Una versión más actualizada de este artículo está disponible como parte del capítulo 4 del libro Perspectivas urbanas: Temas críticos en políticas de suelo de América Latina.

En muchas ciudades brasileñas, los impuestos a la tierra y las edificaciones son muy poco utilizados. Según datos del Instituto Brasileño de Administración Municipal (IBAM), por ejemplo, en la mitad de los municipios de más de 50.000 habitantes el impuesto a la propiedad representa menos del 30% del total de los recursos tributarios. Considerando que para la mayoría de estos municipios los ingresos a cuenta de impuestos locales representan menos del 30% de los recursos totales, los impuestos a la propiedad no sobrepasan al 10% de los recursos financieros de los municipios (incluyendo transferencias intergubernamentales). Tales porcentajes resultan incluso menores en los municipios más pequeños. Otros impuestos basados en la tierra, tales como el impuesto a la transferencia de bienes raíces y el impuesto a las mejoras a la propiedad presentan un patrón de resultados igualmente desalentadores.

Especialmente a partir de la nueva Constitución brasileña de 1998, cuando la responsabilidad principal de planificación del uso de la tierra fue transferida al nivel local, los municipios se han vuelto cada vez más conscientes de que la regulación del uso de la tierra y las inversiones públicas en infraestructura introducen cambios en el valor de la tierra. Muchos empleados oficiales públicos están actualmente tratando de desarrollar estrategias de planificación para capturar parte de los beneficios “gratuitos” resultantes. A la vez, los gobiernos locales están encontrando problemas en la aplicación de instrumentos tradicionales de planificación tales como el Plano Diretor, una medida constitucional que requiere que las ciudades con poblaciones mayores de 20.000 habitantes desarrollen un plan maestro. Estas ciudades se encuentran cada vez más involucradas en el debate sobre la flexibilidad del marco regulativo del uso de la tierra. Consecuentemente, la idea de una zonificación flexible a cambio de contribuciones de los promotores se ha vuelto también popular.

Para investigar los aspectos económicos, financieros y de planificación urbana de estos cambios negociados en el uso de la tierra, el Instituto Lincoln y la Municipalidad de Santo André (Estado de São Paulo) organizaron un programa de tres días sobre “Instrumentos y Técnicas de Financiamiento del Desarrollo Urbano en base a la Tierra” en mayo de 1998. Durante los dos primeros días, empleados municipales de Santo André se reunieron con conferencistas invitados para compartir sus experiencias en instrumentos de zonificación, captura del valor y desarrollo económico local en lugares tan diversos como Nueva York, Ciudad de México y Colombia. Las discusiones abarcaron tres temas generales: la captura del valor y el financiamiento urbano; la planificación urbana y el mercado de la tierra; y las negociaciones y asociaciones público-privadas.

El programa finalizó con un debate público que incluyó a una audiencia regional de aproximadamente 200 planificadores, promotores y representantes de organizaciones no gubernamentales, del sector privado y de las comunidades locales dentro de la región del Gran ABC (siete municipios alrededor de São Paulo, incluyendo a Santo André, que en conjunto constituyen el área industrial más densa de Latinoamérica). Un grupo de discusión sobre la efectividad de las negociaciones en base a la tierra y las asociaciones público-privadas en el contexto brasileño contó con la participación de conferencistas de la Universidad de São Paulo, del sector de bienes raíces y de los gobiernos locales.

Numerosas conclusiones se derivaron del programa. Primero, los cambios negociados del uso de la tierra típicamente se producen en ambientes donde los impuestos a la propiedad no funcionan bien. En Santo André, por ejemplo, las restricciones operativas y legales existentes dificultan el reacondicionamiento del sistema de impuestos a la propiedad (ver Figura 1).

Segundo, los cambios negociados del uso de la tierra en Santo André parecen acompañar un cambio continuo de usos industriales a usos asociados con el moderno sector terciario de servicios. A través del proceso de negociación, se introduce una mayor flexibilidad dentro del existente marco legal, como se ha observado en las recientes negociaciones entre el centro comercial Plaza ABC y Pirelli, la empresa multinacional de fabricación de neumáticos. Tercero, aun cuando las negociaciones del uso de la tierra aparentemente satisfacen expectativas en lo que se refiere a complementar la dinámica de la economía local, no hay una metodología ni un marco bien establecidos que permitan definir reglas claras y estables basadas en un análisis sólido de costo y beneficios. En comparación con experiencias internacionales como la de Nueva York, resulta difícil prever las compensaciones monetarias que se pueden esperar en las ciudades brasileñas y si dichas compensaciones son realmente eficientes (en términos de Pareto) vis-a-vis situaciones en las que el permiso de desarrollo se hubiese negado.

Finalmente, los cambios negociados del uso de la tierra deben ser vistos como un elemento esencial de la estrategia general de desarrollo económico local. En la región del Gran ABC, las asociaciones estratégicas entre inversionistas de los sectores público y privado son cada vez más importantes en vista del proceso constante de reestructuración local y regional que ha tenido dramáticos efectos negativos en los niveles de ingreso y de empleo.

Entre las lecciones que nos ofrece el programa de Santo André está la necesidad de desarrollar mejores medidas para calcular los aumentos del valor de la tierra causados por los cambios de zonificación, a fin de poder desarrollar medios para capturar esos valores a través de sistemas más eficaces de tasación. Además, la experiencia de Nueva York muestra que es mejor recolectar impuestos a tasas más bajas por medio de un sistema universal y estable, que en base a una negociación arbitraria caso por caso, la cual puede prestarse al abuso y a la corrupción.

Jeroen Klink, economista urbano, es consejero del alcalde de Santo André. Anteriormente fue Dissertation Fellow del Instituto Lincoln, y se encuentra completando su tesis de doctorado sobre “Fuentes de Financiamiento Urbano: la Aplicabilidad del Modelo Estándar Económico al Caso Brasileño” en la Escuela de Arquitectura y Urbanismo de la Universidad de São Paulo, Brasil. Luis Carlos Afonso, economista, es Secretario de Finanzas de Santo André. Irineu Bagnariolli Jr., sociólogo urbano, es Secretario de Vivienda y Desarrollo Urbano de Santo André.

Figura 1: Limitaciones a la Revisión del Impuesto a la Propiedad

En 1993, la administración de la ciudad de Santo André aprobó una ley otorgando un descuento del 40% en el impuesto a la propiedad. Dicho descuento iba a ser válido solamente durante ese año. Sin embargo, la reducción ha sido mantenida como resultado de varias cláusulas legales que determinan que el valor del impuesto en el año en curso no puede exceder el valor del año anterior, estableciendo así un límite al impuesto.

Otra restricción al uso más agresivo del impuesto, especialmente a fin de promover una tasación más equitativa, es la interpretación dada por la Corte Suprema de que el impuesto no puede ser progresivo. La única excepción permitida es la aplicación penal por desuso o falta de uso de la propiedad, cláusula que en sí misma depende de la emisión de nuevas leyes federales y que ni siquiera ha sido discutida por el Congreso. (Claudia M. De Cesare, “Usando el Impuesto a la Propiedad para la Captura del Valor: el Caso de Brasil”, Land Lines, enero de 1998).

Durante 1990 y 1991, una administración previa en Santo André trató de otorgar descuentos al impuesto a la propiedad basados en las características físicas, el uso actual y el tamaño de la propiedad, pero la iniciativa fue rechazada posteriormente por dictamen de la Corte a causa de su supuesto carácter progresivo oculto. Así, el límite a los impuestos a la propiedad, a pesar de ser revocado formalmente por una ley posterior, permanece básicamente inalterado, ya que si los impuestos fueran aumentados los sectores más pobres de la población serían los más afectados en forma negativa.

Finalmente, en Santo André y en todas las ciudades brasileñas, el valor del metro cuadrado de tierra está fijado por ley, lo cual impide la capacidad de la administración urbana de aplicar impuestos a la propiedad de bienes raíces de acuerdo con su valor en el mercado.

Increasing socio-economic and spatial disparities in Latin American cities have prompted a revival of interest in equity-oriented government policies to reduce those disparities. However, solutions to the major urban problems being faced today must go far beyond the implementation of inconsistent and narrowly defined actions. The solutions must ensure equity for all sectors of society. In too many places, entire neighborhoods are forced to exist under deplorable living conditions while government agencies seek to evict residents in the name of environmental protection. It is evident that urban legislation can no longer ignore the rights of people to have a place in which to live in security and dignity.

The critical impact of land inequity on the urban environment requires that the urban poor gain access to the technical information necessary to better negotiate their concerns with public officials. My research explores the role of environmental education in low-income communities in developing countries. Taking a perspective based on self-help capacity building, my goal is to develop programs to train community leaders at the grassroots level to deal more effectively with local land use conflicts and environmental risks.

Impacts of Land Inequity

Like many Latin American cities, Rio de Janeiro is strongly affected by prevailing poverty and environmental degradation. Complex factors are involved: economic instability, inequitable land ownership, short-sighted development policies, and a lack of a democratic system that provides for human rights and freedoms. In my view, the problems experienced by Rio de Janeiro during the last few decades are mainly a result of existing “apartheid” urban planning assumptions and a lack of political will to incorporate the popular sectors in land use policy making.

In the region of Baixada de Jacarepaguá-at the heart of the core expansion area of Rio de Janeiro-the extraordinary process of urban growth since the 1970s has provoked dramatic changes in the landscape, as well as a variety of environmental problems. Amidst the spectacular natural beauty of lagoon ecosystems, mangrove forests and wetlands, the region remains home to a large population of urban poor who live in favelas-shanty communities resulting from largely uncontrolled urbanization of public land.

During the 1980s and early 1990s, the region enjoyed an unprecedented development boom that has fostered unsustainable patterns of land use. Discrimination against the poor inhabitants and inequalities in landownership allowed landowners and speculators to capitalize on the boom by formally obtaining titles and subdividing the land. In addition, a select group of private builders injected themselves into the local scene with multiple court permits to develop the region for high-income residential condominiums, commercial establishments and industrial enterprises.

