The complexity that characterizes the interaction of transportation and land use in urban areas is matched by the variety of the disciplines called on to address these issues, including economics, urban planning and civil engineering. In recent decades, communication among scholars in these disciplines has improved and the acceptance of a common base of theory and method, based on economics, is increasing. The Taxation, Resources and Economic Development (TRED) conference on “Transportation and Land Use” held at the Lincoln Institute in October 1996 focused on these issues. Ten papers presented at that conference are now published in a special issue of the journal Urban Studies. The papers are organized into four groups as summarized below.

Trends in Urban Development

Gregory Ingram’s paper on “Metropolitan Development: What Have We Learned?” documents the worldwide prevalence of several trends that characterize modern urbanization. Employment decentralization and the emergence of multiple employment centers in large metropolitan areas are observed worldwide in both developing and developed countries. Although employment continues to be more centralized than population, the typical Central Business District does not contain more than about 20 percent of jobs, and much smaller percentages are common in the U.S. Manufacturing employment has become more decentralized than service employment. Decentralization has reduced traffic congestion and travel distances and has contributed to a weakening of transit systems. The increased affordability of motorized transportation worldwide has led to more trip-making, with work trips typically being less than a third of all trips in urbanized areas.

Peter Gordon, Harry Richardson and Gang Yu find evidence that the suburbanization and exurbanization of employment in the U.S. has picked up its pace since 1988. In their paper, “Metropolitan and Non-Metropolitan Employment Trends in the U.S.: Recent Evidence and Implications,” they argue that the ability of manufacturing and even of services to locate in exurban and rural areas, shunning inner-suburban and central city locations, is a consequence of the continued weakening of the agglomeration economies that shaped the now outdated downtown-oriented city.

Robert Cervero and Kang-Li Wu examine the relationship between average commuting distance and employment subcentering in their paper, “Subcentering and Commuting: Evidence from the San Francisco Bay Area, 1980-1990.” They are concerned with changes in employment densities in 22 employment subcenters and with the commuting distances and travel times of those employed in these subcenters. The authors find that employment densities have increased more in the outlying suburban centers and that commuting to these centers has experienced modal shifts away from transit and in favor of the automobile. According to their data, while jobs in these centers grew by 18 percent during the decade, average one-way commuting distances to these 22 subcenters increased by 12 percent, and average one-way travel times rose by only 5 percent.

These findings are consistent with theory: with the number of subcenters fixed and the degree of spatial mismatch between jobs and housing invariant with job growth, an increase in the number of jobs in each subcenter should result in longer commutes on average. If new subcenters are spawned in between existing ones or new ones develop in outlying areas-something that does not appear to have occurred in the Bay Area-then average commutes should decrease. The 22 subcenters account for less than half of total employment in the Bay Area, the rest of the jobs being broadly dispersed throughout. Because such dispersed employment is not included in their study, we do not know about the total effect of job decentralization on average commute distances and times.

Genevieve Giuliano’s paper, “Information Technology, Work Patterns and Intrametropolitan Location: A Case Study,” examines the impact of information technology, including the advent of fax machines, computers, modems and the internet. One of her central observations is that while the U.S. labor force increased by 14 percent from 1980 to 1990, the “contingent workforce,” a diverse group of temporary workers, part-time workers, the self-employed and business service workers, increased much faster, from about 25 to 33 percent.

This trend implies that the information revolution is causing structural shifts in the labor force as more and more workers offer temporary services to a variety of employers and, as a result, do not have a long-term attachment to any one employer. Theory suggests that such workers should locate in a way that is sensitive to their expected accessibility to jobs. Also, the advent of information technology should facilitate “telecommuting,” thus reducing the need for physical proximity to jobs.

