students to complete or make up specific tasks or quizzes.

These courses are set up on the Moodle platform, which offers excellent results in terms of performance and usability. Three main tools are used.

• Discussion forums, considered the engines of the course. The professor acts as a virtual community facilitator and proposes a daily topic for discussion, such as: What are the major factors behind the poor performance of the property tax as a source of revenues in Latin American jurisdictions?, or What are the advantages of decentralizing to local government (municipalities) the responsibility for setting property tax rates? Participants frequently suggest other subjects that enrich and accelerate the acquisition and/or reconstruction of knowledge.
• Tasks, consisting of a report on land policy issues. The tasks may be an analysis of a legal framework, a strategy for land market data collection and analysis, or a map processed in a GIS environment. The report is uploaded to the platform and the professors grade it during the week following the classes.
• Multiple-choice quizzes, mainly for self-evaluation. The quizzes are used to test the participant’s understanding of reading materials assigned or to support the discussion forums and tasks.

Completion of tasks and quizzes along with participation in discussions constitute the minimum criteria for participants to pass the course and receive a certificate from the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

The LAC Program offers nine distance education courses with overlapping themes (figure 2). One set of courses includes Financing Cities with Urban Land, which fosters a critical examination of the various policies regarding the financing of cities through urban land; and Property Tax and Urban Financing, which provides the analysis of the legal, political, and economic principles of land taxation as a beneficial instrument for urban development. This tax course overlaps with two others: Application of Multipurpose Cadastres in Defining Urban Land Policies, which covers topics related to land tenure, geotechnologies and urban land valuation systems used in different Latin American jurisdictions; and Urban Land Valuation Techniques, which presents the techniques and basic principles of commercial valuations and mass appraisal of urban properties.

A second set of courses includes Legal Dimensions of Land Policy, which offers an analysis of the main approaches and categories found in urban legal systems in Latin America, with the review of relevant theoretical and practical aspects for urban public managers. It intersects with Management of Urban Land Markets, which provides an examination of the structure, function, and regulation of markets and their relationship to the economic, social, and environmental problems of cities.

The technical connections between the two sets are provided by two additional courses: Urban Land Markets Analysis Techniques, which analyzes the basic principles of land and real estate economics and the application of empirical methods; and GIS Applications for Urban Studies, which covers basic concepts of GIS, alphanumeric databases structure, and cartographic tools useful in urban studies. Most of these topics and techniques are covered transversally in the course on Land Policy Definition in Small Cities, introduced in Spring 2010.

Over the years, we have experimented with different configurations of faculty and administrative staff. Since 2009 we have implemented a simple but efficient coordinating structure with senior Lincoln Institute staff responsible for the strategic decisions in terms of courses and production of materials, and a distinguished group of adjunct professors and their assistants who communicate directly with the participants and follow up on instructions about uploading materials, assignments, and quizzes. To keep up with increasing topical diversity and enrollment demand for EAD courses, in 2010 we increased the number of faculty from 22 to 52 and developed a special course for all teachers and assistants to ensure that they are all operating at the same pace and within the same framework on distance education pedagogy and Moodle tools.

Another response to the consistent increase in demand has been the development of self-paced courses as an alternative and complement to the more intensive moderated courses. Using different platforms and multimedia materials, self-paced courses rely heavily on videos taped during in-person classes and available for viewing on the Lincoln Institute’s Web site. These products are also being adapted for free downloading, especially for use by private and nongovernmental institutions, small cities, and educational institutions.

Course Materials

LAC distance education courses are supported by both written and audiovisual materials. The written materials, usually in a PDF format, are selected for individual student reading, analysis, and reflection. They include documents authored by the participating professors, papers available on the Internet for public access, and chapters of books and reports published by the Lincoln Institute and other sources. For certain courses, legislation and public documents from various countries are shared in order to facilitate comparative case studies.

Some course materials, primarily those authored by course faculty, have been compiled as e-books that can be downloaded in whole or in part to meet the needs of the course participants. The four e-books produced to date (in Spanish or Portuguese) are also available to other interested users.

A variety of audiovisual materials provide additional information and enhance comprehension through different production and user technologies, but with the common goal of accelerating understanding of the core curriculum. Early multimedia offerings were simple videos of professors teaching a class with alternating PowerPoint slides to create the atmosphere of an in-person lecture. The videos are produced with high-quality digital technology, and are used for both self-paced and moderated courses. Some videos are filmed in a studio and others are filmed live during a scheduled course.