Increasing pressures on the land snowballed into a wide range of protests between the popular sectors and the powerful land developers, posing the threat of forced eviction of the poor inhabitants. The accumulated discontent against the government for failing to control land speculation and ensure protective legislation created an extremely dangerous situation. Violence and persecution claimed the lives of 30 community leaders, presidents of local community associations, their family members and relatives. The murders were carried out by what are known in the region as “extermination squads,” and no criminal investigation has taken place.

The Vicious Cycle of Poverty and Environmental Degradation

Since poverty and environmental degradation are interdependent, it is appropriate to think of environmental concerns in terms of social justice. My research revolves around the problems of inequality and the environmental risks faced by the residents of the Via Park village-an informal settlement located in the region of Baixada de Jacarepaguá. A basic question arising from this research is to what extent can improved access to land equity actually contribute to mitigate the factors that encourage environmental degradation. By connecting land use issues to the learning process of environmental education, the research demonstrates that environmental degradation is a recurring phenomenon manifested in the inequitable ways land has been used and distributed in the region.

Via Park village has been caught in a serious land use struggle since the 1970s, when urban development began to impact many traditional fishing communities in the area. Builders were eager to lobby the government to break the fishermen’s land tenure system, which was enforced by law, and thereby turn the land over to market forces. In the 1980s, the area was designated a public reserve for environmental preservation, enshrined in Article 225 of the Brazilian Constitution (1988). Since the village was located on protected land, the city’s planning authorities then argued that the Via Park residents had no legitimate claims of ownership.

Living in an atmosphere of fear and at mercy of the land developers and speculators who continued to flourish, the Via Park residents started illegally subdividing and selling small parcels of land to new settlers. The growth of the poor population and the concentration of land ownership and speculation contributed to the expansion of informal land markets into nearby low-income communities.

Underlying these practices was a more complex system of commercial transactions and civil relations governing the invasion of vacant lands, as well as the division and sale of plots. Throughout Rio de Janeiro, land development through informal channels is the predominant “territorial pact” by which disadvantaged local groups have been able to gain access to land and housing. At the same time, agents from the “formal world” have developed political arrangements to support and take advantage of existing informal land markets.

It was in this context that a program for grassroots environmental improvement was conceived and eventually implemented in Via Park village. However, given the residents’ long history of exclusion-including threats of forced eviction-they remained suspicious. It became clear that successful program implementation would depend on managerial strategies based on an integrated vision of the geographic/ecological and social/cultural environment.

If the dilemma of poverty and environmental degradation is to be overcome, then the task of improving the environment must be shown to be compatible with the struggle for land equity. This innovative approach toward environmental education differs from traditional methodology, which is generally more concerned with simply introducing physical changes to the environment. The key here is to focus on the conditions that are favorable for the development and exercise of a sense of “community belonging”-a tangible expression of shared sentiments, values and identities where land is understood not only as a component of wealth, but as a common settled place invested with symbolic meanings.

Lessons of Via Park Village

While there is no single solution to the social and environmental vulnerability of the urban poor living in the Via Park village, their experience does offer some insights. One alternative suggests creating “urban natural reserves” integrated into the community where those threatened with forced eviction are encouraged to maintain their traditional lifestyles. In exchange, government authorities at all levels would accept the obligation to promote land equity, giving security of tenure and protection to those forced by circumstances to live in informal settlements.

Aspects of the environmental education program initiated in the Via Park village are applicable to other Latin American cities. The fundamental principle is based on insuring respect for the inherent identity of the community. The experience of the Via Park residents demonstrates that local action can contribute to consolidating a socio-political struggle for land equity with protection of the environment. This is in line with current thinking about land use and environmental management, which suggests an integrated approach that acknowledges the leadership role of the local residents.

The Via Park case reveals that a routine excuse being used to justify evictions is “protecting the environment.” In other words, the urban poor most often accused of being the primary protagonists of environmental degradation are in reality the greatest victims. For the 450 residents of the Via Park village, the trauma of being forcibly evicted from their homes will never be overcome. Five people, including two children and one woman, lost their lives in the confrontation. The Via Park village, now destroyed by bulldozers, still reminds us that hope for land equity lies in community solidarity, effective governance and democracy.

Sonia Pereira is a visiting fellow of the Lincoln Institute. She is also completing her Ph.D. thesis from the Institute of Earth Sciences of the Federal University in Rio de Janeiro, with support from a Fulbright scholarship. An environmental lawyer, biologist, social psychologist and activist on behalf of human rights, she has been widely recognized for her work on environmental protection for low-income communities in Brazil. She is a Citizen of the World Laureate (World Peace University, 1992) and a Global 500 Laureate (United Nations Environment Programme-UNEP, 1996).

Una versión más actualizada de este artículo está disponible como parte del capítulo 1 del libro Perspectivas urbanas: Temas críticos en políticas de suelo de América Latina.

El Programa para América Latina del Instituto Lincoln se dedica a la educación y los proyectos de investigación con universidades y gobiernos locales en toda América Central, Sudamérica y el Caribe. Estas actividades cobran mayor relevancia en la actualidad debido a los numerosos cambios políticos y económicos por los que están atravesando los mercados inmobiliarios de América Latina. Por ejemplo, la (re)democratización del continente permite que un segmento más amplio de la sociedad participe en el diseño de programas viables e innovadores para los gobiernos locales en manos de partidos políticos rivales.

Además, las reformas institucionales, y en muchos casos constitucionales, están afectando el valor de la tierra y los derechos y regulaciones de la propiedad. Los programas de ajustes estructurales diseñados para contener la inflación y superar las crisis económicas de los años 1980 están cambiando las actitudes en cuanto a la tenencia de la tierra, ya sea como inversión o como reserva de valor. En América Latina, los frecuentes cambios especulativos entre la tenencia de la tierra y otros activos financieros, según los caprichos del “ambiente económico” predominante, han sido la pesadilla de los planificadores.

Las fuerzas de la globalización y la urbanización contribuyen igualmente con las presiones significativas y variables que se ejercen sobre el uso de la tierra. Cada vez más, se ven espacios al estilo de Los Ángeles en ciertas zonas residenciales de Sao Paulo, Santiago o Ciudad de México. Aunque la pérdida de la biodiversidad de la región se conoce bien porque está documentada, América Latina también corre el riesgo de perder la diversidad del uso de la tierra.

Pese a que estos temas son comunes, América Latina dista mucho de ser una entidad homogénea. La diversidad surge claramente al analizar la tenencia de la tierra y las estructuras de los mercados inmobiliarios de los distintos países, por ejemplo:

• La glorificación de los mercados inmobiliarios en Chile contrasta con la verdadera eliminación de dichos mercados en Cuba y la segregación residencial resultante.
• México tuvo una experiencia única con las tierras comunales (ejidos) que ahora se están privatizando con repercusiones considerables para la nueva expansión urbana.
• En Brasil, los frecuentes conflictos por causa de la tierra —algunos con consecuencias trágicas para los desposeídos— pueden atribuirse a una reforma prometida hace mucho y que aún no se ha materializado.
• En Paraguay, hasta su reciente democratización, tradicionalmente las tierras eran repartidas por un partido político hegemónico, en un claro menosprecio del mercado. En Argentina, por el contrario, el estado utiliza sus considerables reservas de tierras fiscales para facilitar las inversiones extranjeras en proyectos inmobiliarios, directamente a través del mercado.
• Es probable que la pasada redistribución de tierras en Nicaragua sea la causa de la vitalidad del mercado de bienes raíces recientemente liberado y los fuertes procesos de reconcentración de tierras que están en marcha actualmente.
• Los pujantes mercados inmobiliarios de Ecuador y Venezuela a menudo han sido atribuidos a la facilidad para el lavado de dinero proveniente de Colombia, país vecino donde la regulación es más estricta.

En vista de esta diversidad, el programa para América Latina del Instituto está concentrando sus esfuerzos educativos y de investigación en la creación de una red integrada por estudiosos sumamente capacitados y autoridades responsables de formular políticas públicas.

Dado que representan países diferentes y aportan variados antecedentes académicos y profesionales, estos expertos ayudan a identificar los asuntos de mayor importancia para la región. Estos son algunos ejemplos de los temas actuales que surgen de las necesidades reales y previstas por los funcionarios públicos: La reactivación del debate sobre el funcionamiento de los mercados inmobiliarios urbanos, el estrechamiento de la brecha entre el mercado inmobiliario formal y el informal y la implementación de nuevos instrumentos de políticas de tierras.

El acceso a la tierra por parte de la población urbana de ingresos bajos es el tema que tiene mayor presencia en el ánimo y la mente de muchos investigadores y funcionarios públicos. Hay dos campos de investigación que se relacionan: 1) los mecanismos que generan la segregación residencial o la exclusión a través del mercado por parte de agentes privados o públicos, y 2) las estrategias para que “los excluidos” tengan acceso a la tierra y así puedan formalizar su “inclusión social”. En su mayoría, los programas educativos que el Instituto lleva a cabo en América Latina para abordar la gestión de la tierra y los instrumentos de intervención pública surgen directa o indirectamente de este tema.

Para muchos funcionarios públicos de la región, la reforma de la tierra es un tema delicado y la recuperación de plusvalías de los bienes raíces generados por la actuación del sector público todavía parece una idea subversiva vista con recelo. De tal modo, el Instituto Lincoln se sitúa en una posición privilegiada como facilitador neutral con capacidad para colaborar con académicos y funcionarios públicos de América Latina, y también con expertos de los Estados Unidos, para aportar una perspectiva comparativa internacional de las ideas y experiencias en cuanto a las políticas de la tierra.

Martim Smolka, miembro principal del Instituto desde septiembre de 1995, se encuentra de licencia como profesor asociado en el Instituto de Investigación y Planificación Urbana y Regional de la Universidad Federal de Río de Janeiro, en Brasil.

I am pleased to report that the Lincoln Institute has signed an agreement of understanding with the Ministry of Land and Resources in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to work together on researching and teaching about land and tax policies. Many places in the world face fundamental problems in land allocation and land taxation, but it is difficult to imagine a place and time where the resources of the Lincoln Institute could be more influential and could help more people than in China during the early twenty-first century.