Giuliano uses the 1990 U.S. Census Public Use Microsample for the Los Angeles region to compare the residential location and commuting patterns of contingent and non-contingent workers. The socioeconomic complexity of contingent workers makes it difficult to draw clear conclusions, but Guiliano does find that those contingent workers who live in suburban areas are likely to live in high amenity areas. Controlling for socioeconomic factors, commuting distances are shorter for part-time workers than they are for full-time workers, and among full-time workers the self-employed have the shortest commutes.

Agglomeration Economies

The next two papers offer empirical contributions on intra-urban employment agglomeration. “Spatial Variation in Office Rents within the Atlanta Region,” by Christopher Bollinger, Keith Ihlanfeldt and David Bowes, is a hedonic rent study for office buildings in the Atlanta area from 1990 to 1996. The authors find that part of the rent differences among office buildings is due to differences in wage rates, transportation rates and proximity to concentrations of office workers. More importantly, the convenience of face-to-face meetings facilitated by office agglomerations is also reflected in office rents, providing evidence that agglomerative tendencies continue to be important in explaining office concentrations, despite the ability of information technology to reduce the need for some such contacts. In their paper, “Population Density in Suburban Chicago: A Bid-Rent Approach,” Daniel McMillen and John McDonald show that population density patterns in the Chicago MSA are strongly influenced by proximity to subcenters, which include the Central Business District, O’Hare Airport and 16 other centers. Site-specific variables such as access to commuter rail stations or highway interchanges have smaller influences on population densities.

Travel Behavior and Residential Choice

Among the challenges posed by the evolving trends in transportation and land use is a better explanation of the role of non-work travel in residential location decisionmaking. Motorized mobility has greatly increased non-work travel, thus weakening the relevance of the now classical commuting-based theory of residential location. While information technology may result in more telecommuting, the importance of non-work travel relative to work travel may grow even more in the future.

Two papers attempt to develop new techniques that can be used to explain the influence of non-work travel behavior on residential location and land use patterns, and vice versa. Central to this research is the notion that when a household makes a residential choice decision it will consider the pattern of non-work trips its members are likely to make. Accessibility to non-work opportunities is likely to be important and, for many households, perhaps more important than accessibility to jobs.

Moshe Ben-Akiva and John Bowman model the probability of choosing a residential location by treating the non-work trip patterns and activity schedules of the household’s members as explanatory variables. Their model allows the treatment of trips as tours with stops at multiple destinations. In their paper, “Integration of an Activity-Based Model System and a Residential Location Model,” the authors report that their model does not fit the data as well as a work-trip-based comparison model. But, the non-work accessibility measures are more appealing conceptually and allow a richer set of predictions and simulations to be made.

Until recently, economists have suppressed the importance of non-work trips in their theories of land use. Planners have viewed land use planning as a tool that can affect behavior and travel demand. But what is the evidence that travel patterns can be influenced meaningfully by manipulating land use at the neighborhood level or in a larger area?

Marlon Boarnet and Sharon Sarmiento tackle this question by means of a travel diary survey of Southern California residents. Their paper is titled “Can Land Use Policy Really Affect Travel Behavior? A Study of the Link Between Non-work Travel and Land Use Characteristics.” The number of work trips made by residents is explained by sociodemographic variables describing the residents and by land use characteristics describing their place of residence. Generally, the land use variables describing the neighborhood are not statistically significant, but future studies could follow this approach by trying more complex specifications and using better data.

Jobs-Housing Mismatch

As first stated by John Kain in 1968, the “spatial mismatch hypothesis” claimed that black central city residents are increasingly at a disadvantage economically as jobs disperse to the suburbs. Many suburban governments limit the quantity of high-density/low-income housing, forcing workers to make long, expensive commutes. Although there is a wealth of empirical work on the mismatch hypothesis, Richard Arnott’s paper, “Economic Theory and the Mismatch Hypothesis,” is one of the first attempts to formulate a microeconomic theory of the mismatch problem. In Arnott’s model, jobs flee to the suburbs because of the advent of international trade (relaxation of global trade barriers) and the emergence of suburban-based inter-city truck transport after World War II. At the same time, large-lot zoning and discrimination in suburban housing markets force minorities to reside in central cities. An increase in the cost of commuting effectively lowers the wage paid to low-skilled labor from the city.