The incorporation of audio classes has further enhanced the distance education experience. Professors in countries throughout the region tape their voices using free software and following the instructions of the course administrators. The audio files and related PowerPoint slides are sent to the editing team, which then creates an audio class. The sound portions of the multimedia classes (both video and audio) are converted to MP3 audio files.

The audio and video classes are being transcribed for two purposes: to give the hearing or visually impaired access to the classes, and to create the basic material for translation and dubbing or subtitling. Moreover, transcriptions are used by faculty to write the chapters of the e-books that are being produced in collaboration with many of the courses. These resources inform the participants in moderated courses, and are also available to the general public on the Lincoln Institute Web site.

Working in distance education requires constant updating of information as land policy issues and contexts change, and the educational arena itself is expanding rapidly with new tools, methods, and strategies. Currently we are considering the implementation of a learning environment in Second Life, a leading alternative in cost-effective virtual education solutions for collaborative learning. Second Life simulates an academic environment with classrooms, meeting areas, libraries, and other resources. Participants create a virtual image of themselves (an avatar) that can be moved among these facilities to access bibliographic materials, attend classes, and interact with the avatars of other participants. At present, we are designing a virtual learning environment and preparing faculty to work in it, using their avatars for navigation.

Linking Distance and In-Person Education

By experimenting with various combinations of distance learning and in-person instruction, the LAC Program staff has learned that the mix is a promising and productive model to pursue. For several years, we have developed tailor-made moderated courses as prerequisites for in-person weeklong courses in Latin America. We are now beginning to use existing self-paced courses as a preparatory stage for participants as well. This allows us to make better use of classroom time and minimize the need for sessions designed to equalize participants’ understanding of concepts, terminology, and fundamentals during the weeklong professional development courses.

As an alternative to the nine-week courses, we have also developed partnerships with several universities and nongovernmental institutions to implement graduate-level courses that combine classroom instruction with distance education content. These courses rely on the same basic distance education infrastructure, professors, and materials used for the moderated courses. Most of them, after being implemented initially with Lincoln Institute support, continue being offered by the partner institutions themselves. Some of these courses were developed in the Dominican Republic and Bolivia, where the LAC Program had not previously worked, thus establishing partnerships that have led to sustained relationships.

This combination model began with several initiatives that brought together select groups of alumni from previous online courses, and it has continued as part of two specialization courses—Urban Planning and Financing, and Urban Cadastres and Land Valuation—both of which conclude their distance learning segments with weeklong, in-person sessions. Our partner institutions plan to offer the courses on a regular basis with continued Lincoln Institute support in the form of class materials and the distance education platform structure.

Achievements and Remaining Challenges

A number of initial challenges have been overcome and can now be described as successful outcomes of the LAC Program’s distance education initiative.

• Increase in the number of participants per country, including those in remote jurisdictions who had been difficult to reach through traditional courses (figure 3);
• Increased understanding of the interrelationships among urban land policy topics (figure 2);
• Better knowledge of the national, regional, and local realities of each country through the collection and updating of large amounts of data from the discussion forums and task reports requested as part of the moderated courses;
• New course offerings, such as the course on Land Policy Definition in Small Cities, including the implementation of self-paced courses to complement the moderated and in-person courses;
• Integration of several LAC Program faculty members to the distance education teaching environment, in spite of their initial skepticism;
• Increase in the volume of written and audiovisual study material;
• Structuring of a topical matrix (tree) related to urban land policies and their interdependencies;
• Cultivation of a second generation of faculty and researchers who are alumni of past educational programs; and
• Generation of new research projects to provide timely curriculum materials, case studies, e-books, and other course content.

Despite these advances and experiences acquired over time, some challenges remain.

• To identify and develop a broader dissemination strategy to reach those interested in urban land policy issues;
• To improve and define selection processes and other strategies to identify course applicants who are most interested and committed, in order to reduce the dropout rate in the free moderated courses;
• To increase the range of perspectives for Latin American policy makers by offering more topics and the opportunity to participate in more than one course; and
• To implement courses and seminars in a 3D virtual world environment as well as new kinds of virtual “in-person” seminars using avatars.

Final Considerations

The results achieved by the Lincoln Institute’s LAC Program over the past six years demonstrate that the distance education platform is both functional and reliable, and that a combination of online course types enables us to reach more people and places without losing contact or missing the daily monitoring of participants. The success of the current pilot programs has special significance because it confirms that distance education is a valid option for the Latin America region due to increasing availability of Internet access and the openness to alternative learning methods.

About the Author

Diego Alfonso Erba is a fellow in the LAC Program at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and professor at Universidad Nacional de Rosario, Argentina. He is a land surveyor/engineer with doctoral and post-doctoral degrees in surveying sciences. He began working with distance education in Brazil in 2001 at Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos (UNISINOS), and has spearheaded this program for the Lincoln Institute.

