As a part of the educational activities of the Lincoln Institute’s Latin America Program, a course on “Large Urban Projects,” held in Cambridge last June, focused on the most important and challenging aspects of this land planning issue. Academics, public officials and representatives from private enterprises in 17 cities participated in the presentations and discussions. This article presents a synthesis of the principal points, questions and challenges raised in carrying out these complex projects.

Large urban redevelopment projects have become an important issue in many Latin American countries recently, due in part to changes motivated by the processes of globalization, deregulation and the introduction of new approaches in urban planning. These projects include varied types of interventions, but they are characterized primarily by their large size and scale, which challenge traditional instruments of urban management and financing.

Urban projects on a grand scale are not considered a novelty in Latin America. The diverse elements of existing developments include the revitalization of historic centers; conversion of abandoned industrial facilities, military areas, airports or train stations; large slum rehabilitation projects; and construction of innovative public transportation models. However, at least four important features characterize this new type of intervention:

• An urban management structure that implies the association of various public and private, national and international actors;
• Significant financing needs that require complex forms of interconnections among these actors;
• The conception and introduction of new urban processes that are intended to transform the city;
• The questioning of traditional urban planning perspectives, since these projects tend to exceed the scope of prevailing norms and policies.

The last feature is reinforced by the influence of different planning strategies and the impacts of large urban projects in various cities around the world (Powell 2000). One project that has influenced many city planners and officials in Latin America was the transformation of Barcelona in preparation for the Olympic Games in 1992 (Borja 1995). Several projects in Latin America have been inspired by, if not directly emulated, this approach (Carmona and Burgess 2001), but it also has faced serious criticism (Arantes, Vainer and Maricato 2000). It has been seen as a convenient process through which a group of decision makers or private interest stakeholders manage to bypass official planning and policy channels that are seen to be too dependent on the public (democratic) debate. As a result most such projects tend to be either elitist, because they displace low-income neighborhoods with gentrified and segregated upper-class land uses, or are socially exclusionary, because they develop single-class projects, either low-income settlements or high-income enclaves, in peripheral locations.

Large-scale projects raise new questions, make inherent contradictions more transparent, and challenge those responsible for urban land analysis and policy formulation. Of special importance are the new forms of management, regulation, financing and taxation that are required for or result from the execution of these projects, and in general the consequences for the functioning of land markets.

Size, Scale and Timeframe

The first issue that emerges from a discussion of large-scale projects has to do with the ambiguity of the term and the necessity of defining its validity. Size is a quantitative dimension, but scale suggests complex interrelations involving socioeconomic and political impacts. The wide variety of feelings evoked by large projects shows the limitations in being able to restore a vision of the urban whole and at the same time its global character (Ingallina 2001). This issue has just begun to be discussed in Latin America, and it is framed in the transition to a new approach in urban planning, which is related to the possibility and even the necessity of constructing a typology and indicators for its analysis. Issues such as the emblematic character of these projects, their role in stimulating other urban processes, the involvement of many actors, and the significance of the impacts on the life and development of the city are all part of the discussions. Nevertheless, it is the scale, understood as being more than just simple physical dimensions, that is the central core of this theme.

Since the scale of these projects is associated with complex urban processes that combine continuity and changes over the medium and long terms, the timeframe of their execution must be conceived accordingly. Many of the failures in the implementation of such projects have to do with the lack of a managing authority that would be free or protected from the political volatility of local administrations over time.

The cases of Puerto Madero in Buenos Aires and Fenix in Montevideo, the first completed and the second in process, offer examples of the difficulties in managing the scale and timing of development in the context of economic situations and policies that can change drastically. Twelve years after its construction, Puerto Madero has not yet stimulated other large-scale projects, such as the renovation of nearby Avenida de Mayo, nor appreciable transformations in urban norms.

The scale and timeframe are particularly important for the project in Montevideo, raising doubts about the feasibility of executing a project of this scale in relation to the character of the city, its economy, and other priorities and policies of the country. Its goal was to generate a “work of urban impact,” in this case promotion of public, private and mixed investments in a neighborhood that lost 18.4 percent of its population between 1985 and 1996, and focusing on an emblematic building, the old General Artigas train station. Most of this work has been executed, with a loan of $28 million from the Inter-American Development Bank, however the percentage of public and private investments are minimal and the Fenix project is having to compete with another large-scale corporate-commercial development located east of the city that is already attracting important firms and enterprises.

Land Policy Issues

The issue of scale relates intrinsically to the role of urban land, which makes one ask if land (including its value, uses, ownership and other factors) should be considered a key variable in the design and management of large-scale urban operations, since the feasibility and success of these projects are often associated with the internalization of formidable externalities often reflected in the cost and management of the land.

Projects to restore historic centers offer important lessons to be considered here. We can compare the cases of Old Havana, where land ownership is completely in the hands of the state, which has permitted certain activities to expand, and Lima, where land ownership is divided among many private owners and public sector agencies, adding to the difficulties in completing an ongoing restoration project. Even though Old Havana has received important financial cooperation from Europe and Lima has a $37 million loan from the Inter-American Development Bank, the main challenge is to promote private investment while also maintaining programs of social and economic assistance for the local residents. Both cities have created special units for the management of these projects, which constitutes an interesting commentary on institutional modernization.

The Role of the State

The scale, the time dimension and the role of land in large urban projects lead us to consider the role of the state and public investment. While urban operations on a large scale are not new in Latin American cities, their present conditions have been affected radically by economic changes, political crises and substantial modifications in the role of the state in general. These conditions make the execution of urban projects, as part of the process of long-term urban development, a source of contradictions with the generally short tenure of municipal governments and the limits of their territorial claims. We must also consider the differences in regulatory competencies between central governments and local municipalities, and the differences between public entities and private institutions or local community organizations, which often reflect conflicting interests due the decentralization and privatization processes being promoted simultaneously in many countries.

Two large projects related to transportation infrastructure are examples of local situations that led to very different results. One was the transformation of the old abandoned Cerrillos airport in Santiago, Chile, and the other was a project for a new airport for Mexico City in Texcoco, an area known as ejido land occupied by peasants and their descendants. In the first case, the active participation of interested groups is expanding the recuperation process of a zone of the city that does not have quality urban facilities. A total investment of $36 million from the public sector and $975 million from the private sector is supporting the construction of malls, facilities for education, health and recreation, and housing for the neighborhood. In Mexico serious conflicts between state interests and community rights to the land had caused social unrest and even the kidnapping of public officials. As a result, the federal government has recently withdrawn from the Texcoco project, assuming huge political and economic costs for this decision.

Segregation and Exclusion

Many planners and practitioners have doubts about the feasibility of large projects in poor countries and cities because of the distortions that their execution could cause on future development, in particular the reinforcing tendencies of segregation and social exclusiveness. The diminishing capacity of the state to look for new alternatives for financing socially beneficial projects through private capital, principally from international sources, adds to the doubts about their success. Many large-scale projects are seen as the only alternative or the unavoidable cost that the city or society has to pay to generate an attractive environment in a context of growing competition among cities for a limited number of external investors.

A key matter with respect to the use of public space generated by these projects is to avoid segregation of space and people. Special attention must be given to protect the inhabitants of the zones where the large urban projects are developed from the negative consequences of gentrification. This is without a doubt one of the most difficult aspects of large urban projects. Table 1 shows the most important aspects and the principal challenges that arise from an analysis of the large urban projects. Effectively, the integration of projects of this scope calls for a vision of the city that avoids the creation of islands of modernity isolated in the middle of poor areas, which would contribute to the process called the dualism of the city, or the generation of new exclusive urban centers.

Table 1: Aspects and Challenges of Large Urban Projects

Two cases in different political-economic contexts help us reflect about this matter. One is the El Recreo project, planned by Metrovivienda, in Bogotá. Although presenting innovative proposals about the use and management of the land in a large project for popular housing, the project has not been able to guarantee the integration of social groups with different income levels. In the Corredor Sur area of Panama City large zones are being planned for the construction of residences, but the result again serves primarily medium- and high-income sectors. Thus in both a decentralized and a centralized country the general norms that provoke residential segregation cannot seem to prevent negative consequences for the poorest sectors of society.

In view of all this, large urban projects should not be seen as an alternative approach to obsolete plans or rigid norms like zoning. They could instead be presented as a kind of intermediate-scale planning, as an integrated approach that addresses the needs of the whole city and avoids physical and social separations and the creation of norms that permit exclusive privileges. Only in this way can large-scale projects take their place as new instruments for urban planning. The positive effects of specific elements such as the quality of architecture and urban design are valuable in these projects if they operate as a benchmark and are distributed with equity throughout the city.

Public Benefits

Large-scale projects are public projects by the nature of their importance and impact, but that does not mean they are the total property of the state. Nevertheless, the complexity of the participant networks involved directly or indirectly, the variety of interests and the innumerable contradictions inherent in large projects require a leading management role by the public sector. The territorial scale of these operations especially depends on the support of the municipal governments, which in Latin America often lack the technical resources to manage such projects. Local support can guarantee a reduction of negative externalities and the involvement of weaker participants, generally local actors, through a more just distribution of the benefits, where the regulation of the use and taxation of the land is a key issue. Such is the intention of the Municipality of Santo Andre in Sao Paulo in the design of the extraordinarily complex Tamanduatehy project. It involves the reuse of an enormous tract of land previously occupied by railroad facilities and neighboring industrial plants that fled this once vigorous industrial belt of Sao Paulo to relocate in the hinterland. The project involves establishing a viable locus of new activities, mostly services and high-tech industries, capable of replacing the economic base of that region.

Beyond creating and marketing the image of the project, it is important to achieve social legitimacy through a combination of public and private partners engaged in joint ventures, the sale or renting of urban land, compensation for direct private investment, regulation, or even public recovery (or recapture) of costs and/or of unearned land value increments. Active public management is also necessary, since the development of the city implies common properties and benefits, not only economic interests. Analysis of economic and financial costs, and opportunity costs, are also important to avoid the failure of these projects.