Land and tax policy makers in China are faced with enormous challenges as a result of the extraordinary urbanization of the past two decades. The number of established cities in China grew from 182 in 1982 to 324 in 1985, and reached 666 by 1996, and the average urban population grew by 227 percent between 1957 and 1995. Some cities grew by 200 percent from 1985 to 1995, and the urbanized area of Beijing doubled from 1985 to 1992. However, the extent of urbanization in the future will dwarf that of the recent past. Based on forecasts of population growth and migration, China must provide enough urban land and infrastructure to accommodate more than 450 million persons over the next 20 years. If all of the additional urban population were put in new cities of 10 million persons each, China would need to develop and finance 45 such cities.

China initiated fundamental and revolutionary land use reforms during the mid-1980s. The first reforms established privately held land use rights. The second set of reforms included multiple elements, such as land banking, land trusts, land readjustments, and development of land markets in both urban and rural areas. We believe that the Institute can make a real difference in assisting these reform measures by sponsoring education and training for government officials, supporting research and publications by U.S. and Chinese scholars, and facilitating more in-depth interactions through workshops and conferences.

Over the past two years the Institute has led two training programs in Beijing and participated in meetings between Chinese officials and scholars and Institute board members, faculty and staff. The Institute also sponsored several sessions on land and housing markets in the PRC at the First World Planning Congress in Shanghai in 2001. We anticipate several more training and exchange programs this year, but we believe this is still just the beginning of an expanded effort by the Institute to have a positive impact on land and tax policy in the world’s most populous country. In this issue, Institute faculty associates Chengri Ding and Gerrit Knaap examine some of the recent reforms and current trends in urban land policy in China.

The twenty-first century will witness record growth in the number and distribution of private residential communities. Collectively referred to as common interest communities (CICs) or common interest developments (CIDs), these communities rely on covenants, conditions and restrictions to privately govern and control land use, design decisions, services and social conduct. The communities own, operate and manage the residential property within their boundaries, including open space, parking, recreational facilities and streets. Although CICs historically have been the domain of the affluent, they are now becoming a viable choice for both suburban and urban residential development. Taking the form of condominiums, cooperatives, and single- and multifamily homes, both gated and nongated private communities are spreading among diverse economic and social classes.

A Worldwide Phenomenon

The proliferation of private communities in the United States is causing an unprecedented transition from traditional individual ownership to collective governance of property, signaling a remarkable shift in the American political and economic landscape. This trend establishes a new micro-scale level of governance beneath existing municipal structures, and highlights other tensions between the public and private sectors.

Indeed, the numbers provide a clear indication of this movement’s strength. At the end of the twentieth century, about 47 million Americans lived in condominiums, cooperatives and homeowner associations (HOAs). Growing from only 500 in the 1960s to an estimated 231,000 in 1999, HOAs now comprise almost 15 percent of the national housing stock, with an estimated addition of 8,000 to 10,000 private developments each year. In the 50 largest metropolitan areas, more than half of all new housing is now built under the governance of neighborhood associations. In California—particularly in the Los Angeles and San Diego metropolitan areas—this figure exceeds 60 percent (Treese 1999).

Recent press coverage and research from Europe, Africa, South America and Asia suggest that CICs are rapidly being popularized in other parts of the world as well. Although gated communities are still rare in Britain, former prime minister Margaret Thatcher reportedly moved into such a community in South London. In South Africa, where secure communities were an unavoidable consequence of racism, post-apartheid gated developments are inhabited by all races, and not only by the wealthy. In Saudi Arabia private compounds of linked houses provide extended families with privacy and identity. Those compounds seem to be a reaction to the single residential typology imported from abroad during the country’s modernization period.

Since the economic reforms of the early 1980s, many residential areas in Chinese cities have walls to improve security and define social status. Often these developments are designed by U.S. companies and based on U.S. planning and design standards. Private communities in Southeast Asia, such as in Indonesia, are marketed as places that allow the differentiation of lifestyle and give prestige and security to their inhabitants. In Latin America sprawling gated communities at the metropolitan edges of Santiago, Chile, Bogotá, Colombia, and other cities have become the norm for a growing professional class in need of a secure lifestyle in an environment dominated by social and economic poverty. The deteriorating political and economic state of affairs in Buenos Aires, Argentina, has resulted in situations where developers and private companies provide privatized “public” services that attract large sectors of the population to private developments housing up to half a million people (Environment and Planning B 2002).

Dual Governance, Rules and Outcomes

The spread of CICs in the U.S. is driven by the mutual interests of developers and local governments, including planning officials. Developers benefit because they can maintain profits—despite the high costs of land and infrastructure—by introducing efficient land design schemes and, often, higher densities. Local governments prefer CICs because they privatize infrastructure and reduce public costs. At the same time, consumers see a way to protect their property values through the ability to control their neighborhood character by using compliance and enforcement mechanisms. CICs also provide consumers greater infrastructure options, recreational amenities and community services.

The growing fiscal crisis experienced by many local governments means they are often unable to respond to such traditional community demands as building and maintaining streets, collecting garbage, snowplowing and other services. The establishment of a separate legal mechanism within a private neighborhood association allows collective control over a neighborhood’s common environment and the private provision of common services. Perhaps more important, this trend creates a de facto deregulation of municipal subdivision standards and zoning, because cities and towns allow for a different, more flexible set of standards to be implemented in private developments. Often, the results are innovative spatial and architectural layouts and, sometimes, unusually sensitive environmental design. This shift in neighborhood governance enables a resultant shift in the design of residential developments that heretofore has not been fully appreciated.

A recent nationwide survey of public officials and developers gauges the impacts of subdivision regulations on the design of residential developments and the practices of developers in rapidly growing regions of the country (Ben-Joseph 2003). It assesses attitudes and perceptions and identifies the issues regarding subdivision regulations that members of the housing industry and the regulatory agencies feel are affecting housing development.

Excessive Regulations

As early as 1916 Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., commented on subdivision standards and regulations.

While such regulations are intended only to guard against the evil results of ignorance and greed on the part of landowners and builders, they also limit and control the operations of those who are neither ignorant nor greedy; and it is clear that the purpose in framing and enforcing them should be to leave open the maximum scope for individual enterprise, initiative and ingenuity that is compatible with adequate protection of the public interests. Such regulations are, and always should be, in a state of flux and adjustment—on the one hand with a view to preventing newly discovered abuses, and on the other hand with a view to opening a wider opportunity of individual discretion at points where the law is found to be unwisely restrictive. (Olmsted 1916, 3)

Indeed, developers in the 2003 survey clearly expressed their frustration with the excessive and often unwarranted nature of physical improvements and standards associated with subdivision development. When asked to indicate which types of requirements present the greatest expense in conforming to regulations, an overwhelming majority (80 percent) pointed to requirements associated with site design. When asked to indicate which specific requirements they perceived as excessive, 52 percent of the respondents indicated those relating to street design and construction, with almost 45 percent indicating land dedication and 43 percent storm sewer systems (underground piping for storm water mitigation). When asked about which physical standards within each category were seen as excessive, those most frequently cited were street widths (75 percent of the respondents), street rights-of-way (73 percent) and requirements of land for open space (73 percent). Most developers also mentioned water and sewer hook-up fees (85–90 percent) and payments in lieu of land dedication (79 percent) as being excessive monetary requirements associated with physical improvements (see Table 1).

While one might expect that developers would criticize regulations as interfering in their business, it is important to note that most respondents were selective in their answers to the survey. Out of 29 requirements listed in Table 1, only 13 were considered excessive by the majority of developers, while 16 others were deemed reasonable. Such results indicate that many developers are tuned in to construction and design performance, and their attitude toward regulation cannot always be assumed to be negative.

Furthermore, the surveyed public officials (town planners and town engineers) often concurred with the developers’ observations. Generally these officials agreed that the regulatory process, such as the enforcement of subdivision regulations, has become more demanding and complex. Over the past five years, for example, 70 percent of the jurisdictions where these public officials work have introduced new requirements, and 57 percent have increased specifications, such as those for setbacks and lot sizes. Only 16 percent of these jurisdictions have decreased their specifications, mostly by reducing street widths.

Relief from Subdivision Regulations

Two-thirds of residential developers consider government regulations, particularly those pertaining to the design and control of subdivisions, the main culprit in prohibiting design innovation and increasing the cost of housing. More specifically, they see these regulations as an impediment to increasing densities, changing housing types, and reconfiguring streets and lots.

One way developers try to relax these regulations is through requests for relief in the form or zoning or design variances. More than half of the surveyed developers (52 percent) had to apply for some sort of relief in at least half of their projects, while 37 percent had to apply in at least three-fourths of their projects. When asked to point to the type of changes they requested, many indicated higher-density single-family projects, more multifamily units, and more varied site and structural plans. The majority of the developers in the survey responded that they sought to increase the density of housing units on their sites, but 72 percent noted that because of existing regulations they had to design lower-density developments than they wanted. Some developers reported that regulations forced them to build in greenfield locations away from major urban areas, where restrictions and abutters’ objections were less onerous.

Although almost all of the public officials (83 percent) reported that their jurisdictions require private developments to follow established subdivision regulations, the enforcement of these standards through the approval process is malleable. In some cases, when such a development is classified as a condominium, which may include attached and/or detached dwelling units, no formal review of street standards is required. In fact, the majority of public officials surveyed (61 percent) indicated that their jurisdictions allow for narrower streets to be constructed within private developments. One respondent stated, “Variances are more easily granted within private road systems since the county will not have any maintenance responsibility or liability.”

The practice of building narrower roadways and offering smaller building setbacks within private subdivisions has become widely accepted over the last decade. A street standards survey completed in 1995 showed that 84 percent of the cities responding allowed for different street standards in such developments, and that they more readily accepted the introduction of different paving materials, changes in street configurations, and the employment of traffic calming devices (Ben-Joseph 1995).