The current state of global urban development is unsettling and plagued with man-made and natural disasters. In many developing countries, the government does not have the fiscal and institutional capacity to build affordable housing and basic infrastructure for the growing urban population, resulting in a proliferation of informal settlements and slums. At the same time, natural disasters in some of these distressed regions have destroyed homes, roads, water and sewage systems, and other public facilities, exacerbating the already limited basic services available to the urban poor.

In response to these problems, many international aid agencies such as UN-HABITAT and the World Bank, as well as governments, scholars, and practitioners, are looking for new ideas or repackaging existing ways to rebuild cities. This article discusses a long-established land management tool that has attracted recent attention—land readjustment (LR)—and describes how selected elements of this tool are being adopted to assist post-earthquake reconstruction efforts in Chile.

The LR approach emphasizes the integration of the urban economy, city planning, law, and governance with land management to form a comprehensive urban development or upgrading strategy. It requires an interdisciplinary team of experts with different perspectives to work on a concrete land development project. Although many scholars such as Doebele (1982) and Hong and Needham (2007) have emphasized the importance of this integrated approach, some practitioners perceive it as merely a tool to facilitate land transactions. This narrow view has limited opportunities in some developing countries to resolve urban upgrading and development problems in a more comprehensive way.

The recent resurgence of interest in LR is due to the recognition of the importance of coordinating economic, legal, political, and social institutions in the design and implementation of urban (re)development plans. Practitioners are also contemplating the possibility of extending LR from management of peri-urbanization and post-disaster reconstruction to slum upgrading, for example in some rapidly urbanizing African cities. The application of this LR approach to countries where the technique has never been used is still at an experimental stage. Potential pilot projects are being designed, but have not been fully implemented, so further research is needed to test the validity of assertions about this approach.

Challenges of Urbanization

In 2010, about 50.7 percent of the world’s population (3.5 billion people) lived in urban areas (World Bank 2011). The percentage is expected to increase to 70 percent by 2050, mostly in the periphery of secondary cities in developing countries. According to UN-HABITAT (2011), one-third of the urban population in developing countries (1.2 billion people) lives in slums and, despite substandard living conditions, these populations are increasing, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Asia-Pacific region. Between 2000 and 2010, the number of slum dwellers increased by six million annually (Cities Alliance 2011).

Unfortunately, infrastructure and basic service development in most African countries have not increased at the same rate. Cities where sanitation, roads, water, and other services were already underdeveloped have limited fiscal resources and struggle with accommodating the unprecedented increase in population. Two major problems that hinder urban upgrading are holdouts in land assembly and lack of public funds to finance infrastructure—issues to which we will return.

Natural disasters also have taken a toll on urban populations. According to a United Nations estimate, earthquakes, tsunamis, landslides, floods, and volcano eruptions caused economic damage totaling $109 billion in 2010, three times more than in 2009 (Reuters 2011). Cities in developing countries with poor infrastructure and fiscal health are particularly vulnerable and are facing increasing price tags for both post-disaster reconstruction and adaptation to future calamities. Again, solving the problems associated with land assembly and infrastructure financing are crucial.

Conventional solutions for dealing with land assembly problems, such as compulsory purchase (eminent domain) and market transactions, are onerous. With increasing global demands for democratic governance and the realization of human rights to adequate housing, secure tenure, and protection from forced eviction, the traditional approach of relying on coercive measures that take land from owners or occupants for urban expansion and redevelopment is encountering strong legal opposition and public protests (table 1).

Using the market to facilitate voluntary land transfers is also problematic. Holdouts by individual landowners could thwart the redevelopment project and increase compensation costs for land acquisition. In some African countries where market mechanisms are not yet fully developed, unequal access to information has led to land grabs and speculation by local elites. As a result, the urban poor were either forced out or bought out from their neighborhoods and were relocated to remote areas where access to employment, public transportation, and basic services are limited.

To make matters worse, the fiscal outlook for cities in developing countries is bleak, and the opportunities to speed up the construction or repair of housing and basic infrastructure are limited. The 2008 subprime mortgage market meltdown in the United States has had adverse repercussions for municipal finances around the world. The decline in demand for imports in industrialized nations and the tightening of liquidity in the financial markets has slowed global economic growth. As exports to developed countries decrease, income-tax and value-added-tax collections in less developed nations also drop. The reduction in tax revenues exacerbates the already tight local budgets and further undermines the ability of municipalities to repair disaster-damaged infrastructure or build new facilities to accommodate rapid population growth.