Conclusions

The basic components in the pre-operational stage of executing large urban projects can be summarized as follows:

• Establish a development/management company independent from the state and municipal administration
• Formulate the comprehensive project plan
• Elaborate on the marketing plan
• Design the program of buildings and infrastructure
• Define adequate fiscal and regulatory instruments
• Formulate the financing plan (cash flow)
• Design a monitoring system

An adequate analysis of the trade-offs (economic, political, social, environmental, and others) is indispensable, even if it is clear that the complex problems of the contemporary city cannot be solved with large interventions alone. It is important to reiterate that more importance must be given to the institutionalization and legitimacy of the final plans and agreements than simply the application of legal norms.

The presentations and discussions at the course on “Large Urban Projects” show that the matter of urban land strongly underlies all the aspects and challenges described above. Land in this type of project presents a huge complexity and offers a great opportunity; the challenge is how to navigate between the interests and conflicts when there are many owners and stakeholders of the land. It is necessary to combat the temptation to believe that modern urban planning is the sum of large projects. Nevertheless, these projects can contribute to building a shared image of the city between the inhabitants and the users. This topic clearly has facets that have not been completely explored yet and that need continued collaborative analysis and by academics, policy makers and citizens.

Mario Lungo is executive director of the Office of Planning of the Metropolitan Area of San Salvador (OPAMSS) in El Salvador. He is also a professor and researcher at the Central American University José Simeón Cañas.

References

Borja, Jordi. 1995. Un modelo de transformación urbana. Quito, Peru: Programa de Gestion Urbana.

Carmona, Marisa and Rod Burgess. 2001. Strategic Planning and Urban Projects. Delft: Delft University Press.

Ingallina, Patrizia. 2001. Le Projet Urbain. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Powell, Kenneth. 2000. La transformación de la ciudad. Barcelona: Ediciones Blume.

Arantes, Otilia, Carlos Vainer e Erminia Maricato. 2000. A cidade do pensamento unico. Petrópolis: Editora Vozes.

Property taxes based on market value have many features that recommend them as a source of local government revenue. They promote visibility and accountability in public spending by providing property owners with a means of evaluating the costs and benefits of local government services. They can provide stable, independent local revenue that is not at the mercy of state budget surpluses or deficits. They are now considered to be proportional or even mildly progressive, in contrast to earlier economic views that presumed the tax to be regressive.

Against these strengths, the greatest challenge to a value-based property tax is political: taxpayers’ strong and completely understandable resistance to sharp increases in tax payments that reflect rising markets but not necessarily rising incomes with which to pay the tax increases. The best known and most dramatic response to this situation was rejection of the value-based tax system in California in 1978. When voters approved Proposition 13, they changed the tax base to the value of the property at the time of purchase or construction, with a maximum 2 percent annual inflation adjustment. For property held by the same owner since 1978, the inflation adjustment is applied to its value on the 1975–1976 tax roll.

This change has greatly altered California’s fiscal landscape. It has restricted the role of local governments, centralized service provision and decision making, and redistributed the tax burden from long-time residents to new property owners. Local governments now have an incentive to seek sales tax revenue by encouraging large retail establishments, such as auto malls, in what has been termed the “fiscalization of land use.” Can the property tax achieve greater stability and predictability without such drastic social and governmental costs? Table 1 illustrates the wide range of residential property tax levies in large metropolitan areas, a factor that presents additional challenges to formulating uniform policies or practical recommendations.

A Lincoln Institute seminar in April 2005 brought together public finance and assessment officials, policy analysts and scholars to consider alternate approaches to the recurrent problems that volatile real estate markets pose for value-based property taxes.

Problems Related to Market-Value Assessment

Discussion began with the incontrovertible observation, “Taxpayers do not like unpredictability.” In theory, reductions in tax rates could balance increases in property prices to maintain stability in actual tax payments under market-value assessments. This approach faces two obstacles. The first and most straightforward is governmental reluctance to reduce tax rates and forego increased revenues when rising values provide a cover for greater tax collection. The second is nonuniform price appreciation in different locations and for different types of property. When one segment of the tax base experiences a disproportionate value change, a corresponding change in the tax rate applied to the entire property class will not maintain level tax collections. California faced both difficulties in the years preceding adoption of Proposition 13. There, rapid residential appreciation was not matched by the lagging commercial sector, and a $7.1 billion state surplus fueled taxpayer cynicism as to the actual need for increased government revenues.

While rapid market shifts are the most challenging source of unpredictable tax changes, taxpayer “shocks” can also be caused simply by long delays in reassessment. Maintaining outdated values on the tax rolls achieves short-term predictability in tax bills, but at the expense of uniformity, accuracy and even legality. Long-postponed reassessments have been followed by tax revolts in many jurisdictions, both in this country and overseas.

Options for Addressing Value Shifts

Seminar participants reviewed the benefits and drawbacks of various measures to address these problems.

Circuit breakers, as their name implies, attempt to reduce a property tax “overload” by providing a refund or credit for taxes that exceed a set percentage of the property owner’s income. When funded by the state and administered as part of the state tax system, they have the dual benefit of protecting local revenue and targeting aid to the most needy taxpayers. At the same time, they require state funding and administration, and taxpayers must file tax returns to order to obtain these benefits. Like all programs that require income information, they sometimes encounter taxpayer resistance and consequent underutilization.

Homestead exemptions, available in most states, reduce assessments on the taxpayer’s primary residence. These exemptions are often granted without regard to taxpayer income, and so are not targeted to the most needy. In predominantly residential communities, this results in a significant loss of municipal revenues unless the tax rate is increased or the tax burden is shifted to other taxpayers. Like all preferential programs for homeowners, these exemptions fail to benefit renters, who bear a portion of the property tax burden and generally are less affluent than homeowners.

Tax deferral measures, often available to low-income elderly homeowners, permit unpaid taxes to accumulate as a lien against the property, to be paid after the residence changes hands. However, the desire to retain property clear of encumbrances has traditionally led homeowners to avoid making use of this option.

“Truth in taxation” legislation requires local governments to take various measures, such as publishing voter information and requesting ballot approval, to treat increases in tax collections in the same manner whether they are the result of growth in the tax base or increases in the tax rate. These enactments seek to counter the temptation to allow rates to remain constant while market values rise, thus increasing taxes and spending without budgetary accountability.

Limitations on annual total property tax collection increases, such as Proposition 2½ in Massachusetts, restrict overall levy growth but do not address unpredictable tax bill changes for specific taxpayers. For example, after several decades of tax stability, Boston taxpayers are now facing assessment shifts that reflect a downturn in the commercial property market with simultaneous explosive growth in certain residential values.

Limitations on annual tax increases for individual properties have enormous political appeal, but face three hazards. First, there is often pressure to make the phase-in period as long as possible, or even longer than possible. Montana provided for an extended 50-year phase-in of new assessments. Second, initial success at limiting increases to a certain percentage may lead to efforts to reduce that limit again. Oklahoma instituted a 5 percent limit and now faces pressure to reduce it to 3 percent. Finally, the “catch-up” of tax assessments when values stabilize or even drop elicits opposition of its own as taxpayers face increasing assessments while property values are flat or falling.

Assessment “freezes” take limitations on increases to their ultimate conclusion, prohibiting any increases despite changes in market values. They often are restricted to specific groups of taxpayers, such as elderly homeowners. Proposition 13 is a type of assessment freeze for all property, with only a 2 percent annual inflation adjustment in the tax base. These measures are in many respects equivalent to the long delays in reassessments that lead to nonuniformity and resistance to new valuations. After values are frozen taxpayers may seek to transfer that value to other family members, as they do in California, or to new residences, as in Texas.

Possible New Approaches

Seminar participants discussed methods for utilizing these and other measures to address the problems of unpredictability while minimizing the problems of inequitable distribution of the tax burden and maintenance of collections. A major distinction was drawn between approaches that moderate tax bill shifts but maintain a market-value base and those that alter assessments themselves. Altering assessments by limiting increases in value can result in situations where owners of similar properties pay very different tax bills. Furthermore, over time properties with average or lesser value appreciation can experience an increasingly greater share of taxes compared with properties that have had larger market increases. As a result wealthier taxpayers are more likely than those of moderate or low incomes to benefit from assessment limits.

To maintain a market-value tax base, with its benefits of uniformity, understandability and administrative efficiency, participants offered suggestions to stabilize rapid increases in tax payments due to significant shifts in the assessment base.

• Eliminating stringent income limitations on eligibility for senior citizen deferral programs, expanding eligibility for circuit breakers and tax deferral, and including such measures in state rather than local tax relief programs would allow more taxpayers to participate. A state could establish a property tax deferral fund to reimburse local jurisdictions for delayed collections.
• Classification and taxation of property according to use is a common means of taxing commercial and industrial properties at a higher rate than residential properties. Changing the class rates to accommodate a shift in the value base can be an appropriate short-term remedy, but may have harmful economic consequences in the long term. In Massachusetts the permitted shift of the share of the total tax levy from residential to commercial property in a municipality is subject to statutory limits. The recent combined acceleration of residential values and downturn of commercial values would have resulted in a substantial shift of taxes to homeowners in the City of Boston and a few other urban centers. Thus the legislature permitted a temporary increase of the share to be borne by the commercial class, at local option, but required a return to an even more limited class share difference within a five-year period.
• Alternative methods of tax collection, such as credit card, direct debit or more frequent payment schedules, may offer greater financial convenience than the more common annual and semiannual billings.
• Shorter periods between revaluations avoid the “sticker shock” that accompanies dramatic shifts and increases in value when reassessment occurs infrequently. Annual reassessments using computer-assisted mass appraisals offer greater stability and uniformity. Tax bills that reflect current values, rather than fractional assessments or outdated figures, are easier for taxpayers to understand.

Even significant increases in assessed value, if relatively uniform across the jurisdiction, do not result in increased taxes for most property owners if the municipal budget requires no additional property tax revenues and the tax rate is reduced proportionately. Better information about the relationship between assessed value and the tax rate will make it less likely that taxpayers will place the blame for their higher taxes on the assessors and their assessments. They may consider instead the adequacy of funding sources available to local governments, the effect of exemptions that reduce the property tax base, and unfunded mandates that require additional local expenditures.

The property tax, as the most important source of autonomous local revenue, often bears the brunt of criticism for the social, economic and fiscal pressures on local communities. Among these pressures are increased costs of new educational, environmental and security requirements, reductions in state and federal assistance, changing demographics and economic conditions, and increasing numbers of exemptions. Attention to these issues can clarify the debate over the role and burden of property taxes and the effectiveness of various tax relief measures.