Design Benefits

Both public officials and developers acknowledge the design benefits associated with private subdivisions (see Table 2). Fifty-seven percent of officials indicated that private developments are introducing innovative design in the form of building arrangements and unit clustering. Forty-one percent felt that such developments permit the introduction of housing types not found elsewhere in their communities, and 61 percent indicated that they allow for narrower street standards to be incorporated.

While public officials see the benefits of pushing the design envelope within the confines of the development itself, many are also concerned about the social implications and impacts of these private developments on their surrounding communities. “As a matter of policy,” a survey respondent wrote, “gated private communities are discouraged as they are not in keeping with the urban form, which calls for an interconnecting network of vehicular and pedestrian movement. In addition, the walling of neighborhoods from arterial roadways should be avoided by alternatives such as the placement of other compatible uses along the periphery.”

Both developers and public officials believe that common subdivision regulations restrict alternative solutions, and they see privatizing subdivisions as a vehicle for simplifying the approval process and introducing design innovation. As one of the developers remarked, “Regular subdivision codes don’t allow flexibility. Lots are too standardized and streets use too much area. If I could build narrow streets and small lots, developments controlled by covenants and HOAs will not be necessary.” The ability to provide design choices and efficient layouts and to avoid a lengthy approval process drives both public and private sectors to offer CICs rather than typical subdivisions. Indeed, it seems that in the last decade most innovation in subdivision design has sprung from within the private domain and under the governance of community associations rather than within the public realm through traditional means.

Toward Better Subdivisions

The proliferation of CICs, with their ability to plan, design and govern outside of public boundaries, can be seen as an indicator of a failed public system. When developers and public officials resort to privatization to achieve a more responsive design outcome, and when local jurisdictions acknowledge that privatized communities provide a straightforward way to grant variations and innovation, then something is wrong with the existing parameters of subdivision codes and regulations.

For the last 25 years the subdivision approval process has increased in complexity, in the number of agencies involved, in the number of delays, and in the regular addition of new requirements (Seidel 1978). Both developers and public officials acknowledge that the application for variances and changes in subdivision regulations are lengthy and cumbersome. Therefore, it is not surprising that developers see private projects governed by HOAs as not only responding to market demands and trends, but also introducing planning and design concepts that are often not allowed or are difficult to get authorized under the typical approval process.

CICs are enabling developers to maintain profits and keep the design process relatively open-ended and flexible. The ability to operate outside the regular, common set of subdivision regulations allows developers to offer various design solutions that fit the local setting, the targeted site and the prospective consumers. In some cases these can be attractive, high-density yet affordable single-family developments, and in others low-density, high-end yet ecologically sensitive construction (McKenzie 2003).

The concept of private communities as environmentally sensitive developments may seem a contradiction in terms. However, some of these developments provide examples of responsible construction that minimizes environmental impact while maximizing economic value. In Dewees Island, South Carolina, there are few impervious road surfaces, allowing full restoration of the underground aquifer. Only vegetation indigenous to the local coastal plains is allowed. This xeriscaping approach removes the need for irrigation, fertilizers and pesticides. In addition, homes are required to use water conservation fixtures, reducing water consumption by 60 percent.

Paradoxically, while CICs are often controlled and managed by strict covenants and regulations, their initial design is very much outside the mainstream regulatory apparatus. It is precisely for this reason that they prove to be more flexible in their design solutions and more agreeable to developers, consumers and local governments.

How can such flexibility be integrated in the regular planning process? Can subdivision regulations be made more accommodating and less prescriptive? Will such an approach level the playing field and allow for more housing choices and greater design variety in the public domain? Will such changes promote developers to plan subdivisions endowed with CICs’ design qualities without their restrictive covenants and privatized shared spaces? And conversely, can CICs, while exhibiting great variation in architecture and site design features, be made less controlling in their management policies?

There are many issues raised by the spread of CICs, but none is more important than the realization that public policy and subdivision regulations must allow and promote more variety in housing styles and development options. Consumers should not be forced into CICs because they are the only type of development that offers a lively choice of features. CICs should be seen as a catalyst to change subdivision standards and regulations and as a vehicle to create a bridge between public officials and developers. Through the use of CICs developers are not only able to circumvent existing regulations, lower development costs and in some cases produce quite innovative community design solution, but also enable jurisdictions to secure new taxpayers with less public expenditure.

Not all CICs are created equal, and many are far from perfect. But, in terms of design efficiency, utilization of space, and integration of social and environmental amenities, private communities illustrate the shortcomings of many standards applied to typical subdivisions.

References

Ben-Joseph, Eran. 1995. Residential street standards and neighborhood traffic control: A survey of cities’ practices and public officials’ attitudes. Berkeley: Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California at Berkeley.

———. 2003. Subdivision regulations—Practices and attitudes: A survey of public officials and developers in the nation’s fastest growing single-family housing markets. Working paper. Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design. 2002. Theme issue: The global spread of gated communities 29(3).

McKenzie, Evan. 2003. Common-interest housing in the communities of tomorrow. Housing Policy Debate 14(1/2):203–234.

Olmsted, Frederick L., Jr. 1916. Basic principles of city planning. In City planning: A series of papers presenting the essential elements of a city plan, John Nolen, ed., 1–18. New York: D. Appleton and Company.

Seidel, S. 1978. Housing costs and government regulations: Confronting the regulatory maze. New Brunswick: Center for Urban Policy Research, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.

Treese, Clifford. 1999. Community associations factbook. Alexandria, VA: Community Associations Institute.

Eran Ben-Joseph is associate professor of landscape architecture and planning in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA. This article is based in part on his survey and research that were supported by the Lincoln Institute.

The prevailing land use regulation and land tax laws in the United States make the Kelo case and the use of eminent domain for private development particularly dramatic, especially compared to other countries.

Like many schoolchildren, I learned that years ago a squirrel could cross the country from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean never touching the ground, using our magnificent forests as an aerial highway. After massive clearing and development for agriculture, cities, and roads, those forests are now a tattered patchwork, and are nonexistent in many places. More than a squirrel’s dilemma, though, the loss and altering of America’s forests have created both an enormous challenge to climate health and an opportunity for climate policy and action.

Sustaining local communities will require mechanisms to envision and plan for the future and to engage residents in the process. Scenario planning is an increasingly effective way to address these efforts, and Western Lands and Communities, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy’s joint venture with the Sonoran Institute, is working to advance the necessary tools.

Scenario Planning to Address Uncertainty

Land use decisions and planning efforts are critical as communities look 20 to 50 years into the future to guide policy choices and public investments that are sustainable across economic, social, and environmental dimensions. As uncertainty increases and available resources decrease, it becomes ever more important to consider the full range of emerging conditions and to strive to ensure our ability to respond to those changes, adopt policies, and pursue investments that will be resilient across a variety of potential futures.

Key areas of uncertainty include population and demographic changes, economic trends, climatic variability and change, resource costs and availability, land markets, housing preferences, housing affordability, and the fiscal health of local governments. Simultaneous with increasing uncertainty and decreasing resources, or perhaps in part because of them, decision makers face conflicting perspectives on desired futures and on the role of government in providing services and infrastructure as well as regulation and planning.

Increased polarization means that more civic engagement and an informed and supportive public are needed to ensure stable policies and adequate investments in a community’s future. Scenario planning offers a mechanism to address these needs and issues of potential uncertainty and conflict. Fortunately, as the scope and complexity of planning and the demand for broader engagement have increased, advances in computing power and public access to technology are making new and more powerful tools available.

The Lincoln Institute has a long history of supporting the development of planning tools and publishing the results (Hopkins and Zapata 2007; Campoli and MacLean 2007; Brail 2008; Kwartler and Longo 2008; Condon, Cavens, and Miller 2009). This article covers lessons learned from the use of scenario planning tools in several projects undertaken by Western Lands and Communities (WLC), as well as mechanisms to expand their application.

Superstition Vistas

Superstition Vistas is a 275-square-mile expanse of vacant state-owned trust land on the urbanizing edge of the Phoenix metropolitan area (figure 1). State trust lands such as this site in Arizona are key to future growth patterns because the state owns 60 percent of the available land in the path of development. Colorado and New Mexico to a lesser degree face similar opportunities with their state trust lands (Culp, Laurenzi, and Tuell 2006). Creative thinking about the future of Superstition Vistas began to gain momentum in 2003, and the Lincoln Institute, through the WLC joint venture, was an early proponent of these efforts (Propst 2008).

Initial WLC objectives for Superstition Vistas scenario planning included capacity building, tool development, and opportunities to catalyze a planning process. More specifically, we sought to:

• look at the land in a bold, holistic, and comprehensive manner;
• advance the Arizona State Land Department’s capacity to conduct large-scale planning and establish an example for other state land agencies facing urban growth opportunities;
• design a model sustainable development;
• advance scenario planning tools and illustrate their use;
• catalyze and inform debates about modernizing state trust land planning and development management; and
• stimulate a larger discussion about the Arizona Sun Corridor megaregion.

WLC, along with regional partnerships, neighboring jurisdictions, the regional electric and water utility, two private hospital providers, and a local mining company, formed the Superstition Vistas (SV) Steering Committee to advance the planning effort, secure funding, and hire a consulting team. The consultants, working with the committee over a three-year period, conducted extensive public outreach and values research, assembled data on Superstition Vistas, developed and refined a series of alternative land use scenarios for the development of a community of 1 million residents, evaluated the impacts of the different scenarios, and produced a composite scenario for the site.

The Arizona State Land Department (the landowner) adapted the consultants’ work to prepare a draft conceptual plan for Superstition Vistas in May 2011 and submitted a proposed comprehensive plan amendment to Pinal County. The county is now considering the proposed amendment and its Board of Supervisors is expected to act in late 2011.

Sustainability Lessons

The scenario analysis, utilizing enhancements supported by WLC, identified the most important factors in shaping development patterns and potential conflicts among desired outcomes (figure 2). The inclusion of individual building and infrastructure costs for the alternative scenarios facilitated examining the sensitivity of varying these key factors and the cost effectiveness of four increasing levels of energy and water efficiency in each building type.