Land Readjustment as an Alternative

LR has been practiced in many countries to achieve policy goals ranging from farmland consolidation to inner-city revitalization (Doebele 1982; Hong and Needham 2007). Its basic principle is to organize landowners to act collectively—in cooperation with a municipality and/or private developer—to pool their land in order to accomplish a redevelopment project.

LR is often used to re-parcel land when existing parcel boundaries are in conflict with the current land use plan. One important outcome is that a portion of the readjusted land can be retained by the development agency for construction of necessary infrastructure and basic services. If LR is not used, this land would have to be acquired by the local government, which could entail a huge upfront cost.

In return for the owners’ or occupants’ land contribution to the project, each participant receives, upon completion of the program, a new parcel proportionate in size or value to the original one. The size of the parcel may be smaller, but the value is greater due to land improvements and infrastructure created by the project. In this way, LR generates desirable urban development patterns, increases land values, allocates these increments to the involved parties, and limits displacement.

What is important about the recent interest in LR is its renewed emphasis as a mechanism for building legal and social institutions to govern urban development. The major goal is to combine job creation, land use planning, urban densification, public-private partnerships, and value capture for public infrastructure financing in one comprehensive policy package.

Potential Advantages and Disadvantages

Different elements of this unified goal can be emphasized depending on the context. For instance, in the design of a LR project for urban upgrading in an African city where residents do not have legal property rights, policy makers can legitimatize the occupants’ claims to land and allow them to exercise their right to participate in the project. After land is pooled, readjusted, and serviced, the residents will be invited back to the neighborhood to rebuild their homes or receive an apartment unit with legal title. This is a win-win approach because it allows squatters to improve their living conditions and tenure security, and it increases development densities to enable the city to obtain much-needed land for urban expansion.

LR can also help implement citywide land use regulation incrementally. To ensure that individual LR projects add up to a coherent whole, they must be conducted as part of a comprehensive urban planning process. In situations where local governments lack the capacity to execute a large-scale master plan, related LR projects can be implemented in an orderly sequence and at a manageable scale to put into action a coordinated, long-term development strategy.

In addition, LR can engender democratic governance. The core principle of LR is to build consensus and cooperation among the parties involved in land development. These parties include formal landowners, informal landholders, renters, NGOs, national government agencies, city officials, and private developers. The process entails grassroots mobilization by giving the urban poor real bargaining power to approve LR proposals. Agreement from the supermajority of landowners and renters is required before LR can proceed, thus ensuring that the government (or a private organizing agency) will pay special attention to the needs of the underprivileged groups and avoid confrontation caused by the threat of forced eviction at the very beginning of the project.

Finally, LR can facilitate land value capture for financing local infrastructure and social services. In readjusting the land boundaries, land space is created by increasing development densities. This land space can then be sold in the market to raise funds to defray a portion of the infrastructure costs. This technique creates a clear connection between the development benefits received by landholders and the price that they need to pay to make the program financially viable.

Despite these potential advantages of LR over conventional land assembly methods, it is hardly quick or uncomplicated. LR is particularly difficult to implement in developing countries where public participation is not integrated into urban planning or where there is limited capacity to maintain ownership records and resolve competing land claims. When property owners do not recognize their obligation to pay for basic infrastructure and services, requests to give up a portion of their land to cover the project costs will be strongly resisted.

Another concern is that LR reduces plot sizes, causing problems in many informal settlements where people often rely on extra space to earn rental income or conduct agricultural and business activities. In some cases, urban legislation is often too rigid for facilitating LR. Furthermore, different stakeholders may value real assets in diverse ways, making consensus building difficult. Some see possible improvements in living conditions, neighborhood amenities, social networks, and cohesiveness of community as the predominant factors. Others may make their decision based solely on monetary gains.

The integrated LR approach is designed to target all of these issues by focusing on institutional design and development. It emphasizes learning from past LR experiences to illustrate the importance of local context and enhancing this tool to accommodate a wide range of variables and situations. In addition, future adoption of the technique will search for a good fit rather than a single best practice. Most fundamentally, the design of LR projects must be based on multiple perspectives ranging from political economy and anthropological approaches to legal investigation.

Designing Land Readjustment in Chile

On February 27, 2010, a massive earthquake and tsunami destroyed a large part of Central Chile. Three regions—O’Higgins, Maule, and Bio-Bio—comprising 5 major cities and 45 small towns were seriously damaged; more than 80,000 homes were destroyed, and about 108,000 units were severely damaged (figure 1).