Improving Educational Resources

There is an urgent need to provide government officials, lawmakers and the public with better information on property tax policy choices. Tax revolts and anti-tax initiatives make compelling news stories, but they should be balanced by concise and accessible information that sheds light on the problem and its solution. There is also a need for periodic research on such topics as:

• The effects over time of assessment and tax limits on the distribution of the property tax burden and on revenue growth, and the full costs to residents of additional fees and charges imposed to offset decreases in local property tax revenues.
• The effectiveness of property tax relief measures, and the distribution of their benefits across taxpayer classes.
• “Tax expenditure” studies to quantify the cost of exemptions, and exploration of the use of payments in lieu of taxes (PILOTS) for tax-exempt nonprofit property owners to pay for municipal services received.
• Assessment quality studies to evaluate both individual assessment equity and the distribution of the tax burden.

The Institute will be collaborating with the seminar participants and others in continuing these discussions and will undertake further research and the preparation of publications on these property tax issues in the coming year.

Joan Youngman is senior fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, where she chairs the Department of Valuation and Taxation. Her writings include Legal Issues in Property Valuation and Taxation (1994), and two books co-edited with Jane Malme, An International Survey of Taxes on Land and Buildings (1994) and The Development of Property Taxation in Economies in Transition (2001). She is a contributing author on the property taxation chapter of Jerome R. Hellerstein and Walter Hellerstein’s State and Local Taxation (7th ed. 2001), and writes on property taxation for State Tax Notes.

Jane Malme, fellow of the Lincoln Institute, is an attorney, author and consultant on property tax policy, law and administration in the U.S. and internationally. She directed the Massachusetts Department of Revenue’s Bureau of Local Assessment as it implemented major property tax reforms from 1978 to 1990.

The Lincoln Institute seminar on Property Taxes and Market Values—Responding to Post-Proposition 13 Challenges in April 2005 included participants from many states, including California, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York and Oklahoma. The discussion leader was Alan Dornfest, property tax policy supervisor in the Idaho State Tax Commission.

The Institute will continue this discussion at the International Association of Assessing Officers (IAAO) Annual Conference in Anchorage, Alaska, in September. Jane Malme will moderate a policy seminar on Property Tax Viability in Volatile Markets with speakers Alan Dornfest; Mark Haveman, director of development for the Minnesota Taxpayers Association and project director for its Center for Public Finance Research; and Andrew Reschovsky, professor of public affairs at the University of Wisconsin’s LaFollette School of Public Affairs.

Ciro Biderman is an associate professor in the graduate and undergraduate programs in public administration and in economics at Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV) in São Paulo; associate researcher at the Center for the Study of the Politics and Economics of the Public Sector (CEPESP/FGV); and associate researcher at the Metropolis Laboratory of Urbanism at São Paulo State University (LUME/FAUUSP). He received his Ph.D. in economics at the FGV and his postdoctoral degree in urban economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2007.

Biderman was a visiting fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy from 2006 to 2009, and he continues to teach courses and conduct research with Martim Smolka and others affiliated with the Program on Latin America and the Caribbean. He also consults on the economics and politics of local development for the World Bank and other organizations. His research interests include urban and regional economics focused on public policies at the subnational level, with particular emphasis on land policy interactions with real estate markets and transport costs.

He has published articles in academic journals, and coauthored or coedited three books, including the 2005 volume Economia do Setor Público no Brasil (Public Sector Economics in Brazil). At the Lincoln Institute he has written several Land Lines articles and working papers, all of which are available on the Institute Web site.

Land Lines: As a Latin American scholar specializing in land economics issues, how do you compare the state of the art of research in the region to other countries?

Ciro Biderman: In Brazil, as in most of Latin America, there is a lack of research in urban economics in general and in land issues in particular. The same is true to some extent in the United States and Europe, although the research interests are quite different, and urban economics is more in the mainstream in those countries.

Some relevant characteristics of cities in Latin America are similar to those in other developing countries, and all would benefit from additional research. For instance, despite the large informal market in Latin America, most economists have neglected that sector. Ironically, most urban economics analysis of informality has been conducted by U.S. and other international scholars.

Second, Latin American cities are usually not as sprawling as cities elsewhere, yet their historic downtowns are often deteriorated and we know little about why this is happening. Third, most countries in the region have recently adopted decentralization policies that shifted the responsibility for the provision of public goods to local governments. However, the revenues of local governments are low and most rely heavily on federal transfers.

Land Lines: How did you become associated with the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy?

Ciro Biderman: My first contact was in 1998, when I was awarded a dissertation fellowship to finish my Ph.D. Working with Paulo Sandroni at FGV, I studied the impact on land prices of a zoning change in São Paulo. At the time, the central business district was expanding toward the southwest, but the expansion was blocked by Jardim Europa, then a low-density, high-end residential neighborhood. New office development bypassed the area, moving towards the new Luiz Carlos Berrini Avenue. To reverse this pattern, in 1996 the city changed the zoning in part of Jardim Europa, increasing density and auctioning building rights to encourage new development.

I compared the part of the neighborhood where zoning did not change with that which experienced exogenous changes from being a low-rise residential area to a high-rise, mixed-use area of high-end residential and office space. In an article written with Sandroni and Smolka (2006) we showed that the change in density increased land prices as expected.

The most interesting finding, however, was the local government’s capture of the land price increment through a fiscal mechanism called CEPAC (Certificate of Additional Potential of Construction). These certificates are auctioned as part of the process by which developers obtain building licenses in specified areas. In the adjacent neighborhood where business development had leapfrogged without CEPACs, the incremental land rent generated by the zoning change was instead captured by the developers.

Land Lines: What other research have you pursued at the Institute?

Ciro Biderman: Since becoming a visiting fellow in 2006, I have focused on the economics of informal housing, particularly on the extent to which urban regulation was statistically associated with different measures of informality, including the role of regulation on prices in formal and informal housing markets (Biderman 2008).

In a related study in 2009, Martim Smolka and I discussed the policy implications of how and why different international agencies define informality to reflect one or more housing attributes. The consequence is that different definitions produce different estimates of the incidence of informality. Thus, when governments improve only one informal housing attribute but not the others, they may report a reduction in informality when in fact there is none.

In a new line of research I am looking at the causes and consequences of sprawl in Latin America, focusing on ten large Brazilian cities. Preliminary findings show that these cities are less sprawled than their North American and European counterparts, but more than comparable Asian cities. Transport systems are based on the automobile, as in the United States, except that less than 10 percent of the population owns a car. Yet the socioeconomic spatial pattern is more similar to Europe, with the rich living in the center and the poor on the periphery.

Land Lines: You help the Latin America Program evaluate research proposals submitted for Institute funding. What have you learned from that experience?

Ciro Biderman: I have been involved in evaluating these proposals since 2006, and the number of high-quality scholarly applications has grown steadily. I have noticed that the research questions from Latin Americans scholars are often better presented than the techniques to address them, in contrast to what occurs in the United States.

I think this is a problem faced in many aspects of social science research, and not only in Latin America. Although the origins of urban economics were grounded in the connections among urban equilibrium, transport costs, and land prices, each of these fields has developed almost independently and there is a general need for more integrated analysis.

Land Lines: What do you see as the main strengths of Latin American researchers?

Ciro Biderman: Highly qualified professionals in Brazil and other countries often move between public office and academia. As a result, they are aware of the respective issues and needs in the public sector and academia, and may have a more direct impact on the implementation of urban policies.

Furthermore, researchers can bring to focus what is specific to Latin American cities compared to cities elsewhere, thus expanding the scope of applied research. For example, to the best of my knowledge, there is no economic model for housing demand that allows the quality of the housing to change in order to adjust housing consumption to budget constraints. This is quite a relevant question in Latin America, but not to researchers in the United States or Europe.

Land Lines: Can you elaborate on the kinds of issues facing scholars in different world regions?

Ciro Biderman: As with most social phenomena, patterns of land use have evolved historically. For instance, sprawl in the United States is closely related to the movement of high-income groups to the periphery of metropolitan areas. In Latin America the movement of income groups is usually in the opposite direction, with poor people seeking affordable land on the periphery.

Although fundamental principles of urban economic theory might apply, the consequences are quite different. Studying different patterns using the same theoretical framework would advance our understanding of urban economics.

Land Lines: What topics or issues are especially lacking in strong empirical work?

Ciro Biderman: In terms of land policy, in my opinion, we need more research on property taxation; the interactions of fiscal and regulatory policies with land use planning issues; socioeconomic patterns of sprawl; and the connections between land use and transport. The lack of research on the economics of the informal housing market is surprising since informal settlements represent more than one-third of the total urban housing stock in some countries. Although this problem could eventually be solved with subsidies, the amount of resources needed is probably prohibitive for most countries.

Currently there is a branch of the literature studying the impact of tenure security on general welfare, suggesting that titling programs may be improving welfare, but there are few similar studies on the impacts of slum upgrading programs. While some evidence suggests that inappropriate regulation may induce more informality, we do not yet fully understand the economic nexus between formal and informal housing markets. We also lack systematic cross-country studies.

Land Lines: Do you think there a trade-off between policy experience and technical research capability?

Ciro Biderman: As an economist, I know the virtues of the division of labor and gains from trade, so it is important that academics and public officials complement each other. Thus, researchers need to be as rigorous as possible and able to expose the unintended consequences of public policies, and policy makers must ensure that their policies are designed so they can be implemented effectively and efficiently to reach the intended goals.

For example, a major policy issue is how to increase the supply of affordable, high-quality housing for the poor in developing countries, which requires understanding the opportunity costs between affordability and quality. The trade-offs may be technical, but the alternatives are clearly political. How can this housing imbalance be fixed? Who has to pay the cost (the residents or the society)? What are the consequences of different policy options? These are practical questions. Empirical evidence that helps to evaluate current policies might be a major resource for a policy maker.

Land Lines: How do you think the Lincoln Institute can contribute to narrowing the gap between rigorous empirical research and policy relevance?

Ciro Biderman: I believe that the Institute is already doing that by working with both scholars and policy makers in a variety of programs and fellowship opportunities. Classroom and online courses offer training to policy makers to help improve their dialogue with researchers, and to young scholars to expand the pool of policy-sensitive researchers. The intensive courses in methods for land policy analysis also inform researchers about advances in urban economics theory and strengthen both their methodological skills and their knowledge of new analytical techniques.