The scenarios also examined the impact of urban form on vehicle miles traveled (VMT). Scenario model outputs included land use indicators, energy and water use, VMT, carbon emissions, and construction costs. This analysis revealed the “low-hanging fruit” for sustainability improvements. The consulting team, working with the Steering Committee, identified a number of lessons that illustrate the value of scenario planning tools and can be applied to other efforts to design more sustainable and efficient urban areas (Superstition Vistas Consulting Team 2011).

1. Create mixed-use centers to reduce travel times, energy use, and the carbon footprint. Mixed-use centers along public transportation routes and close to homes and neighborhoods are one of the most effective ways to reduce travel times, energy use, and the resulting carbon footprint. Smaller homes, more compact forms of urban development, and multimodal transportation systems all create similar benefits (figure 3). However, the scenario modeling for Superstition Vistas demonstrated that mixed-use centers would be substantially more important than increased density in affecting transportation choices, energy use, and the carbon footprint.

2. Foster upfront investments and high-quality jobs to catalyze economic success. A strong local economy and a diverse balance of nearby jobs, housing, and shops are critical for a sustainable community, especially when high-quality jobs are provided at the beginning of development. Significant upfront public investment and public-private partnerships can supply critical infrastructure and have an enormous impact on shaping development and increasing the value of state trust land. State owned trust land could also provide unique opportunities for patient capital, with enhanced trust land management authorities providing access to resources for upfront capital investment and the ability to recapture these investments when the land is sold or leased later at a higher value.

3. Provide multimodal transportation infrastructure and regional connections to facilitate efficient growth. Another critical step is determining how to phase transportation improvements as the region grows and the market can support increased services. Phased components may include buses first, then Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), with rights-of-way set aside for eventual commuter or light-rail corridors. Identifying and building multimodal transportation corridors and infrastructure prior to sales for residential and commercial development should establish the cohesiveness of the entire area and enable the evolution to more capital-intensive transportation infrastructure as the community matures.

4. Design efficient buildings that save water and energy resources and reduce the community’s carbon footprint. Incorporating construction costs and return on investment (ROI) data in resource planning allows for financial feasibility and cost-benefit calculations. The consulting team modeled four levels of water and energy use (baseline, good, better, best) for each scenario and building type. Results demonstrated that investments in energy efficiency would be better spent on residential than commercial and industrial buildings. An additional finding showed that building centralized renewable power generation may be a better investment than extreme conservation.

5. Offer housing choices that meet the needs of a diverse population. Ensuring a viable community means meeting the needs of all potential residents with a broad variety of development types and prices that local workers can afford and that allow for adjustments under future market conditions.

6. Incorporate flexibility to respond to changing circumstances. A challenge for large-scale master plans that will take shape in multiple phases over 50 years or more is how to plan so the development itself can evolve and even redevelop over time. Plan implementation needs to include mechanisms to limit future NIMBY (not in my back yard) problems for necessary infill and redevelopment projects.

Procedural Lessons

The visioning process for Superstition Vistas involved planning a completely new city or region of communities in a vacant area with a single public landowner and no existing population. Given the recent economic downturn, as well as the limited capacity of the state agency to bring land to market, development of this area will likely be postponed for a number of years. Despite these particular conditions, procedural lessons learned in the project to date are relevant to other long-term and large-scale efforts, and to the expanded use of scenario planning for community decision making in general.

Agreed-upon procedures and planning processes become increasingly important as the planning and development time period grows and the number of stakeholders increases. Significant changes in participants, perspectives, and external factors, such as the recent collapse of the development economy, should be expected in any long-term, multiparty project. Such challenges need to be considered and incorporated into project tasks.

1. Design for change. Long-term projects need to accommodate changes in stakeholders, decision makers, and even political perspectives during the course of planning and implementation. Projects would benefit enormously from anticipating such changes, agreeing on mechanisms to transfer knowledge to new participants, establishing certain criteria and decisions that new stakeholders would be expected to follow, understanding how to deal with political or market conditions that will change, and building resiliency for such factors into the alternative scenarios themselves.

2. Consider governance. This is an issue for planning and implementation efforts and for the political decision-making structure of a new community. In building a new city it is important to consider how to create a governance system capable of implementing a consistent, comprehensive vision for a community that does not yet exist.

3. Incorporate new community designs into local and regional comprehensive plans. It is also critical to consider how a project at the scale of Superstition Vistas, with up to 1 million residents and a buildout plan of 50 years or more, can be incorporated into the framework of a typical county comprehensive plan. Scenarios and visions must reflect ideas and plans that local jurisdictions will be politically willing and administratively able to incorporate into their planning processes.

4. Phase development. Communities need to establish mechanisms that allow the adoption of a long-term buildout vision and then incorporate a series of flexible and adaptable phased plans to implement that vision in appropriate stages.

5. Plan for market changes. Market conditions, housing preferences, and employment opportunities will evolve, and large-scale projects with creative and compelling visions may even create their own demand. No one knows what future markets may offer, so consideration of alternative markets and adaptable community designs are critical. Projected housing mixes and estimates of development absorption need to be flexible and not based only on current preferences and trends.

6. Connect to common values. Demonstrating how development proposals connect to common visions and values that are shared and stable over time is also important. For Superstition Vistas, values such as an opportunity for healthy lifestyles and choices for residents across the socioeconomic spectrum were found to be broadly accepted. Planners also need to recognize values that are more controversial or may be transient and likely to change.

Challenges and Opportunities

The WLC experience in planning for Superstition Vistas has been successful in several respects. The community came together through the Steering Committee to develop a consensus vision that represented multijurisdictional cooperation around sustainable “smart” growth. Neighboring communities, at the request of the state land commissioner, deferred any consideration of annexation. In addition, the Arizona State Land Department developed a plan for a geographic scale, time horizon, and level of comprehensiveness well beyond anything attempted previously. However, the proposed comprehensive plan amendment for Superstition Vistas is at best a first step toward a vision for a community of up to 1 million people.

The Arizona State Land Department has been unable, at least so far, to push the envelope very far on new and more creative ways to conceptualize large-scale developments that could enhance the economic value of state trust lands and improve regional urban form. The recent collapse of land and housing markets throughout the country has also impacted this project and local perceptions of future growth potential. Since the overall effort to conceptualize and implement development plans for Superstition Vistas is just beginning, initial on-the-ground development is not expected for at least a decade. There will be multiple opportunities to build on these planning efforts to bring bolder and more comprehensive visions forward as the real estate economy recovers and the land becomes ripe for development.

Scenario planning and effective visualizations become both more important and more challenging to achieve when conducting larger and longer-term visioning exercises. Visualizations that provide compelling depictions of activity centers and higher-density, mixed-use neighborhoods can help to gain public acceptance. Effective mechanisms are also needed to convey to current participants that the planning process is imagining community characteristics and housing and lifestyle preferences for their grandchildren or great-grandchildren many years in the future.

As noted earlier, upfront investments in transportation, economic development, education, and utility services can significantly shape a community, serve as a catalyst for higher-level employment, and earn high returns. To achieve this potential, mechanisms are needed to facilitate these investments, whether on private lands or state trust lands. Continued work on the contributory value of land conservation, infrastructure investment, planning, and ecosystem services, as well as the integration of this information into scenario planning, would greatly aid efforts to address uncertainty and advance community sustainability.

Other Projects and Lessons Learned

WLC conducted three additional demonstration projects to further enhance scenario planning tools and apply them in different situations.

Gallatin County, Montana

Sonoran Institute staff worked with Montana State University (MSU) to engage local stakeholders in a workshop where each of four teams produced scenarios for concentrating projected growth within the currently developed “triangle” region of Bozeman, Belgrade, and Four Corners. This effort successfully integrated Envision Tomorrow scenario planning with housing unit projections from the Sonoran Institute’s Growth Model and demonstrated the value of ROI tools as a reality check on proposed land use and building types. The project also demonstrated the value of scenario planning to local experts.

Lessons learned include recognizing that (1) for many participants working with paper maps was more intuitive that the touch screen technology we had employed; (2) additional information on land characteristics, such as soil productivity and habitat values, should be used in preparing growth scenarios; and (3) more effective techniques are needed to visualize the density and design of different land use types, as well as to incorporate political and market realities that are not typically captured with scenario planning tools.

Products from this Montana project will include the creation of a library of regionally appropriate building types for use with ROI and scenario modeling and a report examining the costs and benefits, including sustainability impacts, of directing future growth to the triangle area of Gallatin Valley. With WLC support MSU has been able to incorporate the use of scenario planning tools in its graduate program.

Garfield County, Colorado

Sonoran Institute’s Western Colorado Legacy Area office, with support from the Lincoln Institute, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and other local contributors, utilized the Envision Tomorrow tool in a new way to advance implementation of previously adopted plans calling for mixed-use infill and redevelopment in target growth areas. This project focused on stakeholder education regarding the mechanisms necessary to implement recently adopted comprehensive plans calling for town-centered development, rather than on scenario generation for a comprehensive plan.

Examination of policy and market feasibility for redevelopment in downtown Rifle, Colorado, was one of three separate efforts undertaken. The City of Rifle project successfully utilized an ROI tool to identify financial and regulatory factors that could impact revitalization efforts and engaged the key parties necessary for implementation, including property owners, developers, realtors, planning commissioners, local officials, state transportation representatives, and local staff.

Among the lessons learned from this project was the importance of grounding bold visions with market reality. For example, previous planning efforts in Rifle had focused on six-to-eight-story mixed-use buildings, but in the current market even three-to-four-story projects are not considered feasible (figure 4c). Most attention now is given to two-story mixed-use projects and townhomes. Visualizations for an underutilized parcel in the center of town illustrated the type of one-story option that may be most feasible for initial commercial development (figure 4b). Constraints related to parking requirements and high minimum lot coverage requirements were also identified as limits on investment. In addition to pinpointing changes in Rifle’s building code, these findings spurred discussion about the role of public-private partnerships in catalyzing downtown development.