In response to this unprecedented disaster, the Chilean government expanded its National Reconstruction Plan to include new mandates and more flexible policies to speed up its post-earthquake reconstruction efforts. This plan offers four types of assistance in the form of vouchers to affected families: (1) US$24,144 for rebuilding a new home on existing land; (2) US$19,083 for buying a new home in another neighborhood; (3) US$3,761 for repairing houses that were partially destroyed; and (4) a special bonus of US$4,200 if the destroyed house is located in a heritage zone (Ministry of Housing and Urban Development 2011).

Despite this financial assistance from the government, affected property owners are facing two major problems. First, because the reconstruction program gives priority to low-income households, the money provided by the state to middle-income families is insufficient for them to rebuild homes of the same size and quality or in the same neighborhood. Property owners without insurance coverage who want to build a similar house must sell their land and move to another neighborhood where the land price is lower. Those who live in tsunami-damaged areas now considered unsafe for redevelopment must resettle further inland, yet that may limit their access to jobs and public services.

Second, selling their land to finance reconstruction may not be a viable option for all affected residents. Some landowners refuse to sell to private developers who offer a low price because the property is so badly damaged. Others who are unable to sell their land may not have sufficient financial resources to rebuild. This persistence of unlivable houses and vacant lots covered with debris further dampens the private incentive to reinvest in the neighborhood.

To assist the post-earthquake reconstruction effort, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and the ProUrbana Program in the Public Policy Center at the Catholic University of Chile (the team) put forward a joint proposal to the Chilean government to experiment with LR.

The Pilot Project: Las Heras, Talca

The team decided to conduct its first pilot in the Las Heras neighborhood in Talca for four reasons.

First, Las Heras was ripe for redevelopment even before the earthquake. It is a middle-class neighborhood with large old houses and a beautiful main square. Good social networks exist among its residents, organized by the church and local NGOs, although its development had stagnated for many years due to economic restructuring of the Chilean economy. The central government was offering Las Heras assistance in developing affordable housing through the national voucher program, and these housing subsidies later became an important potential funding source for the proposed LR project.

Second, the Public Policy Center has another program called Puentes (Bridges) that conducts collaborative research projects with local municipalities, including a preexisting work agreement with Talca, which facilitated prompt support and cooperation from city officials.

Third, Talca has a master plan that allowed the team to design a series of related LR projects to be implemented step-by-step, so it could fulfill the city’s long-term development plan. Preliminary land ownership and demographic information, land use data, and property damage assessments in different neighborhoods are also available.

Fourth, the local government and private developers in Talca were interested in increasing urban densities. Densification provided the much-needed profit incentive for the private sector to redevelop damaged sites, and it could help the local government achieve its objective of increasing and upgrading the housing supply.

Buy-In from All Involved Parties

Following the integrated LR approach, the team recognized the importance of gaining support from the central government. It organized a seminar in Santiago in May 2010 to present the concept of LR and exchange views with top officials from the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development (MHUD). After several rounds of follow-up discussions, the director of the National Program of Housing Reconstruction agreed to purchase reserved land generated from the proposed LR project, thus providing a guarantee for one of the funding sources, and agreed to go to Talca with the team to encourage property owners to participate.

To obtain critical local government involvement, the team travelled to Talca in September 2010 to present the LR ideas to city officials. The team also met with selected property landowners to determine if they might be interested in contributing all or part of their land as capital to finance the reconstruction of their homes and neighborhood. In another visit, some team members also met with school and community leaders, emphasizing the need for broad community support for the project’s success.

The team next began to gather detailed data about the area by conducting a survey of residents in eight blocks comprising 217 lots near the main plaza of Las Heras (figure 2). Team members completed 135 questionnaires over the telephone and then interviewed selected residents. The survey results indicated that 77 percent of the respondents trusted their neighbors, and the majority of them (65 percent) wanted to stay in the neighborhood and were willing to work with their neighbors to rebuild the community. Only 12 percent of respondents planned to sell their property and relocate to another area. This information revealed that organizing property owners for LR was feasible.

Project Design

Because the majority of residents in Las Heras are unfamiliar with the concept of LR, the strategy started with a small pilot project to demonstrate the applicability of this method. The team chose a block near the plaza and proposed three scenarios for combining 8 to 12 sites for LR. The number of lots included in the proposed project would depend on the levels of difficulty involved in negotiating with affected property owners. To facilitate the participation process, the team prepared visual images of what the neighborhood environment might look like after the project (figure 3).