References

Biderman, Ciro. 2008. Informality in Brazil. Does urban land use and building regulation matter? Working Paper. Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Biderman, Ciro, Paulo Sandroni, and Martim Smolka. 2006. Large-scale urban interventions: The case of Faria Lima in São Paulo. Land Lines 18(2).

Smolka, Martim, and Ciro Biderman. 2009. Measuring informality in housing settlements: Why bother? Land Lines 21(2).

China ha experimentado un crecimiento económico rápido desde 1978, cuando adoptó una reforma económica y políticas de apertura hacia el mundo. Se ha convertido en la segunda mayor economía del mundo en términos de PIB, y su recaudación tributaria ha experimentado un crecimiento anual promedio de alrededor del 20 por ciento desde la reforma fiscal de 1994.

No obstante, muchos gobiernos subnacionales de China han experimentado problemas fiscales y han incurrido en grandes deudas locales en los últimos años debido a numerosas competencias del gobierno central no financiadas y la gran brecha fiscal entre las necesidades de gasto y la capacidad para generar ingresos. Por ejemplo, en 2008, los gobiernos subnacionales de China han sido responsables por el 79 por ciento de los gastos totales del gobierno, pero sólo del 47 por ciento de los ingresos gubernamentales totales (Man 2011).

A diferencia de muchos países desarrollados, los gobiernos locales de China (provinciales, de prefectura, de condado y municipales) no tienen ninguna autoridad legal para imponer tributos o pedir préstamos, y el impuesto sobre la propiedad desempeña un papel muy limitado en la estructura de financiamiento público a nivel local. En consecuencia, muchos gobiernos locales recurren a fuentes de ingresos extrapresupuestarios, imponen aranceles para el derecho a arrendar el suelo, otras tasas y recargos, y obtienen préstamos bancarios de forma indirecta para financiar las inversiones de infraestructura y desarrollo económico local.

Durante el período de 1991 a 2008, los aranceles para el arriendo del suelo (también llamados aranceles de transferencia del suelo) aumentaron del 5,7 por ciento de los ingresos totales del presupuesto local al 43,5 por ciento. Esta dependencia excesiva de aranceles para el arriendo del suelo ha sido criticada como un factor importante en el crecimiento del precio de las viviendas y el aumento de casos de corrupción y disputas sobre suelos en China.

Problemas con el sistema tributario actual

El sistema actual de impuestos sobre el suelo y la propiedad en China genera una cantidad limitada de ingresos, aun cuando se gravan cinco tipos de impuestos sobre la propiedad inmobiliaria en las diversas etapas de producción (ver tabla 1). Los gobiernos locales cobran el Impuesto a la Ocupación de Suelos Agrícolas y el Impuesto al Valor Agregado al Suelo (IVAS) en el momento de adquirir y transferir el suelo. En el momento de la toma de posesión, se cobran el Impuesto al Uso Urbano del Suelo y el Impuesto sobre la Propiedad Inmobiliaria, y finalmente se cobra el Impuesto a la Escritura cuando se transfiere el título de la propiedad.

Este sistema tributario tiene muchos problemas y debe ser reformado estructuralmente. En primer lugar, los diversos impuestos sobre el suelo y la propiedad constituyen solamente un 15,7 por ciento de los ingresos tributarios a nivel local. Es una fuente de ingresos inestable e inadecuada para los gobiernos locales de China. Los funcionarios de los gobiernos locales han dependido de otras fuentes de ingresos, como el arriendo de suelos del estado a emprendedores inmobiliarios a cambio de un arancel fijo importante, para financiar proyectos de capital y desarrollo de infraestructura. En 2010, los gobiernos locales de China recaudaron 2,7 billones de RMB en concepto de aranceles de arriendo de suelos, además de 8,3 billones de RMB en impuestos y otros ingresos presupuestarios. La relación entre los aranceles de arriendo y los ingresos tributarios totales fue del 32,5 por ciento, comparada con el 4,5 por ciento en 1999.

En segundo lugar, la estructura actual de impuestos sobre la propiedad en China aplica una mayor carga tributaria en la etapa de transacción que durante la posesión. Por ejemplo, la recaudación del impuesto anual sobre el uso urbano del suelo y el impuesto sobre la propiedad inmobiliaria durante la etapa de posesión ascendió a sólo el 6,44 por ciento de los ingresos tributarios locales en 2008, mientras que alrededor del 9,25 por ciento de los ingresos tributarios locales se recaudó en las etapas del desarrollo del suelo y transacción de la propiedad.

En tercer lugar, las propiedades residenciales ocupadas por sus dueños no están incluidas actualmente en la base tributaria del impuesto sobre la propiedad inmobiliaria, lo que restringe la capacidad del gobierno para recuperar la plusvalía del mercado de vivienda en pleno auge debido a la privatización de viviendas de interés social, el crecimiento de los ingresos de la población y la inversión masiva en infraestructura urbana. Para 2010, la tasa de propiedad de viviendas alcanzó el 84,3 por ciento de la bolsa de viviendas urbanas del mercado formal, y los valores de las mismas han experimentado aumentos sustanciales en los últimos cinco años en muchas de las grandes ciudades (Man, Zheng y Ren, 2011). Pero la exclusión de las propiedades residenciales del impuesto sobre la propiedad inmueble creó desniveles de riqueza y una demanda excesiva de viviendas con fines de inversión y especulación, lo que aumentó la cantidad de viviendas vacantes en muchas ciudades costeras.

Finalmente, a diferencia del sistema de impuestos sobre la propiedad en muchos países desarrollados, en China no se grava el impuesto de acuerdo al avalúo de la propiedad. En lugar de ello, su valor es el 1,2 por ciento del precio original, menos un 10 al 30 por ciento por depreciación, o un 15 por ciento de los ingresos reales por arriendo de la propiedad. Los funcionarios gubernamentales tienen poca experiencia en la estimación del valor de mercado de las propiedades existentes, una destreza fundamental para poder establecer un sistema moderno de impuesto sobre la propiedad.

Recientes avances en la reforma del impuesto sobre la propiedad

El gobierno central de China ha estado explorando la posibilidad de reformar su sistema actual de tributos sobre el suelo y la propiedad desde 2003, cuando propuso oficialmente por primera vez el establecimiento de un sistema moderno de impuestos sobre la propiedad. En 2006 se seleccionaron seis ciudades para realizar proyectos pilotos, y un año después se amplió esta cantidad a 10 ciudades.

En 2010, la Administración Estatal de Impuestos (AEI), que está a cargo de este proyecto piloto, ordenó a cada provincia que seleccionara por lo menos una ciudad para realizar ensayos de avalúo de propiedades, con el objeto de verificar el precio de venta declarado por los propietarios para el impuesto a la escritura. Estos ensayos han tenido un importante papel en la preparación técnica e informática de avalúos masivos futuros del valor de la propiedad. El 28 de enero de 2011, las ciudades de Shanghái y Chongqing recibieron permiso para recaudar impuestos sobre la propiedad de segundas residencias y residencias de lujo de reciente adquisición, respectivamente.

Logros importantes

La reforma del sistema de impuestos sobre la propiedad en China intenta establecer un sistema para gravar las propiedades existentes (incluyendo tanto el suelo como las estructuras edificadas) anualmente de acuerdo a su avalúo, con el objeto de generar una fuente significativa de ingresos para los gobiernos locales. Este sistema utilizará varios métodos de avalúo, tales como la comparación con los valores de mercado, su costo y los ingresos generados, y se aplicará a propiedades comerciales e industriales, así como también a propiedades residenciales, incluyendo aquellas ocupadas por sus dueños.

Algunas ciudades piloto, como Hangzhou, Dandong y Chongqing, han estudiado e implementado distintas versiones de Avalúo Masivo Asistido por Computadora (CAMA, por sus siglas en inglés). El AEI ha estado capacitando a funcionarios de las agencias tributarias locales de cada provincia en el desarrollo de un sistema CAMA y sus aplicaciones. También ha intentado establecer normas tecnológicas para cada método de avalúo.

En 2005, el AEI diseñó un ensayo de regulación de avalúo de propiedades inmobiliarias, con 12 capítulos y 40 cláusulas que estipulan los métodos de recolección de datos, las normas y el sistema CAMA. Todas las ciudades piloto han concluido su simulación de avalúo y han calculado las cargas y los ingresos tributarios utilizando distintos escenarios de tasa de impuestos. En 2011 se seleccionó a, por lo menos, una ciudad de cada provincia para realizar un avalúo de propiedades recién adquiridas para recaudar el impuesto a la escritura.

El avance más importante tuvo lugar a comienzos de 2011, cuando Shanghái comenzó a recaudar impuestos sobre las segundas residencias recién adquiridas por residentes y sobre las primeras residencias de no residentes de acuerdo a su valor de transacción, previa exclusión de la base tributaria de 60 metros cuadrados por persona. La ciudad de Chongqing está apuntando a la residencia unifamiliar existente y a los apartamentos de lujo recién adquiridos por residentes o segundas residencias adquiridas por no residentes. El programa excluye 180 metros cuadrados para residencias unifamiliares y 100 metros cuadrados para apartamentos en Chongqing.

Se ha impuesto el tributo sobre la propiedad a alrededor de 8.000 parcelas en total en estas dos ciudades, si bien este experimento de un año de duración recaudó sólo una pequeña cantidad para el financiamiento de viviendas de bajos ingresos. Aunque la base tributaria, la tasa tributaria y la recaudación han sido muy pequeñas en estas dos ciudades, estos esfuerzos representan un gran paso adelante para la reforma del impuesto sobre la propiedad en China.