Morongo Basin, California

This area of high open space and wildlife habitat values between Joshua Tree National Park and the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Southern California may be impacted by spillover from regional growth. This project with the Morongo Basin Open Space Group involves an innovative effort to link results from the ongoing conservation priority-setting efforts with both a GIS tool to analyze and predict how land use patterns impact wildlife habitat and the scenario planning capability of Envision Tomorrow.

We are evaluating the environmental impacts of the current and potential alternative development patterns and location-specific planning and land use options. The tools being developed for this effort will be useful to land trusts throughout the country that are interested in engaging partners on local and regional planning issues and incorporating larger landscape conservation and wildlife habitat goals into their projects.

Open Source Planning Tools

Western Lands and Communities has recently been focusing on efforts to develop open source planning tools as a mechanism to increase the use of scenario planning. Key factors that hinder their use include: (1) the cost and complexity of the tools themselves; (2) the cost and availability of data; (3) a lack of standardization, making integration of tools and data difficult; and (4) proprietary tools that may be difficult to adapt to local conditions and may impede innovation.

Proponents of open source modeling tools believe open and standardized coding will facilitate increased transparency and interoperability between models, ultimately resulting in faster innovation and greater utilization. As a result of our work with Envision Tomorrow on the Superstition Vistas project, WLC and other members of an open source planning tools group are continuing to advance scenario planning tools and pursue the promise of open source tools that can foster sustainable communities in many more locations.

About the Author

Jim Holway directs Western Lands and Communities, the Lincoln Institute’s joint venture with the Sonoran Institute, based in Phoenix, Arizona. He was previously assistant director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources and a professor of practice at Arizona State University.

References

Propst, Luther. 2008. A model for sustainable development in Arizona’s Sun Corridor. Land Lines 20(3).

Superstition Vistas Consulting Team. 2011. Superstition Vistas: Final report and strategic actions. www.superstition-vistas.org

Lincoln Institute Publications

Brail, Richard K. 2008. Planning support systems for cities and regions.

Campoli, Julie, and Alex S. MacLean. 2007. Visualizing density.

Condon, Patrick M., Duncan Cavens, and Nicole Miller. 2009. Urban planning tools for climate change mitigation.

Culp, Peter W., Andy Laurenzi, and Cynthia C. Tuell. 2006. State trust lands in the West: Fiduciary duty in a changing landscape.

Hopkins, Lewis D., and Marisa A. Zapata. 2007. Engaging the future: Forecasts, scenarios, plans, and projects.

Kwartler, Michael, and Gianni Longo. 2008. Visioning and visualization: People, pixels, and plans.

For planning processes to resolve the pressing issues of our day—such as climate change, traffic congestion, and social justice—plans must be made at the appropriate scale, must promulgate appropriate implementation tools, and must be enforced with legitimate authority. That is, our ability to meet critical challenges depends on the legal and institutional foundations of planning.

In the United States, responsibility for establishing these foundations for planning rests with the states, which in turn have delegated most land use authority to local governments. In Europe, the foundations of planning are established by each country, whose planning systems often feature national and regional plans as well as a mosaic of local plans. For better and for worse, these institutional foundations have framed the planning process on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean for most of the post-war period. But as the scope of our planning challenges continues to broaden, and discontent with the status quo continues to spread, several states and European nations have begun to experiment with new and innovative approaches to planning.

The opportunity to explore and discuss these issues brought scholars, practitioners, students, and others to Dublin, Ireland, in October 2012 for a two-day seminar sponsored by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and organized by the School of Geography, Planning, and Environmental Policy at University College Dublin and the National Center for Smart Growth at the University of Maryland. Held in the historic Newman House on St. Stephen’s Green, the meetings featured overview papers on planning in the United States and Europe and case studies of five U.S. states and five European nations. Each presentation was followed by commentary from a high-level official from the corresponding state or nation (see box 1).

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Box 1: Papers Presented at the Dublin Seminar on Planning for States and Nation/States, October 2012

Bierbaum, Marty
The New Jersey State Development Plan

Faludi, Andreas
The Europeanisation of Planning and the Role of ESPON

Fulton, Bill
Planning for Climate Change in California

Galland, Daniel
The Danish National Spatial Planning Framework

Geppert, Anna
Spatial Planning in France

Grist, Berna
The Irish National Spatial Strategy

Knaap, Gerrit
PlanMaryland: A Work in Progress

Lewis, Rebecca
The Delaware State Development Plan

Needham, Barrie
The National Spatial Strategy for The Netherlands

Salkin, Patricia
Planning Frameworks in the United States and the Role of the Federal Government

Seltzer, Ethan
Land Use Planning in Oregon: The Quilt and the Struggle for Scale

Tewdwer-Jones, Mark
National Planning for the United Kingdom

For more information about the seminar, see the program website: http://www.ucd.ie/gpep/events/seminarsworkshopsconferences/natplansymp2012

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A Framework for Spatial Planning in Europe

Planning in Europe is governed by a variety of traditions and governance structures (Faludi 2012). Some European nations have “unitary” governance structures, in which all land use authority ultimately rests with the national government. Italy and Spain have “regional” governance structures, in which land use authority is constitutionally shared between the national government and regional governments. Austria, Belgium, and Germany have “federalist” governance structures, in which particular land use functions are distributed among the national, regional, and local governments. Within these frameworks a variety of planning cultures and traditions have evolved: “amenagement duterritoire” in France; “town and country planning” in the UK; “Raumordnung” in Germany; and “ruimtelijke ordening” in The Netherlands. While these terms generally connote what “urban planning” means in the United States, there are important, nuanced, and fiercely defended differences.

The expression for urban planning used by the European Union is “spatial planning” (European Commission 1997, 24).

“Spatial planning refers to the methods used largely by the public sector to influence the future distribution of activities in space. It is undertaken with the aims of creating a more rational territorial organization of land uses and the linkages between them, to balance demands for development with the need to protect the environment, and to achieve social and economic objectives.

“Spatial planning embraces measures to co-ordinate the spatial impact of other sectoral policies, to achieve a more even distribution of economic development between regions than would otherwise be created by market forces, and to regulate the conversion of land and property uses.”

The European Union has no authority to engage in spatial planning, but directly influences spatial planning outcomes through regional development initiatives, environmental directives, and structural and cohesion funding. This goal is articulated in the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP) signed in 1998 by the ministers responsible for spatial planning in the member states and the members of the European Commission responsible for regional policy (Faludi 2002).

Modern spatial planning in the European context is broadly understood to include national, regional, and local planning, where national plans provide broad national development strategies and guidelines for plans at lower levels of government; regional plans integrate physical development with social, economic, and environmental policies but without site-level specificity; and local plans are site-specific and address the physical and urban design elements of the built environment. While none of the planning frameworks for the member nations matches this neat hierarchical ideal exactly, the ESDP has influenced planning activity in every nation.

The ESDP itself is based on longstanding European planning traditions dating to World War II, when national development or reconstruction plans were indisputably necessary for post-war reparations. Many European nations still have national development plans and complementary national spatial strategies. But the influence and importance of those plans has diminished steadily since reconstruction. In the last decade in particular, nations once known for their ambitious and extensive commitment to planning—France, Denmark, and the United Kingdom among them—have failed to adopt new national plans and expressly placed greater emphasis on regional and local plans.

National European Spatial Strategies and Frameworks

France

Although France is a unitary, centralized nationstate, the national government has never played a leading role in spatial planning. Rather, responsibility for spatial planning was officially transferred to regional and local governments in devolutionary reforms adopted in 1982 and 2003 (Geppert 2012). Although coordination between governments at different levels continues, this process results more often in joint investment strategies rather than in shared spatial visions or common objectives. Before most other nations, the French national government began focusing less on spatial planning and more on sectoral policies, leaving spatial issues for lower levels of government.

Denmark

Planning in Denmark historically began with a comprehensive national planning framework (Galland 2012). Over the last two decades, however, as a result of interrelated political and economic factors, the land use roles of national, local, and regional governments within the national territory have significantly transformed the scope, structure, and understanding of Danish spatial planning (figure 1).

Among the implications of this reform, several spatial planning responsibilities have been decentralized to the local level while regional planning for Greater Copenhagen and other sectoral functions have been transferred to the national level. Moreover, the recent abolition of the county level of government has increased the risk of uncoordinated spatial planning and decreased coherence across diverse policy institutions and instruments.

The Netherlands

The Netherlands has perhaps the longest and best-known tradition of national spatial planning, and its plans include industrial as well as detailed spatial policies (Needham 2012). For several decades, Dutch national plans influenced the distribution of people and activities throughout the country. In the first decades after World War II, all levels of government—national, provincial, and municipal—tended to work together in their spatial planning. In the 1990s, however, they started to move apart. In response, the national government strengthened its own powers over the local governments (a form of centralization), and at the same time reduced its own ambitions to pursue a national spatial strategy (a form of decentralization). The latest national spatial strategy expressly withdraws from some planning tasks previously carried out by the national government.

United Kingdom

In the early 1900s, the UK Parliament divested its direct powers to plan; instead, the powers of intervention, new state housing development, and regulation of private housing development were handed over to local governments (Tewdwr-Jones 2012). In the following decades, the central government did acquire new planning powers of its own as a consequence of World War II and the need to rebuild cities, infrastructure, and the economy in the national interest. Since 1945, central government has retained these powers, while also permitting the monitoring of local authorities in their operation of the planning system.

These powers have changed dramatically over the last 70 years. After 1999, devolution in Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland further fragmented the meaning of “national” in policy and planning terms. During the 2000s, the push toward regional spatial planning in England also rebalanced national planning matters toward sub-national interests. As a result of this trend in devolution, decentralization, regionalism, and localism over the last 20 years, it is increasingly questionable whether the UK now possesses anything that could be regarded as a national planning system, since so much has changed spatially and within policy-making institutions and processes across different parts of the country.

Ireland

Ireland is one of few European nations not following the trend toward decentralization of planning authority, partly due to the fact that its planning system has been fully decentralized (Grist 2012). Largely following EU guidelines, Ireland adopted a series of national development plans, the latest one being the National Development Plan 2007–2013. Based on recommendations in the previous national plan, the Department of Environment, Community and Local Government in 2002 developed the Ireland National Spatial Strategy. This strategy identified critical gateways and hubs and articulated plans to decentralize economic activity from Dublin and throughout the island.

