This professional development course examines large-scale projects designed to promote the redevelopment or regeneration of deteriorated or abandoned urban areas; the extension of the urban perimeter; the strengthening of growth centers; and/or the creation or rehabilitation of central city areas, including historic centers. The course focuses on policies and a broad set of land-based tools and management instruments to finance and fairly redistribute costs and benefits, and/or promote social urban integration. The course presents methodologies to evaluate the impact of these large-scale projects and critically analyzes a wide variety of case studies.

The video classes are multimedia treatments of diverse topics related to urban land policy. Developed to support both moderated and self-paced courses of the Program on Latin America and the Caribbean’s distance education, they are also well suited to generate discussion in neighborhood associations, professional associations, public entities and other groups interested in these topics. Videos are presented primarily in Spanish.

In recent years, vacant land has acquired great importance in the definition of land policies. Housing programs need vacant land and an increased demand for its purchase ends up in land value increments that often make programs unfeasible. This course, offered in Spanish, aims to present alternatives for the management of vacant land in the definition of land policies.

In recent years, the idea of vacant land has acquired great importance within the definition land policy. As housing programs require the use of vacant land, the demand for such land grows, resulting in elevated values that often make these programs unfeasible. This course, offered in Spanish, takes a closer look at alternatives for vacant land management in land policy.

This course is especially designed to provide an understanding about current urban issues in Latin American cities and their roots in land and urban policies to a journalism audience. Mass media and journalism professionals have great potential to inform the public regarding cities and their problems as well as influence urban and land policy. The course will cover the fundamentals of land markets (land use and price determination), the nature and limits of property rights in Latin American legislation, and alternative land-based tools for financing urban (re)development. Special attention will be given to new urban planning instruments currently being applied in the region, including value capture, inclusionary zoning, and regularization of informal settlements.

The course, offered in Spanish, provides a space to discuss new theoretical perspectives and practical experiences that seek to challenge and overcome some weaknesses of traditional technocratic planning, and the need to make visible the state’s role in building the city and the impact that planning decisions have on land markets.

Each year, the Program on the People’s Republic of China offers a week-long capacity-building “Training the Trainers” course to young faculty members, researchers, and practitioners from universities, government agencies, and institutions across China. The subject of the course varies each year, often targeting to the specific need for knowledge relevant to the current policy reform. The course is taught by internationally-reputed scholars in relevant fields. This year the course topics are Municipal Fiscal Health and Urban Planning.

Latin America has undergone an accelerated process of urbanization and is nowadays the second most urbanized region in the world. Today, medium-sized cities lead the urban population growth creating enormous challenges for emerging cities. This course, offered in Spanish, aims to expose and work the particularities that define small towns and their urban management processes in order to identify the most appropriate tools for defining land policies.

Prerequisites: Knowledge on land planning models, functioning of land markets and capital gains recovery is recommended.

This week-long professional development course offers students the opportunity to assess and challenge their understanding of fundamental topics related to urban informality. Participants will examine tools on informal economic analysis, land markets and pricing, as well as the development of informal settlements in Latin American cities. Students will deepen their knowledge on different intervention tools and land tenure regularization processes by means of case studies from Latin America, the Caribbean and other regions.

Nowadays it is necessary to analyze a set of policy initiatives on sustainable cities with a broad perspective that not only focuses on explaining the instruments that have been proposed in various cities, but rather identify possible points of contradiction with the theory of land. This course, offered in Spanish, aims to discuss the impact that new urban environmental sustainability initiatives could have on urban land policies.

Specific requirements: Participants must have knowledge of operation of land markets, urban capital gains, fundamentals of urban planning, access to land and urban marginality.