Desafíos futuros

La reforma del impuesto sobre la propiedad en China todavía enfrenta enormes desafíos, aun cuando los ciudadanos y los medios de comunicación ya la comprenden mejor. En primer lugar, ha encontrado resistencia desde varios grupos de interés influyentes. Los mayores adversarios de un impuesto sobre la propiedad son los funcionarios gubernamentales locales, además de los inversores y especuladores inmobiliarios. Muchos gobiernos locales creen que la adopción de este impuesto reducirá el valor de las viviendas y, en consecuencia, reducirá la demanda de suelo, lo que disminuirá sustancialmente los aranceles por arriendo de suelo en manos estatales. Además, los funcionarios de los gobiernos locales son evaluados según el papel que cumplan en la estimulación del crecimiento de la economía local, y los proyectos de inversión en infraestructura se usan frecuentemente como un estímulo para el desarrollo de la economía local. Los funcionarios quieren acceso ilimitado a los aranceles de arriendo del suelo, porque se pueden recaudar y gastar con muy poco control y pueden generar una gran cantidad de ingresos durante el período de ejercicio de un funcionario.

Un segundo desafío es el progreso lento de los preparativos legales y de avalúo para el sistema de impuesto sobre la propiedad. Se tienen que promulgar leyes y reglamentaciones sobre el impuesto, incluyendo leyes y normas de avalúo. Habrá que capacitar y certificar a hasta 100.000 valuadores en las normas correspondientes. En tercer lugar, todavía no existe un consenso sobre cómo definir la base tributaria, sus exclusiones y exenciones; la asignación de responsabilidades de administración, fijación de tasas y avalúo; y la distribución de los ingresos tributarios. Y, por último, la falta general de familiaridad con el impuesto sobre la propiedad crea continuos malentendidos e interpretaciones erróneas acerca del impuesto.

Al mismo tiempo, cada vez más residentes urbanos comprenden que un impuesto sobre el avalúo de la propiedad comercial y residencial recaudado anualmente puede generar una fuente sustentable de ingresos para los gobiernos locales y reducir su dependencia de aranceles y cargos de transferencia de propiedad que contribuyen a incrementar el precio de las viviendas. A raíz de la política del gobierno central de restringir la compra de viviendas y de ajustar la oferta monetaria, los aranceles de arriendo del suelo han comenzado a disminuir en muchas ciudades en 2011.

Según un informe reciente del Instituto de Índices de China (2012), los aranceles por transferencia de suelos en 130 ciudades han disminuido un 11 por ciento en comparación con 2010. En Shanghái y Beijing han caído un 16 y 35,7 por ciento, respectivamente. Esta reducción significativa puede también ofrecer oportunidades a los gobiernos locales para encontrar maneras más sustentables de equilibrar la promoción del crecimiento económico con el suministro de bienes y servicios públicos. A largo plazo, el establecimiento de un sistema de impuestos sobre la propiedad para sustituir gradualmente los aranceles a la transferencia del suelo ofrece una manera eficiente, equitativa y sustentable de financiar los desarrollos locales y los egresos gubernamentales.

El impuesto sobre la propiedad se ha percibido como una manera efectiva de reducir los precios de la vivienda, amortiguar la especulación y reducir las tasas de viviendas vacantes. Muchos investigadores creen que los gobiernos locales han tratado de limitar la oferta de suelo para aumentar los precios y maximizar los ingresos, produciendo un rápido aumento de los precios de la vivienda y la falta de viviendas económicas en las zonas urbanas de China. La imposición de tributos sobre la propiedad residencial puede aumentar el costo de oportunidad de dejar las propiedades vacías o sin usar, y reducir los incentivos para el comportamiento especulativo. El impuesto se percibe también como una manera efectiva de reducir la brecha de ingresos y riqueza entre los residentes urbanos y desalentar la inversión especulativa en el sector inmobiliario.

Conclusiones

La reforma del impuesto sobre la propiedad de China está progresando en el área de investigación y experimentos de aplicación, y ha comenzado a ser mejor comprendido y aceptado por los ciudadanos y los gobiernos locales. Pero el establecimiento exitoso de un impuesto sobre la propiedad como una fuente importante de ingresos para el financiamiento público local requiere no sólo de técnicas de avalúo y de diseño tributario sino también de determinación política y de una reforma administrativa. Esta reforma podría generar un cambio fundamental en las relaciones intergubernamentales y el papel del gobierno en la estructura política y económica de China.

El Instituto Lincoln comenzó a respaldar las investigaciones relacionadas con la tributación de la propiedad conjuntamente con el gobierno chino en 2004, con la colaboración del Centro de Desarrollo e Investigaciones del Consejo Estatal, el Ministerio de Finanzas y la Administración Estatal de Impuestos (AEI). En 2007 se estableció en Beijing el Centro de Desarrollo Urbano y Política de Suelos de la Universidad de Peking y el Instituto Lincoln, en parte para ayudar a organizar conferencias internacionales y programas de capacitación para funcionarios de las agencias tributarias de las ciudades piloto. El Centro continúa apoyando a expertos nacionales e internacionales para realizar actividades de investigación y proyectos de demostración en el área de impuestos sobre la propiedad y temas relacionados.

Sobre el autor

Joyce Yanyun Man es senior fellow y directora del Programa para China del Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, y es directora y profesora del Centro de Desarrollo Urbano y Política de Suelos de la Universidad de Peking y el Instituto Lincoln.

Referencias

China Index Institute. 2012. http://www.chinanews.com/estate/2012/01-04/3580986.shtml

Man, Joyce Yanyun. 2011. Local public finance in China: An overview. In China’s local public finance in transition, eds. Joyce Yanyun Man and Yu-Hung Hong. Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Man, Joyce Yanyun, Siqi Zheng, and Rongrong Ren. 2011. Housing policy and housing markets: Trends, patterns and affordability. In China’s housing reform and outcomes, ed. Joyce Yanyun Man. Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

National Bureau of Statistics. 2009. China statistical yearbook. Beijing: China Statistics Press.

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

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

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

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

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

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

People who work with me are often surprised by the extent to which my philosophical canon derives from low-budget offbeat films, typically from the 1980s. When in need of wisdom, I frequently turn to the teachings of Repo Man or, for this essay, Terry Gilliam’s allegorical masterpiece Time Bandits. In the movie, a group of public workers are employed by the Supreme Being to fill holes in the time-space continuum left from the haste of creating the universe in seven days: “It was a bit of a botched job, you see.”

Like the Time Bandits, policy makers are often tasked to fill holes—actual potholes in roadways, or more theoretical holes that are the artifacts of dysfunctional private markets. One big hole that policy has struggled for decades to fill is the inadequate supply of affordable housing. For example, housing economists in the United States have become quite adept at tracking the size of the hole, which has only become harder to fill since the federal government committed to address it as a national policy priority beginning with the Housing Act of 1949, part of President Harry S. Truman’s Fair Deal.

Perhaps our collective failure to solve the affordable housing deficit over the last 66 years stems from wrongheaded analysis of the problem, and the conclusion that market-based solutions can be designed to solve the mismatch between the supply of affordable housing and demand for it. In his 1949 State of the Union address, President Truman noted that to fill the needs of millions of families with inadequate housing, “Most of the houses we need will have to be built by private enterprise, without public subsidy.”

To support this claim, permit me a short departure into market theory. From the now-preferred mathematical approach to economic analysis, a market is simply a system of partial differential equations that is solved by a single price. The partial differential equations capture the complex decisions made by consumers and producers of goods, reconciling tastes, preferences, and budgets of consumers with the technical complexities of producing goods to arrive at a price that clears the market by settling all transactions that suppliers and consumers of goods are willing to make.

Acclaimed economists Arrow, Debreu, and McKenzie proved the theoretical existence of a single set of prices that can simultaneously solve for the “general equilibrium” of all markets in a national or global economy. One important aspect of this Nobel Prize–winning contribution was the observation that a unique price cleared each market—one market, one price. There was no expectation that a single price could maintain equilibrium in two markets. But this is the fundamental flaw of the housing market—it is actually two markets, not one. Housing markets supply both shelter for local consumption and a globally tradable investment good made possible by broad capital markets that serve global investors. This dual-market status used to be more descriptive of owner-occupied housing, but, with the proliferation of real estate investment trusts (REITs), rental markets are now in the same boat.

Markets for consumption goods behave very differently than investment markets, responding to different “fundamentals.” On the supply side, prices for consumption goods are dictated by production costs, while prices in investment markets are dictated by expected returns. On the demand side, such things as tastes and preferences, household incomes, and demographics determine the price of housing as shelter. Investment demand for housing is dictated by factors like liquidity and liquidity preferences of investors, expected returns on alternative investments, or interest rates.

In developed countries, global capital markets and the market for shelter collide locally with little chance of reconciliation. Local households compete with global investors to decide the character and quantity of housing that is produced. In markets that attract global investment, plenty of housing is produced, but shortages of affordable units are acute, and worsen over time. This is because a huge share of new housing is produced to maximize investment return, not to meet the needs of the local population for shelter. For example, there is no shortage of global investment willing to participate in developing $100 million apartments in New York City. But affordable housing, being much harder to finance, is in short supply. And in markets that have been abandoned by global capital, house prices fall below production costs, and surplus housing accumulates and decays. In extreme cases such as Detroit, market order can only be restored by demolishing thousands of abandoned homes and buildings.

Perhaps it is time that we reconsider the analysis that led President Truman, and thousands of housing policy makers after him, to conclude that one could forge market-based solutions to the challenge of sheltering a country’s population. Truman concluded that “By producing too few rental units and too large a proportion of high-priced houses, the building industry is rapidly pricing itself out of the market.” But Truman was thinking about the market for shelter, not investment. It is remarkable to note that the number of housing units supplied in developed countries such as the United States significantly exceeds the number of households. In 2010, the U.S. Census estimated that there were 131 million units of housing in the country and 118 million households—one in seven housing units were vacant. It is even more shocking to note that in the United States this oversupply of housing characterizes every metropolitan market in the country—even metropolitan markets with extreme shortages of affordable housing. In 2010, 8.5 percent of housing units were vacant in Greater Boston, 9.1 percent in the San Francisco Bay area, and 10.2 percent in Washington, DC. The problem is that many households have insufficient incomes to afford the housing that is available.

In the end, rather than fill the holes in the fabric of time and space, the Time Bandits decided to take advantage of them to “get bloody stinking rich.” The bandits sought to capitalize on celestial imperfections in the same way that global investors seek returns from short-term market dislocations. To illustrate the dangers of naked speculation in unregulated markets, consider an apocryphal tale from a very different market. In 1974, heavy rains during planting season in Bangladesh suggested that rice might be in short supply at harvest time. In anticipation of these shortages, rice prices started to rise. Savvy commodity speculators realized that there would be a good return on any rice that was held off the market. Despite the fact that the actual harvest produced a bumper crop, the interaction between market expectations and market manipulations by commodity investors produced one of the worst famines of the 20th century—with an estimated 1.5 million famine-related fatalities. The famine was not the result of real food shortages. The collision of the market for goods and the market for speculative investment priced rice out of the reach of the local populations, with landless families suffering mortality at three times the rate of families with land.