Following a turbulent period that saw the rise and fall of the Celtic Tiger, blamed in part on lax local planning policies allied with extensive incentivizing of property development and political corruption, the country is now revisiting that strategy, strengthening regional development guidelines, and imposing new consistency requirements on local governments.

Under the new evidence-based planning regime, local plans must conform more closely with regional planning guidelines, and local plans will have quantitative limits on how much development can be allowed. The future role of the National Spatial Strategy is currently in the review process as the new government, elected following the property crash in Ireland, examines the planning and development issues that prevailed during the property bubble.

The Federal Government and Land Use in the United States

The U.S. federal government, like the European Union, has no authority to plan and manage land use, but probably has a greater influence on the location and nature of development patterns (Salkin 2012). Besides the billions of dollars it allocates for transportation infrastructure, social services, development, and redevelopment, the federal government is a major landowner of more than 630 million acres across the country. Federal regulations are also highly influential. The Clean Air and Water Acts, for example, impose no restrictions on land use per se, but in establishing targets for ambient air quality and nutrient loadings to rivers, lakes, and streams, both acts profoundly influence local land use plans, regulations, and development patterns.

More recently, President Barack Obama’s administration has established a new channel of federal influence on land use planning and regulation. While the federal government continues to refrain from direct intervention in local land use governance, the secretaries of the Departments of Transportation and Housing and Urban Development and of the Environmental Protection Agency signed a memorandum of understanding establishing the Sustainable Communities Partnership. To promote six principles of sustainable communities, these agencies launched a number of new grants programs, including the Regional Sustainable Communities Planning Grants. To be eligible for such a grant, local governments must form inter-organizational consortia that include the metropolitan planning organization (MPO), the central city, the majority of local governments, and a representation of civic and advocacy groups.

While the stated purposes of these path-breaking grants include urban revitalization, environmental protection, social justice, and sustainable development, an equally important purpose is to establish new inter-institutional relationships by promoting greater inclusion and participation. Regional Sustainable Communities Planning is now underway in 74 metropolitan areas across the country. It remains to be seen, however, whether the incentives offered to local governments to engage in regional planning are sufficient to get them to participate in regional plan implementation without additional state-level intervention.

State Plans and State Planning Frameworks

Every state established a framework for local planning and regulation in the 1920s and 1930s based on the standard planning and zoning enabling acts prepared by the U.S. Department of Commerce. Despite expectations of extensive institutional change, characterized in the “Quiet Revolution” more than 40 years ago, most states merely authorize local governments to plan (Salkin 2012).

Others, like Oregon, mandate, review, and approve local plans (Seltzer 2012). If local governments do not submit plans that meet the state’s land use goals and guidelines, the state can withhold funds or the authority to issue building permits. Several unique land use institutions also support the Oregon planning system, including a state planning commission, a land use court of appeals, and a directly elected regional government. Though simple in structure, and frequently challenged in the courts and at the ballot box, the Oregon system has a reputation as one of the most, if not the most, effective land use systems in the United States (Ingram et al. 2009).

California is among the states that delegated substantial land use authority to local governments. Although major development projects have to pass a complex mini-National Environment Policy Act process, and the California Coastal Commission was an innovative new statewide institution in its day, local planning remains dominant. But in 2008, the state adopted a bold new initiative to address climate change—Senate Bill 375, which required MPOs to develop transportation and land use plans that meet state greenhouse gas targets. The difficulty is that local governments, not MPOs, retain land use authority in California. MPOs and the state governments are providing incentives for local governments to adopt plans that conform with metropolitan plans, but it remains uncertain whether the combination of financial and other incentives are sufficient to nudge local governments to follow the MPO plans (Fulton 2012).

At the other extreme, plans for entire states are not common in the United States. In response to federal requirements, most states do have transportation plans, and some have economic development plans, workforce development plans, or climate action plans, but only five have state development plans—Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, and Rhode Island.

New Jersey and Delaware have perhaps the best- and least-known state plans, respectively. New Jersey adopted its State Planning Act in 1985, requiring the state planning commission to develop, adopt, and implement the New Jersey State Development and Redevelopment Plan (Bierbaum 2012). The planning process included a complex cross-acceptance procedure for identifying and resolving differences between the state and local governments. Since its adoption, the influence of and attention received by the plan has ebbed and flowed over successive gubernatorial administrations. Most recently, Governor Chris Christie’s administration developed an entirely new state plan, focused primarily on economic development without the cross-acceptance process. The state plan commission, however, has not yet adopted the plan.

The Delaware plan is much less well-known and far less controversial than the New Jersey plan, and both the content and process are less complex (Lewis 2012). The Delaware plan includes five general land designations (figure 2). It depends on state-local coordination and relies on the threat of withholding infrastructure funding (of which the state pays a significant share) to incentivize compliance by local governments. Because the state did not begin tracking data on development patterns until 2008, and does not maintain spatial data on state expenditures, it is difficult to discern the impact of the approach on development and the consistency of state spending with the state plan map.

Maryland is the only state that rivals California and Oregon in its adoption of bold new approaches to planning, based on its long tradition of leadership in land use and environmental policy (Knaap 2012). Maryland established the first state plan commission in 1933, and broke into the national spotlight in 1997, when it adopted the path-breaking Smart Growth and Neighborhood Conservation Act. Since 1997 the use of state expenditures to provide incentives for smart growth has been the signature feature of the Maryland approach. Long before anyone in Maryland spoke the words “smart growth,” however, the state had passed legislation in 1959 that required the Maryland Department of Planning to develop and adopt a state development plan. More than 50 years later, the administration of Governor Martin O’Malley finally met that requirement.

On December 19, 2011, Governor O’Malley signed PlanMaryland, establishing the first new state development plan in the United States in many years (figure 3). But unlike state plans in New Jersey or Delaware, the Maryland plan is more procedural than substantive. Specifically, it established six plan designation categories and, following a longstanding Maryland tradition, enabled local governments to allocate land for any or all designated uses. State agencies would then target programmatic funds to each of these areas. Since the plan was signed, state agencies have been developing and refining implementation plans, and local governments have just recently begun submitting plans for state certification.

Concluding Comments

The frameworks for land use and spatial planning vary extensively across Europe and the United States. On both sides of the Atlantic, local governments carry much of the load, especially with respect to community, neighborhood, and site-specific details. But the role of regions, states, and nations remains important.

Contrary to its reputation in the United States, planning in many European nations has decentralized extensively. Few European nations are engaged in full-scale national plans that guide national investments and land use regulations. In fact, planning in Europe, while still far more comprehensive in sectoral details than in the United States, shares many policy features with its North American counterpart. An interesting exception is Ireland, which continues to expand the role of national and regional governments partly as a response to the recent period of extremely decentralized planning that failed to take into account and implement the national strategy. Ireland is also one of the few countries adhering to the broad principles of spatial planning formally adopted by the European Union.

In the United States, neither state development planning nor state approval of local plans is a rapidly growing practice. Indeed, despite the demonstrated success of the Oregon program and the growing recognition of the need for horizontal and vertical policy integration, land use planning in the United States remains a fiercely local affair. Although both the state of California and the federal government are providing financial incentives for intergovernmental coordination and planning at the metropolitan scale, it remains far from certain that incentives alone will secure the changes in local plans and regulations required to institute meaningful adjustments in land consumption, travel behavior, and access to opportunities.

New approaches are needed to make cites and metropolitan areas more productive, equitable, and environmentally sustainable in light of anticipated challenges in the future. If these issues cannot be addressed adequately, other kinds of experiments in institutional planning reforms may become more common in many countries.

About the Authors

Gerrit Knaap is professor of urban studies and planning, director of the National Center for Smart Growth, and associate dean of the School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation at the University of Maryland.

Zorica Nedovic-Budic is professor of spatial planning and geographic information systems (GIS) in the School of Geography, Planning and Environmental Policy at University College Dublin.

References

Denmark Ministry of the Environment. 2006. The 2006 national planning report–In brief. Copenhagen. http://www.sns.dk/udgivelser/2006/87-7279-728-2/html/default_eng.htm

European Commission. 1997. The EU compendium of spatial planning systems and policies. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities.

Faludi, Andreas. 2002. European spatial planning. Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Ingram, Gregory K., Armando Carbonell, Yu-Hung Hong, and Anthony Flint. 2009. Smart growth policies: An evaluation of programs and outcomes. Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Antonio Azuela, fellow del Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, posee títulos de grado en Derecho de la Universidad Iberoamericana (México) y de la Universidad de Warwick (Inglaterra), así como también un doctorado en Sociología por la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). Desde finales de la década de 1970, Azuela se ha dedicado a la investigación y la enseñanza del derecho urbano y medioambiental desde una perspectiva sociolegal. Su libro “Visionarios y pragmáticos: Una aproximación sociológica al derecho ambiental”, México: UNAM, 2006, es una reconstrucción sociológica de sus experiencias como procurador general en la Procuraduría Federal de Protección al Ambiente (PROFEPA) de México desde 1994 hasta 2000. Recientemente editó el libro “Expropiación y conflicto social en cinco metrópolis latinoamericanas”, publicado por la UNAM y el Lincoln Institute of Land Policy en 2013.

Land Lines: ¿Cómo se involucró usted con el Lincoln Institute of Land Policy?

Antonio Azuela: En 1991, conocí a varios funcionarios del Instituto mientras realizaban un viaje de exploración por México. Mantuve el contacto con ellos porque me interesaba el enfoque del Instituto respecto de la política urbana. Mi relación con el Instituto se afianzó en el año 1998 en una reunión que tuvo lugar en El Cairo, organizada por el Grupo Internacional de Investigaciones sobre Derecho y Espacio Urbano (IRGLUS), en la que el Instituto expresó su interés en un enfoque sociolegal de los problemas del suelo urbano. En el año 2000, tuve el honor de que me invitaran a formar parte del directorio del Instituto. Desde entonces, he mantenido un contacto permanente con el equipo y los programas del Instituto Lincoln.