The team also conducted detailed financial and legal feasibility studies for the project. A tentative plan for financing the pilot included a careful calculation of the amount of land that each owner would need to contribute based on the availability of government subsidies, estimated building costs, compensation for temporary relocation, and a projected land price at the completion date of the project. The financial study also revealed that constructing housing units at an estimated future price of US$46,000 per unit would allow the project to be self-financing and provide the developer with a 10 percent profit margin—under the assumption that MHUD would purchase the reserved land to build affordable housing for low- and low-to-middle-income households after LR. It was also estimated that 24 percent of the housing units within the block would be affordable for low-income households. This would help the MHUD attain its policy goal of social integration through the provision of subsidized housing.

The Real Estate Co-ownership Law in Chile requires all participating owners of the LR project to sign a legal document specifying their rights and liabilities. For example, any sale of land held by the designated organizing agency would require the consensus of all participating owners. A legal contract signed by the agency and each participating owner would specify explicitly the number of housing units that the owner would receive at the end of the project and the date of the delivery. The contract would also guarantee compliance by requiring the agency to pay compensation to owners in case of failure to transfer properties in a timely manner and of acceptable quality. The agency also needs to submit the proposed plan to the city. The Municipal Works Department would review the project, approve the building plan, and authorize the transfer of land. The approved plan would then be recorded by the registrar.

Although the research conducted by the team shows that LR is feasible in Las Heras, progress in convincing landowners to participate has been slow due to five key challenges.

First, most property owners are unfamiliar with LR, and there is no existing example in Chile to show how the idea could work. The lack of precedents makes community organizing difficult.

Second, city officials have not provided sufficient support in organizing community meetings or interacting with property owners directly about the proposed project.

Third, many affected property owners who received assistance from their extended families or friends have already relocated to other areas. These owners are in no hurry to rebuild their homes and are delaying the transfer of their land until they receive a higher offer from a private developer or the government. In Chile, there is no LR law that can force these owners to transfer their real assets.

Fourth, not all buildings in the neighborhood were destroyed by the earthquake, and the owners of the unaffected homes are not willing to give up their existing plots for a neighborhood-wide redevelopment.

Fifth, although the survey shows that many owners are willing to work on rebuilding with their neighbors, solving local problems through collective action is not a social norm in Chile. Some property owners have a strong sense of entitlement to receive public resettlement assistance, which contradicts the idea of community self-help.

Interim Assessment

Although the LR approach in Las Heras is still a work-in-progress and it is too soon to predict if the team will be able to overcome local challenges, the project has already generated several observable impacts on Chile’s post-earthquake reconstruction policy (Public Policy Center 2011).

First, LR gives property owners in Las Heras an additional option for reconstructing their homes. Before the proposal, they had to either sell their properties to a private developer and move to another area or take the government’s subsidies and rebuild a house of smaller size and lower quality. LR provides residents with the opportunity to remain in the neighborhood and to attain the highest possible living standard by using their land as capital for home reconstruction.

Second, LR opens a new channel for the central government to work with local communities on reconstruction projects. The main reasons that the LR proposal for Las Heras could go forward are MHUD’s willingness to buy land, provide assistance in encouraging landowners to participate in LR, and give participating landowners the first priority to receive government housing vouchers to finance reconstruction.

Third, the introduction of LR has influenced the government’s overall post-earthquake reconstruction strategy. Through this holistic approach, public officials are designing a comprehensive reconstruction plan to rebuild the entire neighborhood coherently, rather than giving subsidies to individual homeowners to rebuild their houses separately. The MHUD has also invited the team to assist its reconstruction effort in the earthquake-damaged city of Constitución, indicating that the government has taken LR seriously as a viable option for other projects.

Fourth, all discussions among the central and local governments, landowners, NGOs, developers, scholars, and urban designers about LR have engendered an environment of mutual learning and understanding, which in turn is reshaping the governance structure for post-earthquake reconstruction. The involved parties have begun to realize that neither a top-down nor a bottom-up approach is sufficient to generate satisfactory solutions. Cooperation among all interested parties is paramount. The LR experiment has fostered a social discourse that helps all segments of society learn how to solve their problems collectively.

Conclusion

Like all policy experiments, the current proposals to test the integrated LR approach for urban upgrading and post-disaster reconstruction in countries where the idea is new will face uncertainties and challenges. Yet, given the mixed outcomes of conventional land assembly methods in many (re)development situations, LR could offer another option for policy makers, practitioners, and other interested parties to consider.

About the Authors

Yu-Hung Hong is a senior fellow of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and a visiting assistant professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Isabel Brain, a sociologist, coordinates the ProUrbana Program (Program of Urban and Land Policy) at the Public Policy Center, Catholic University of Chile in Santiago.