Perhaps shelter and food are too important to be left to unregulated markets to allocate. In light of the damage that the conflict between the market for goods and the market for investment can inflict on local populations, perhaps public policy should focus on protecting a share of the market—and the public—from the ravages of speculation. In this issue, we describe some nascent efforts to produce permanently affordable housing by insulating it from speculation—through community land trusts, inclusionary housing, and housing cooperatives. Miriam Axel-Lute and Dana Hawkins-Simons discuss the mechanics of organizing local community land trusts. Loren Berlin describes efforts to preserve affordable housing in the form of manufactured homes and to promote permanent affordability of that stock through the conversion of manufactured housing communities to limited equity cooperatives.

On more cautionary notes: Cynthia Goytia discusses the ways that low-income communities circumvent housing regulations that drive up housing costs to produce their own affordable but substandard shelter in informal settlements around Latin American cities; and Li Sun and Zhi Liu discuss the tenuous status of one-quarter of urban Chinese households that purchased affordable shelter with uncertain property rights on collectively owned land at the rapidly developing edge of cities and in “urban villages,” former rural settlements now surrounded by modern construction. As capital markets deepen in these countries, the competition between housing as investment good and housing as shelter will likely exacerbate informality in Latin American cities and make property rights of these Chinese families more precarious. After almost seven decades of failed efforts to get private markets to meet populations’ needs for affordable shelter, it might be time to develop, and to export, another approach that is based on a more realistic understanding of the complexity of housing and capital markets.

The state of Bosnia and Herzegovina continues its long process of reconstruction and reconciliation, four years after the November 1995 signing of the Dayton Peace Accords, which marked the end of a three-and-one-half-year war. Under the terms of the Accords, the state was set up within the original borders of what had been the Yugoslav Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but was divided into two largely independent entities: the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Federation) and the Serb Republic (Republika Srpska). Sub-entity levels of government include cantons and municipalities in the Federation and municipalities in the Republika Srpska.

The task of rebuilding a country ravaged by war is never an easy one. International donor organizations have dedicated large amounts of human and financial resources to the cause, greatly assisting in the development of new government institutions and rebuilding the economy. One of the many challenges facing the country is ensuring that there are sufficient resources available to carry out necessary governmental functions. Of particular concern are service responsibilities and infrastructure needs, including reconstruction, which are straining the already limited budgets of the municipalities.

The Lincoln Institute, the World Bank and the United States Treasury have been involved in a joint project that provides assistance to cantonal and municipal governments in Bosnia and Herzegovina as they explore ways to enhance existing revenues and identify new revenue sources. A number of revenue-generating ideas have been discussed, and one option under serious consideration is an area-based property tax.

Ad Valorem vs. Area-based Tax Systems

Ideally, a property tax system should be ad valorem based in order to promote vertical and horizontal equity in the overall tax system. However, an ad valorem system has a number of administrative complexities that limit its full adoption, especially in developing and transitional economies. An efficient and effective ad valorem property tax system requires a functioning market for property, a network of professional appraisers, substantial amounts of exogenous data, and a sophisticated administrative infrastructure. Because Bosnia and Herzegovina is both a transitional and a post-war economy, these necessary elements are not readily available.

The country does not have a robust market for property, although a real estate market is beginning to emerge around the capital city of Sarajevo. A weekly gazette advertises available properties, but the number is limited and the transactions that do occur tend to be cash or barter-based. An initiative to privatize residences and businesses promises to stimulate the supply of privately held property, ultimately increasing the pool of available properties for real estate transactions. However, the privatization effort does not involve “arms-length” transactions because prices are being established by administrative fiat.

Currently no professional appraisal training is available in the country, but it is a necessary condition for a properly functioning ad valorem system of property taxation. Even if such a system is not adopted, training is still needed, as tax authorities administer the tax on non-movables that has been adopted recently in a few cantons. This tax is similar to the property transaction tax used in various states in the U.S. To assure that the sales price being reported by the seller is reasonable, an appointed committee of citizens is asked to validate it. Ideally these citizens would receive training in appraisal techniques before embarking on their duties.

Efficient and effective administration of an ad valorem property tax system requires an extensive administrative infrastructure and substantial amounts of exogenous data. Neither the infrastructure nor the data, such as financial information, cost of construction and mortgage information, are readily available. Therefore, instituting an ad valorem property tax system in Bosnia and Herzegovina would be very costly and would require a substantial amount of lead time to begin collecting the necessary data and to build the required infrastructure.

However, there are at least three property-based alternatives that are appropriate for developing and transitional economies and are worthy of consideration in this case. The first alternative is a flat fee on occupiers/owners of land and/or improvements with no adjustments for size, value or use of the property. A second alternative is an area-based tax that takes into account the size or area of the property, including both land and improvements. The physical area of the land and improvements provides the base for the tax, and the base is multiplied times the rate of the tax, which is generally low. The third alternative is to adjust the aforementioned area-based tax for such factors as the location of the property, its use, and the quality of the improvements on the land.

A hybrid of alternatives two and three-an area-based tax with adjustments for the location and use of the property-seems to make the most sense for Bosnia and Herzegovina, for several reasons:

• Both entities already have some familiarity with area-based taxes: the Federation’s tax on specialized types of real and personal property and the Republika Srpska’s tax on agricultural land.
• Data requirements associated with an area-based tax are less than those associated with traditional measures of valuation.
• Trained appraisers and assessors are not required for an area-based system.
• Self-appraisal and self-reporting of information may be easily accomplished with an area-based system.
• Area-based techniques can easily be modified to account for differences in the location of the property and the quality and type of building with a modest investment in process design.

The Process of “Discovering” Property

For an area-based property tax system to work properly, all property must be discovered. Ideally, discovery would be accomplished by reading digitized cadastral records. However, such information is limited and technological constraints make this approach infeasible at this time.

Both the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Republika Srpska have reasonably good cadastral records considering their 40 years of socialism, the nationalization of property, and the effects of war. The legal cadastral records contain data on legal ownership of property, while the land cadastral records document the size of land. Two key missing components are complete information on improvements to the land and accurate property ownership information, due to the mass dislocations of citizens during the war.

It will take a substantial amount of work to update the cadastral records sufficiently to support an area-based property tax system. In the meantime, it makes sense to use existing information to assist in the identification and discovery of property. Public housing records, which are quite complete and in some instances are computerized, are one source. For example, the Sarajevo Housing Authority has detailed information on the size, quality, amenities and location of publicly owned residential apartments, and its rent collection system is computerized.

Other sources are the gas and electric utilities that must possess information about their customers in order to efficiently and effectively bill them for service. Sarajevo Gas appears to have fairly complete customer records and it makes a serious effort to keep these data files up-to-date. The largest of three electric utilities operating in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Public Enterprise Elektoprivreda BiH, also maintains very good customer records on approximately 560,000 customers, including approximately 60,000 businesses.

These housing, gas and electric records contain a lot of information on property and its owner/occupier, yet no single set of records appears to be sufficient for the level of detail necessary for an efficiently operating property tax system. Given the incomplete information contained in the cadastral records, tax administration officials in Bosnia and Herzegovina are faced with the challenge of developing a data discovery process that can best utilize these existing databases.

An active approach to discovery would require occupants to provide the necessary information to the taxing authorities. The reason that occupants rather than owners should be enlisted in this task is because land and property ownership records are incomplete and inaccurate in many parts of the country. The first step would be to develop a form that asks for the name of the occupant, a cadastral identification number, the location of the property, the area of the land, the size of improvements to the land, and the use of the land. In the Federation, it makes sense for the cantons, in cooperation with the municipalities, to develop these records, whereas in the Republika Srpska, municipalities most likely would do this with assistance from the entity-level government.

The second step would involve collecting this information. Asking occupants to fill out the form voluntarily would require a public information campaign explaining why the information is needed, how to comply with the request, and the penalties associated with non-compliance. Occupants would be encouraged to pick up the forms from the local cadastral office, complete them, and return them. A second approach would be to prepare a list of known properties using existing cadastral, housing, and gas and electric utility records, and then either hand deliver or mail the property record form to the occupants.

Once the municipalities have compiled the property information, it should be audited for accuracy and completeness by comparing information on the forms with similar information contained in the records of the electric and gas utilities. In many cases this comparison could be performed electronically. Then a manual comparison could be done with housing and cadastral records. The result will be a list of properties and occupants who have failed to comply with the request for property record information. Non-compliers could be sent a reminder of their responsibility to comply, and in extreme cases of non-compliance, individual visits to the property can be conducted.

Revenue Potential and Administrative Challenges

Despite the presence of property-based taxes in Bosnia and Herzegovina, officials at the cantonal and municipal levels of government do not fully appreciate the revenue potential of area-based property taxes. However, these taxes have the potential to generate sizable amounts of revenue, relative to current local budgets, and eventually produce more than one percent of gross domestic product (See Table 1).

There also are sizable administrative challenges associated with the implementation of such a tax. Foremost is the development of a legal and administrative framework that will ensure uniformity, an important criterion for any property tax system. Fortunately, the current government system is designed to promote uniformity because the Constitution of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina grants sole responsibility for fiscal policy to the Federation. Therefore, a framework law, outlining the methodology for determining the property tax base and the range of allowable tax rates, and authorizing cantons to pass enabling legislation for municipalities to levy the tax, should be prepared at the Federation level. Similarly, a framework law would be prepared at the entity level in the Republika Srpska authorizing municipalities to pass enabling legislation.

To overcome any misconceptions regarding the revenue potential from or the administrative challenges posed by the implementation of an area-based system of property taxation, the cosponsors of this research are planning a short training conference in Sarajevo in the late fall. It will provide a common foundation of knowledge about property taxes to officials for both the Federation and the Republika Srpska and foster discussion about the best way to implement an area-based system.