Land Lines: ¿Por qué la adquisición pública de suelo se ha convertido en un problema tan crítico, en especial en América Latina?

Antonio Azuela: La expropiación (es decir, la adquisición obligatoria de suelo por parte del Estado) es un tema muy importante en todo el mundo, ya que es una manera de obtener terrenos para proyectos urbanos públicos. Sin embargo, en América Latina este problema es aún más crítico, debido a la naturaleza débil del Estado en cuanto a los asuntos urbanos. Antes de la transición democrática que experimentó la región, los gobiernos obtenían terrenos fácilmente mediante el uso de mecanismos que se considerarían cuestionables en una democracia. Pero la transición fortaleció al poder judicial, que, por lo general, no es proclive a las intervenciones del gobierno en el mercado. Hoy en día, los propietarios privados tienen cada vez más posibilidades de interferir en la adquisición pública de suelos en la región (con la notable excepción de Colombia, donde una amplia coalición de diferentes profesionales, jueces y organizaciones sociales apoya la doctrina de la función social de la propiedad). Esta tendencia puede observarse, por ejemplo, en la compensación exorbitante que algunos tribunales han otorgado en casos de expropiación de suelo en la ciudad de México y en São Paulo.

Land Lines: ¿Cuáles son los principales puntos en conflicto?

Antonio Azuela: El primero es la adopción de políticas económicas que defienden un rol menor del Estado. El segundo tiene que ver con la condición legal de los derechos de propiedad. Cuando las reformas constitucionales permiten a los jueces limitar la facultad de expropiación, dicha restricción no es necesariamente mala, ya que puede dar como resultado una administración pública de mayor calidad, aunque, a corto plazo, ha interferido en la facultad del gobierno de adquirir terrenos urbanos para proyectos públicos. Existen dos excepciones notables: en Brasil y en Colombia, las reformas constitucionales han establecido políticas urbanas inspiradas en ideas de justicia social, aunque solamente en Colombia existe una nueva generación de jueces que actúan conforme a estos principios. En Brasil, los tribunales se encuentran dominados por la visión liberal clásica de la propiedad privada, lo cual interfiere en la capacidad de implementar la función social de la propiedad, una idea que ha circulado por América Latina durante casi un siglo.

Land Lines: Muchas jurisdicciones prefieren adquirir terrenos en el mercado abierto en lugar de utilizar instrumentos tales como la expropiación.

Antonio Azuela: La expropiación no debería ser la primera opción para adquirir terrenos. El desafío es que el gobierno pueda regular diferentes clases de instrumentos con el fin de lograr un objetivo general: reducir el componente del suelo en el costo total del desarrollo urbano. La utilización de la expropiación debe estar garantizada por un marco legal sólido que establezca un equilibrio adecuado entre el poder del Estado y el poder de los propietarios, y debería representar la última alternativa a la hora de adquirir terrenos para proyectos urbanos públicos.

El gran problema es el costo del suelo, pero los mecanismos de intervención del gobierno pueden inflar los precios. Por ejemplo, si no se espera que el uso de la expropiación aumente el valor del suelo y los jueces determinan que la expropiación es el enfoque adecuado, entonces este instrumento puede tener un impacto positivo en los mercados inmobiliarios. Al menos, podemos esperar que la adquisición de terrenos por parte del gobierno no genere un aumento de precios.

Land Lines: ¿Cuáles son los principales resultados de su investigación en torno a la utilización de la expropiación para el desarrollo urbano en la región?

Antonio Azuela: Aunque existe una tendencia general de fortalecer los derechos de propiedad, que interfiere en la facultad de expropiación, se observan diferentes variaciones en dicha tendencia dependiendo de la relación entre el poder judicial y el poder ejecutivo en los gobiernos post autoritarios de la región. El proceso de cambio institucional depende menos de las tendencias mundiales que de las fuerzas nacionales o incluso locales, ya que puede observarse que ciertas ciudades siguen caminos diferentes a otras ciudades de un mismo país. Aun cuando los gobiernos municipales adoptaran la misma estrategia, los tribunales de una región protegerán a los propietarios en mayor medida que los tribunales de otras regiones. El área metropolitana de Buenos Aires, por ejemplo, ilustra de qué manera el sistema institucional de la expropiación no es homogéneo, aun dentro de la misma área metropolitana. Así, en la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, las personas que viven en asentamientos informales (denominados “villas miseria”) han recurrido a los tribunales y han impedido el desalojo. Sin embargo, en la provincia de Buenos Aires, el clima político es tal que no existe amenaza de desalojo: la expropiación se utiliza con el fin de garantizar a las personas la permanencia en el lugar donde se han asentado.

Otra lección importante que podemos extraer es que, en América Latina, no existe un diálogo auténtico acerca de la importancia de la expropiación o de las diferentes maneras en que los tribunales han abordado los dilemas que la expropiación presenta. Aunque el pensamiento constitucional de la región es muy rico en ideas sobre ciertos problemas legales, tales como los derechos de los aborígenes y de los ancianos, las políticas urbanas (en particular, la expropiación) no han generado debates profundos entre los juristas. Lamentablemente, estos problemas parecen ser considerados como excepciones, a pesar de la enorme cantidad de personas que vive, ya sea sufriendo o disfrutando, en los grandes centros urbanos.

Land Lines: ¿Las compensaciones por expropiación son arbitrarias o injustas? De ser así, ¿para quién?

Antonio Azuela: La compensación inadecuada es, sin duda alguna, uno de los mayores desafíos para el futuro desarrollo de la expropiación como instrumento de política de suelo. En algunos casos, los gobiernos pueden aprovecharse de la impotencia de ciertos grupos sociales y ofrecerles una compensación ridículamente baja por sus tierras o casas. En otros casos, el poder económico y la influencia de ciertos propietarios pueden generar compensaciones exorbitantes. Pero más allá de estos dos casos extremos, en los que el propietario afectado es o muy vulnerable o muy poderoso, resulta difícil discernir una tendencia dominante.

Una respuesta más precisa a su pregunta requeriría un estudio de mercado sobre una gran cantidad de casos de expropiación a fin de determinar si la compensación es alta o baja al compararla con criterios preestablecidos. No obstante, según las investigaciones existentes, los tribunales generalmente no poseen criterios claros o ampliamente compartidos para determinar si las compensaciones son justas. Además, los tribunales carecen de la capacidad de comprender lo que está en juego en un proceso de transformación urbana en el que se utiliza la expropiación. Consideremos, por ejemplo, el caso de una familia prominente de Ecuador que recibió una compensación muy alta por la expropiación de suelo de cultivo que poseía en la periferia de Quito. Lo notable aquí fue que el organismo que falló en este caso fue el Tribunal Interamericano de Derechos Humanos, y resulta evidente que este tribunal no estableció criterios claros para determinar la suma de la compensación, sino que simplemente realizó un promedio de las valuaciones presentadas por cada una de las partes. La compensación zen este caso fue la más alta que haya otorgado este tribunal superior, que fue creado con el fin de atender las violaciones a los derechos humanos cometidas por dictadores, aunque terminó beneficiando a los propietarios privados a expensas del interés público. El hecho de que este caso no haya generado un escándalo entre los constitucionalistas de la región indica el grado de marginalización que presentan los problemas legales urbanos en América Latina.

Land Lines: ¿Cuáles son las tendencias que usted ha observado que están cambiando?

Antonio Azuela: Observo con cierto optimismo que muchos tribunales y gobiernos municipales de la región están atravesando un proceso de aprendizaje e intentando no repetir los errores judiciales del pasado. Lamentablemente, estas lecciones raramente trascienden el área local afectada para incorporarse al saber jurídico regional común.

Land Lines: ¿Qué tipo de educación o capacitación recomendaría usted?

Antonio Azuela: Lógicamente, debemos intensificar el intercambio entre las diferentes disciplinas y países y colocar a los tribunales en el centro del debate, ya que estos son los que tomarán las decisiones finales. Sus fallos deberían expresar la mejor síntesis posible de un acervo de conocimientos que debemos construir en torno a la dinámica urbana de la región. En los contactos que hemos tenido con diferentes tribunales, con el apoyo del Instituto Lincoln, descubrimos que, una vez establecido el diálogo, los jueces ven la necesidad de aprender más a fin de comprender los efectos de sus decisiones. En otras palabras, aunque los tribunales parecen no mostrar un gran interés en los problemas urbanos, tal como se demuestra en la actitud rutinaria de sus decisiones diarias, pueden igualmente entrever nuevas perspectivas para su propio desarrollo profesional dentro del contexto de un análisis crítico de problemas urbanos.

Land Lines: ¿Cuáles son los problemas críticos que deben analizarse en mayor profundidad? ¿Qué es lo que aún no sabemos?

Antonio Azuela: Deberíamos intentar comprender la lógica de las decisiones emanadas de los tribunales de la región. Con frecuencia interpretamos de manera simplista las medidas tomadas por los tribunales, ya que los medios de comunicación tienden a amplificar los peores casos. No obstante, muchos jueces se esfuerzan por encontrar la mejor solución posible para cada caso. ¿Y en qué condiciones realizan su labor? Uno de los desafíos que conlleva investigar estos problemas en América Latina es el de comprender el mundo real en el que se toman dichas decisiones, además de los temas de la corrupción y la incompetencia, tan comunes pero siempre relevantes. Debemos analizar los datos estadísticos con el fin de obtener tendencias generales, junto con la aplicación de un enfoque etnográfico sobre el funcionamiento de los tribunales. Sólo entonces seremos capaces de entender qué es lo que debe reformarse para mejorar el rendimiento de los tribunales en los conflictos urbanos. Aunque es muy importante determinar quién resulta favorecido por las decisiones de los tribunales (lo que puede lograrse analizando el contenido de los fallos judiciales), necesitamos comprender mejor las condiciones en las cuales se toman dichas decisiones. Y para ello, debemos acercarnos mucho más a los tribunales.