References

Cities Alliance. 2011. World statistics day: A look at urbanisation. Washington, DC. http://www.citiesalliance.org/ca/node/2195

Doebele, William A. 1982. Land readjustment: A different approach to financing urbanization. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.

Hong, Yu-Hung, and Barrie Needham. 2007. Analyzing land readjustment: Economics, law, and collective action. Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, Government of Chile. 2011. Reconstruction Plan (English version). Santiago, Chile: Ministry of Housing and Urban Development.

Public Policy Center. 2011. Land readjustment project, second report. Santiago: Catholic University of Chile. May.

Reuters. 2011. Cost of natural disasters $109 billion in 2010. January 24. http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/01/24/us-disasters-un-idUSTRE70N26K2…

UN-HABITAT. 2011. State of the world’s cities 2010/2011–Cities for all: Bridging the urban divide. Nairobi, Kenya: United Nations Human Settlements Program.

World Bank. 2011. Data: Urban population. Washington, DC. http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.URB.TOTL

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the other members of the LR project team for their contributions to this article: Armando Carbonell, Department of Planning and Urban Form, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy; Pia Mora, ProUrbana, Public Policy Center, Catholic University of Chile; Julio Poblete, DUPLA/Urban Design and Planning; Alejandra Rasse, Catholic University of Maule; Francisco Sabatini, Institute of Urban and Territorial Studies, Catholic University of Chile; and Martim Smolka, Program on Latin America and the Caribbean, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Es para mí un honor suceder a Gregory K. Ingram como quinto presidente del Lincoln Institute of Land Policy (ver página 28) y participar junto con ustedes en mi número inaugural de Land Lines. Será un gran desafío para mí poder estar a la altura de la capacidad de liderazgo de Greg y los años extraordinariamente productivos desde que él se hizo cargo del Instituto en 2005. Espero poder combinar mis habilidades y experiencia con las formidables herramientas y el talentoso personal del Instituto para continuar con nuestra misión singular: conectar a académicos, funcionarios públicos y líderes empresariales para combinar la teoría y la práctica de las políticas de suelo con el fin de abordar una gran variedad de desafíos sociales, económicos y medioambientales.

Hay fuerzas tectónicas —naturales, artificiales o ambas— que están dando nueva forma a nuestro planeta. A medida que confrontamos el cambio climático, la aceleración de la urbanización en Asia y África, el envejecimiento de las poblaciones de Europa y América del Norte, la suburbanización de la pobreza en los Estados Unidos y la insolvencia económica de las ciudades estadounidenses, las decisiones sobre el uso del suelo que tomemos hoy dictarán la calidad de vida de cientos de millones de personas en los próximos cien años. Hay una demanda crítica de planes y políticas integrales que regulen de manera equitativa el uso del suelo, sistemas políticos y sociales que garanticen la sostenibilidad, y análisis económicos sólidos con los que abordar estos desafíos, y esta demanda seguirá siendo alta durante las próximas décadas.

En este número de Land Lines, autores estrechamente relacionados con el Instituto Lincoln exploran estos temas. La fellow Lincoln/Loeb de 2013, Lynn Richards, próxima presidente del Congreso para el Nuevo Urbanismo, expone 10 pasos ingeniosos que las comunidades de los Estados Unidos han tomado para hacer sus suburbios más accesibles a los peatones, con viviendas económicas para compensar la suburbanización de la pobreza y emprendimientos más densos de uso mixto y transporte público para reducir el uso del automóvil y ayudar a retrasar el cambio climático. La arquitecta y fellow Lincoln/Loeb de 2014, Helen Lochhead, analiza los proyectos ganadores de Rebuild by Design (Reconstrucción por Diseño), el concurso internacional que promovió innovaciones de diseño para integrar resiliencia, sostenibilidad y habitabilidad en las regiones afectadas por la supertormenta Sandy. El Director de Relaciones Públicas Anthony Flint informa sobre el séptimo Foro periodístico anual del Instituto Lincoln sobre el suelo y el entorno edificado, que exploró opciones para realizar inversiones más inteligentes y equitativas en infraestructura en las ciudades del siglo XXI. Finalmente, en el Perfil académico, el analista de investigación senior del Instituto Lincoln, Adam Langley, comenta la base de datos de ciudades fiscalmente estandarizadas (FiSC) del Instituto, una nueva herramienta que servirá de base para nuevos análisis importantes que guiarán las respuestas locales a los desafíos fiscales de los Estados Unidos.