Three pilot studies will then be launched to test whether sufficient property information can be obtained at a reasonable level of effort and cost. In addition, these studies will help determine the roles that various participants at the entity and sub-entity levels of government should play in the discovery phase. If the pilot studies prove successful, a significant step will have been taken toward the introduction of an area-based property tax and diversification of the local government tax base in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

C. Kurt Zorn is professor of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University in Bloomington. Jean Tesche is resident tax advisor for Bosnia and Herzegovina for the United States Treasury, Office of Technical Assistance, in Arlington, Virginia. Gary Cornia is professor at the Romney Institute of Public Management at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.

The authors have prepared a Lincoln Institute Working Paper available for free on the web titled “The Potential for a Property Tax in Bosnia and Herzegovina.”

Una versión más actualizada de este artículo está disponible como parte del capítulo 3 del libro Perspectivas urbanas: Temas críticos en políticas de suelo de América Latina.

La inversión de fondos públicos en áreas urbanas suele traer como resultado un aumento en el valor de la tierra que solamente beneficia a un grupo pequeño de propietarios privados. En una iniciativa sin precedentes, la ciudad brasileña de Porto Alegre está usando el impuesto a la propiedad como un instrumento para recuperar la plusvalía de los bienes raíces, con lo cual logran frenar la especulación en el mercado inmobiliario y promueven el desarrollo urbano racional.

Contexto económico y social

Porto Alegre es la capital y la ciudad más grande del estado brasileño de Río Grande do Sul, el más meridional del país. Con una población de 1,5 millones de habitantes y aproximadamente 450.000 unidades inmobiliarias en 1994, las autoridades de la ciudad estimaron una escasez de más de 50.000 unidades residenciales. No obstante, los mayores problemas económicos y sociales limitaban la capacidad que tenía la ciudad para proporcionar viviendas a las familias de ingresos bajos y medianos.

Al igual que en muchos países en desarrollo con ciclos económicos inestables, la tierra es uno de los principales medios para acumular riqueza en Brasil. En Porto Alegre, la existencia de grandes predios sin urbanizar cerca del centro de la ciudad propicia la propagación urbana en la periferia. El principal factor causante de esta situación es la especulación con las tierras por parte de propietarios adinerados que poseen grandes extensiones de terreno baldío y esperan un momento favorable para realizar inversiones o vender los terrenos con enormes ganancias.

A medida que las familias de ingresos bajos son empujadas hacia la periferia, su segregación lleva a una exclusión social más acentuada y mayores demandas de servicios. No obstante, la dotación de infraestructura básica, como los servicios de transporte público en rutas largas entre la periferia y los núcleos de comercio, industria o entretenimiento, exige que el gobierno haga inversiones considerables.

Las autoridades de la ciudad de Porto Alegre se habían fijado una meta fundamental de proveer servicios urbanos de calidad para la comunidad de las afueras, entre ellos una infraestructura básica, educación, transporte público, limpieza de calles y seguridad. Sin embargo, un diagnóstico financiero de los ingresos de la ciudad hizo que las autoridades se percataran de la escasez de recursos para tal inversión. En contraste, muchos distritos en áreas más centrales estaban bien dotados de infraestructura, equipos y servicios, y su densidad de población era menor a la prevista en el plan de desarrollo urbano de la ciudad.

Era obvio que la especulación obstaculizaba el desarrollo de la tierra, pero las autoridades gobernantes creían que el ambiente político era favorable para un cambio. Después de un período en el que el gobierno se enfrentó a una inflación crónica en Brasil, se introdujo un programa de estabilización económica en julio de 1994. Antes del plan económico, la inflación anual llegó a alcanzar el asombroso nivel del 7.000 por ciento. A partir de la aplicación del plan, el índice promedio de la inflación mensual osciló entre el 0,7 y el 1,7 por ciento. La medición de la economía en términos del producto interno bruto (PIB) arrojó índices positivos de crecimiento anual a partir de 1993. El gobierno local tenía confianza en que el momento era ideal para recuperar la inversión y las actividades productivas que se habían paralizado durante el anterior período de inflación alta.

En resumen, los siguientes factores fomentaron la iniciativa de Porto Alegre de usar el impuesto a la propiedad como instrumento para simultáneamente recuperar la plusvalía de la tierra, refrenar la especulación en el mercado inmobiliario y promover la justicia social y el crecimiento económico:

• Estimulación de la ocupación y desarrollo de tierras urbanas, puesto que el mercado privado no respondía de forma positiva a la demanda de los residentes de ingresos bajos y medianos.
• Reducción de la escasez de viviendas.
• Asistencia a las familias de bajos recursos, para garantizarles mejores oportunidades de vida y trabajo.
• Recuperación del valor de la tierra generado por la inversión pública, motivando a aquellos individuos que habían sido favorecidos por la inversión pública para que retribuyeran los beneficios a la comunidad.
• Limitación de las inversiones adicionales a gran escala en infraestructura y servicios públicos mediante la utilización racional de los recursos financieros.

Medidas gubernamentales

La constitución de Brasil (1988) define el impuesto a la propiedad como un tributo aplicado a la tierra e inmuebles urbanos y especifica que puede utilizarse como un instrumento de las políticas urbanas a fin de promover un uso racional de la tierra que genere beneficios sociales para toda la comunidad. Esta disposición permitió que Porto Alegre emprendiera las siguientes acciones:

• Definir las zonas urbanas prioritarias para el desarrollo y la ocupación. El proceso implicaba la selección de cinco áreas distintas caracterizadas por su alta calidad en infraestructura urbana, equipos y servicios. Estas áreas acogerían una mayor densidad de población sin necesidad de inversiones públicas adicionales.
• Localizar 120 predios vacantes, cuya área oscilaba entre 3.000 y 360.000 metros cuadrados (m2) en las zonas prioritarias.
• Introducir una legislación local que estipulaba el desarrollo de las propiedades seleccionadas en lapsos de tiempo específicos. La ley establecía que si no se cumplía con dichos lapsos para el desarrollo de los predios, se aplicaría progresivamente el impuesto a la propiedad correspondiente. La tasa del impuesto aumentaría en intervalos de 20 por ciento anualmente hasta alcanzar un tasa máxima del 30 por ciento. Las tasas básicas para tierras vacantes varían entre el 5 y el 6 por ciento del valor de la propiedad en el mercado.
• Otorgar prioridad a los proyectos de construcción en los terrenos seleccionados. Las entidades del Ayuntamiento encargadas de los permisos de planificación facilitarían la construcción y la ocupación.

Efectividad de la iniciativa

La legislación fue promulgada a finales de 1993 y el gobierno comenzó a aplicarla en 1994. La propuesta contó con el apoyo de los miembros del Ayuntamiento, tanto los pertenecientes al partido de gobierno como los de la oposición; esta instancia tiene la responsabilidad de aprobar las decisiones en materia de legislación municipal.

A la fecha de octubre de 1997 la iniciativa no ha dado los resultados esperados. Sólo se han desarrollado cinco de los 120 predios vacantes. Los propietarios de 50 inmuebles están pagando el impuesto a la propiedad con una tasa de aumento progresivo. Tres de las propiedades fueron eliminadas de la lista porque habían sido incluidas incorrectamente desde un principio debido a registros inexactos sobre sus características físicas.

No se ha descrito el estado de desarrollo de las 62 propiedades restantes. Algunas pertenecen a terratenientes acaudalados y políticamente influyentes que apelaron ante el Tribunal Supremo contra la constitucionalidad de las medidas aplicadas por el gobierno de la ciudad. De hecho, dos terratenientes (A y B) que poseen casi el 44 por ciento de los terrenos baldíos están apelando y otros terratenientes aparentemente están a la espera de la decisión judicial para tomar sus propias decisiones. (Véase el cuadro.)

Solamente será posible evaluar la efectividad que ha tenido la iniciativa del impuesto a la propiedad en Porto Alegre después de que se conozcan las decisiones judiciales sobre la materia, pero otros beneficios cruciales derivados de la experiencia ya han garantizado su éxito. La legislación ha dado lugar a un debate intenso en el ámbito nacional y local sobre los derechos políticos y privados, los derechos de propiedad y los intereses públicos. La experiencia también ha servido como ejemplo para que otras autoridades gobernantes tomen conciencia de la responsabilidad que tienen de fomentar el uso racional de las tierras urbanas.

En Brasil, los factores culturales y económicos parecen seguir propiciando la especulación con la tierra, en detrimento de las actividades productivas, y la dificultad para establecer límites entre los intereses públicos y los derechos privados es, sin duda, compleja. No obstante, los esfuerzos iniciales realizados en Porto Alegre representan un paso decisivo hacia el control de la especulación privada y el fomento del desarrollo urbano responsable. Otras iniciativas similares en otros lugares ahora tienen mayores posibilidades de convertirse en alternativas viables para lograr justicia en la distribución de los recursos públicos con ventajas sociales para la comunidad.

Claudia M. De Cesare trabaja para la Municipalidad de Porto Alegre y está postulada para cursar un doctorado en el Centre for the Built and Human Environment, de la Universidad de Salford, Inglaterra.

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.

En los últimos años, el Instituto Lincoln ha venido colaborando con el programa de becas Loeb, el cual tiene sede en la Escuela de Posgrado en Diseño de la Universidad de Harvard. Este programa se inició en 1970 gracias a la generosidad de John L. Loeb, egresado de Harvard, con la finalidad de permitir que profesionales de mediana trayectoria cursaran estudios independientes y adquirieran herramientas adicionales dirigidas a la reactivación del medio ambiente natural y urbano. Los becarios de Loeb para el período 2001-2002 hicieron un viaje de fin de año a Cuba a mediados de junio, que incluía una estancia de dos días en Santiago de Cuba, cuatro en La Habana y un recorrido adicional desde esta última hasta Trinidad, con paradas en algunos destinos intermedios.

Con sus fachadas neoclásicas, adoquines blancos, nubes caribeñas y tonos pasteles, Trinidad se ha detenido en el tiempo como una postal de acuarela. Puesto que el patrimonio arquitectónico de Cuba es el núcleo de un creciente interés internacional y no está amenazado por las oleadas de nuevas construcciones, el futuro del pasado parece estar a salvo. Por su parte, el futuro en sí mismo es mucho más difícil de hallar. Mientras nuestro grupo de becarios de Loeb buscaba indicios en tres ciudades y localidades de la provincia, descubrimos que pese al estancamiento económico y la tensión política internacional los cubanos trabajan con esmero por un futuro que sólo pertenece a ellos.

La afluencia de dólares provenientes del turismo y una férrea campaña de preservación cubana han comenzado a rescatar las riquezas de La Habana Vieja de las garras del descuido no intencionado. Después de por lo menos una experiencia negativa con una nueva construcción, la Oficina del Historiador de la Ciudad –encargada de coordinar la impresionante restauración y renovación mayor de La Habana Vieja– todavía trata de resolver el problema de integrar lo nuevo con lo histórico. Una manera de abordar el problema es estudiar minuciosamente el diseño de edificaciones que ocupan una manzana. Caminamos por un estacionamiento grande de estructura moderna dentro de La Habana Vieja que será reconstruido para convertirlo en un edificio de uso múltiple, con un estacionamiento adyacente, según un diseño que busca reproducir la escala y algunos rasgos monumentales del convento colonial que una vez ocupaba el lugar.

Aunque se está reubicando a algunos residentes en la misma zona y otras partes, muchos regresan a sus hogares después de que los barrios son rehabilitados.

Considerado ahora como un modelo para otras iniciativas dirigidas a financiar la rehabilitación de otros distritos de la ciudad, la renovación de La Habana Vieja se fundamenta en un sistema de impuestos y empresas conjuntas que comprende ingresos provenientes de empresas privadas que se benefician del turismo generado por la restauración. La Oficina del Historiador maneja un presupuesto anual de 50 millones de dólares que se divide entre la construcción y la asistencia social a los cubanos que residen dentro de los límites de la zona de rehabilitación. Esto podría interpretarse como un sistema de “recuperación de plusvalías”, tema que suscita gran interés en el Instituto Lincoln.

Julio César Pérez, arquitecto cubano, urbanista y defensor de la planificación con base en la comunidad, era uno de los integrantes del grupo de becarios de Loeb. Gracias a la perspectiva particular que tiene por ser profesional local, mostró a nuestro grupo algunos de sus ejemplos favoritos del rico legado de la arquitectura prerrevolucionaria art deco y moderna de La Habana. Joyas de cinco pisos de altura se destacan en medio del variopinto paisaje urbano de La Habana central, que también incluye el Edificio Focsa de 28 pisos, con sus 375 unidades de apartamentos, construido en el ocaso del gobierno de Batista.

A los talones de las manzanas de viviendas y casinos con estilo internacional de los años 1950, la revolución implantó su propia forma de uso revisado del suelo. Julio contó la historia de un partido de golf que jugaron el Che Guevara y Fidel Castro en los vastos campos del antiguo Habana Country Club para celebrar la revolución. Según la leyenda, se preguntaron: “¿cómo podemos darle un buen uso a este terreno?” Los resultados de su conversación son las muy grandilocuentes y en su mayoría inconclusas Escuelas Nacionales de Arte diseñadas por Ricardo Porro, Vittorio Garratti y Roberto Gottardi. La postura de estas edificaciones es deliberadamente indiferente a la casa club o al plan del campo de golf; el área abierta es tratada como si fuera una enorme pradera en medio de territorio virgen. Está previsto un proyecto de restauración de los edificios, que se ha complicado más debido a la inestabilidad de las fundaciones y los problemas hidrológicos.

Julio también identificó ejemplos más recientes de construcciones de grandes dimensiones en La Habana, como son el Hotel Meliá Cohíba con su voluminoso arco incorporado y el Miramar Trade Center, un centro comercial (con transacciones en dólares) al otro lado de la calle. Además de ser fracasos de diseño, estos costosos proyectos no logran captar la relación del sitio con el mar ni la posibilidad de crear un nuevo género arquitectónico en un distrito en desarrollo.

Con el estancamiento de la economía y de las relaciones internacionales en los años 1990, el arquitecto y planificador cubano Miguel Coyula y sus colegas han utilizado el tiempo y los materiales que tienen a su alcance para adoptar un enfoque más cuidadoso del uso y desarrollo del suelo. Mientras en todo el mundo hay un surgimiento acelerado y avasallante de ciudades verticales de acero y vidrio, en La Habana se construye una de las maquetas de mayor escala en el mundo con cajas viejas de habanos. Esta asombrosa ciudad en miniatura fue concebida como herramienta para la planificación y asidero para los esfuerzos del Grupo para el Desarrollo Integral de la Capital (GDIC), que ha asesorado al gobierno municipal en asuntos de planificación urbana desde 1988.

La maqueta 1:1000 de toda La Habana ha ido creciendo por piezas exactas durante la mayor parte de la última década y actualmente ocupa 112 metros cuadrados, es decir, aproximadamente una cuarta parte de una cancha de baloncesto. Se encuentra en un pabellón especialmente diseñado iluminado con luz natural en el área de Miramar, cercano al centro de la ciudad, donde los visitantes ocasionales pueden circular cómodamente alrededor de la maqueta y verla desde los niveles superiores de acceso con rampas. En la base topográfica de madera hay colocados modelos a escala de prácticamente todas las estructuras de la ciudad. Cada edificio está codificado por un color que indica el desarrollo urbano en cada período histórico: colonial, moderno prerrevolucionario (1900 a 1958) y posrevolucionario.

Miguel describe un proyecto de construcción, un edificio alto para el Comité Estatal de Colaboración Económica (CECE), que fue cancelado porque con la maqueta se pudo ver claramente que era desproporcionado para el resto de la arquitectura del centro de La Habana. La decisión parece haber sido un hito ya que se trataba de un proyecto real y también ha sido ejemplo de la determinación de construir con conciencia por el medio ambiente –pese a las presiones para dar cabida a inversionistas foráneos en una Cuba necesitada de ingresos–.

La misión fundamental del GDIC se asemeja mucho a la que se plantean los planificadores estadounidenses para el urbanismo dentro de las grandes ciudades: comenzar por los vecindarios. El grupo ha realizado una serie de “talleres integrales de transformación del barrio” ofrecidos a los residentes locales y dirigidos por diseñadores y planificadores profesionales, preferentemente que habiten en la misma área. Estos proyectos se inscriben en la misma tendencia del movimiento internacional de diseño comunitario, una tradición vinculada a los Estados Unidos y surgida hace 45 años en la cual los diseñadores trabajan directamente para el beneficio de los residentes de un área determinada. Desde que la depresión económica sobrevenida en los años 1990 después de la disolución de la Unión Soviética y el bloqueo impuesto por los Estados Unidos comenzaron a tener efectos realmente adversos en Cuba, estos talleres han cobrado gran importancia. Han conjugado la planificación y el desarrollo económico en un nuevo contexto local, en el que los vecindarios emprenden diversos proyectos, como son los cultivos urbanos y la manufactura de materiales de construcción a partir del reciclaje de escombros.

Los talleres de transformación del barrio y otras iniciativas similares llevadas a cabo en los últimos 20 años han contribuido a crear un puente entre el precepto revolucionario cubano de igualdad de tratamiento para todos y el precepto humano básico de tomar decisiones sobre la familia, la comunidad y la vida cotidiana. Otro ejemplo lo constituye el proyecto Arquitectos de la Comunidad, una modalidad de diseño comunitario a cargo de un sector cívico nacional que participa en la construcción urbana y la planificación ambiental, además de ofrecer servicios asequibles de diseño para familias individuales. Basada en las teorías del arquitecto argentino Rodolfo Livingston, la práctica fomenta una relación directa entre el usuario y el arquitecto, a la vez que se incorpora en cada proyecto de construcción el concepto de sostenibilidad y sensibilidad contextual. Julio trabajó con el grupo durante cinco años antes de irse a Harvard y presentó una ponencia junto con Kathleen Dorgan, también becaria de Loeb, en la conferencia de la Asociación de Escuelas y Facultades de Arquitectura celebrada en la primavera pasada. Como defensor de un uso más humano y sensato del suelo y del diseño urbano en su país, Julio se cuenta entre un grupo de arquitectos cubanos preocupados por los valores tradicionales del oficio y el diseño idóneo para el medio ambiente.

Con la existencia de esfuerzos como éstos, tenemos esperanza para que en el futuro la construcción se fundamente en una calibración cuidadosa de relaciones proporcionadas y bien reflexionadas entre las edificaciones y los rasgos naturales del entorno, así como la comodidad y placer de los usuarios. El desafío radica en encontrar medios económicos y normativos para apoyar una modalidad apropiada de construcción. Hasta ahora, el estado ha mantenido el control sobre el uso del suelo gracias a su condición de propietario directo y casi exclusivo y ha hecho negociaciones de arrendamiento con algunos inversionistas privados y foráneos a través de una red delicada y sumamente frágil de fórmulas económicas y jurídicas para valorar los terrenos en cuestión. A medida que la economía se hace más dependiente de los recursos provenientes del exterior, aumenta la probabilidad de que estos arrendamientos devengan en transacciones más predecibles y transparentes. Tal vez no tardarán en llegar las ventas de tierras y la aplicación de mayores impuestos.

Con la llegada de inversiones extranjeras y las presiones para una apertura aún mayor, habrá plena oportunidad de que el futuro esté constreñido por decisiones sobre el uso del suelo impulsadas por los márgenes de ganancias de organizaciones distantes, lo que sería una lamentable añadidura a la carga histórica de Cuba. Porque, a pesar de la belleza de sus paisajes naturales y urbanos, Cuba es un mapa de victimización: a causa del colonialismo, de la flagrante explotación económica, de la confrontación revolucionaria y del brutal desarrollo al estilo soviético.

Los becarios de Loeb captaron una perspectiva general de un nacionalismo intenso construido sobre una cultura profunda y diversa, una historia cosmopolita y los logros incuestionables de los últimos 40 años. Cuba es un lugar de grandes penurias y también de enorme potencial, para los cubanos mismos y para el resto del mundo. Esperamos que el futuro no albergue solamente explotación y degradación cultural cuando finalmente caigan las barreras para el comercio y el viaje internacional. También esperamos demostrar que Cuba es un lugar para aprender de los errores del pasado –los suyos y los nuestros– y para descubrir lo que es posible cuando la gente tiene libertad para proteger, respetar y mejorar su entorno.