Y ahora un poco sobre mí. En los últimos 14 años trabajé en la Fundación Ford, donde ocupé un puesto singular en el sistema filantrópico global que me permitió apoyar, demostrar y ensayar nuevas maneras de resolver importantes problemas sociales. Algunos de los logros que más me enorgullecen son haber creado la Campaña Nacional de Propiedades Vacantes y Abandonadas, para ayudar a construir e incrementar la bolsa de viviendas de patrimonio compartido de la nación, por medio de colaboraciones con la Red Nacional de Fideicomisos de Suelo Comunitario y otras organizaciones asociadas. Ayudé a diseñar y posteriormente lideré Metropolitan Opportunity (Oportunidad Metropolitana), la próxima generación de programación comunitaria y de desarrollo económico de la Fundación, que se propone reducir el aislamiento espacial de las poblaciones necesitadas en regiones metropolitanas integrando la planificación del uso del suelo, el desarrollo de viviendas económicas y la inversión en infraestructura para ofrecer un mejor servicio a todos sus residentes.

Antes de trabajar en la Fundación Ford, había acumulado una gran experiencia en investigación sobre vivienda, economía y análisis de políticas públicas. Tuve la oportunidad de trabajar con académicos de todo el mundo en temas tan diversos como el nacimiento del movimiento medioambiental en Rusia, el papel de los desequilibrios de intercambio comercial y la deuda en los ciclos macroeconómicos y el impacto de la propiedad de la vivienda en las vidas de familias de bajos ingresos. He sido maestro y mentor de miles de estudiantes y he seguido sus logros con gran orgullo. Presenté investigaciones, abogué por cambios políticos y colaboré con éxito con investigadores, activistas y funcionarios públicos en cuatro continentes. Y ahora estoy entusiasmado y me siento honrado por unirme a ustedes en esta aventura con el Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Inclusionary Housing: Creating and Maintaining Equitable Communities

By Rick Jacobus

From Seattle to San Francisco to Chicago to Portland, Maine, debates are raging over inclusionary housing—the requirement that developers reserve a percentage of new residential development as affordable. Some say the policy discourages development—or, in an argument that could reach the Supreme Court, that it threatens property rights. Meanwhile, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio faces dual criticisms that his inclusionary housing proposal goes too far, or not far enough.

This new report by Rick Jacobus, Inclusionary Housing: Creating and Maintaining Equitable Communities, separates myth from fact, charting a path forward for policy makers and showing how inclusionary housing can be used effectively to reduce economic segregation.

“In hot-market cities, skyrocketing housing prices push middle-class and low-income residents far away from well-paying jobs, reliable transportation, good schools, and safe neighborhoods,” says Lincoln Institute President and CEO George W. McCarthy. “Inclusionary housing alone will not solve our housing crisis, but it is one of the few bulwarks we have against the effects of gentrification—and only if we preserve the units that we work so hard to create.”

Through a review of the literature and case studies, author Rick Jacobus of Street Level Urban Impact Advisors offers solutions for overcoming the major political, technical, legal, and practical barriers to successful inclusionary housing programs.

“More than 500 communities have used inclusionary housing policies to help maintain the vibrancy and diversity of neighborhoods in transition, and we’ve learned much along the way,” Jacobus says. “Research shows that if programs are thoughtfully designed and implemented, they can be a valuable tool at a time when affordable housing is desperately needed.”

In particular, the report addresses the concern that inclusionary housing can impede new construction by making development less profitable. According to the report, many cities have avoided such impacts by allowing flexibility in how developers comply and offering incentives, such as the ability to build at greater densities.

Other key findings and recommendations in the report include:

• Rapid construction of market-rate housing actually fuels the need for more affordable housing by changing the character of neighborhoods.
• Inclusionary housing programs have been challenged in court, but programs can be thoughtfully designed to minimize legal risks.
• Follow-up in the form of enforcement and stewardship is critical. Some communities have created thousands of affordable homes, only to see them disappear after subsequent sales.

The Lincoln Institute has for many years developed strategies to support permanently affordable housing, including the establishment of community land trusts and other shared-equity arrangements. The effort is in recognition of the ongoing housing affordability crisis in many cities. Stratospheric rents and home prices in hot real estate markets are displacing longtime residents and changing the character of cities and neighborhoods.

To order, visit http://www.lincolninst.edu/pubs/3583_Inclusionary-Housing.

Rick Jacobus, a national expert in inclusionary housing and affordable home ownership, is the principal of Street Level Urban Impact Advisors (StreetLevelAdvisors.com). He was the founder of Cornerstone Partnership, and he currently serves as a strategic advisor to Cornerstone.