In “Where Youth Live: Economic Effects of Urban Space on Employment Prospects,” John Quigley and Katherine O’Regan investigate how neighborhood of residence and access to jobs affect the employment prospects of minority youth. Black youth unemployment rates are higher in metropolitan areas where blacks are more isolated geographically. Controlling for socioeconomic characteristics, minority youth who have less residential exposure to whites are more likely to be unemployed. Finally, controlling for socioeconomic characteristics as well as residential exposure to whites, minority youth living in neighborhoods that are less accessible to jobs are more likely to be unemployed. While these findings support the mismatch hypothesis, they also suggest the importance of social networks and spatial search as important mechanisms in the intra-urban labor market.

Alex Anas, professor of economics at the State University of New York at Buffalo, was the editor of the special issue of Urban Studies (Vol. 35, No. 7, June 1998). The article and figures used in Land Lines are adapted with permission.

Note: Ben Chinitz, former director of research at the Institute, helped organize the 1996 TRED conference and the following colleagues served as discussants of the papers: James Follain, Vernon Henderson, Douglass Lee, Therese McGuire, Peter Mieszkowski, Edwin Mills, Sam Myers, Dick Netzer, Stephen Ross, Anita Summers, William Wheaton, Michelle White and John Yinger. The conference participants were saddened when news arrived that William Vickrey, who had been named a Nobel laureate in economics only a few days before, had passed away while traveling to the conference. Professor Vickrey had been a leading thinker on issues of transportation and land use and a regular attendee of previous TRED conferences. The special issue of Urban Studies based on the 1996 conference serves as a tribute to his memory.

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 administración catastral en Colombia es un punto de encuentro para autoridades de las distintas instancias del sistema político-administrativo del país. En el ámbito nacional, las actividades catastrales se rigen por las normas técnicas establecidas en la Ley 14 de 1983 y siguen las directrices de la Federación Internacional de Agrimensores (FIG). El Instituto Geográfico Agustín Codazzi (IGAC) es una entidad gubernamental de carácter nacional que se encarga de toda la administración catastral y del control de más de siete millones de parcelas. Además, hay catastros municipales en las ciudades de Cali y Medellín, un sistema departamental en Antioquia y un catastro distrital para el Distrito Capital de Bogotá.

Cada una de estas entidades representa la autoridad catastral en su correspondiente territorio. En tal condición, cada una se encarga de los procesos necesarios para establecer los protocolos y actualizar y mantener los catastros, en los cuales se registra la debida identificación física, jurídica, fiscal y económica de todos los bienes inmuebles. Estas autoridades actualizan los catastros cada cinco años a fin de revisar sus elementos físicos y jurídicos y eliminar las posibles disparidades en el avalúo catastral originadas por cambios físicos, variaciones de uso o de productividad, obras públicas o condiciones locales del mercado inmobiliario. Asimismo revisan los avalúos catastrales anualmente, lo que les permite determinar la base gravable para el impuesto predial.

El Departamento Administrativo de Catastro Distrital de Bogotá (DACD) se creó en 1981 pero no estuvo completamente operativo hasta 1991. El proceso para actualizar la base de datos catastral se estableció en el artículo 5 de la Ley 14 de 1983, pero comenzó efectivamente en 1997. El catastro de Bogotá partió de las directrices del programa catastral nacional para luego formular un programa que reflejara los intereses y preocupaciones locales. El alcalde Antanas Mockus fijó como meta para su administración entre 2002 y 2003 realizar una actualización completa de los bienes inmuebles de Bogotá. A pesar de la poca popularidad de esta tarea, la voluntad política del Alcalde, la asignación que hizo del presupuesto y los recursos necesarios y la persistencia del personal del Catastro Distrital garantizaron el cumplimiento de la meta.

Este esfuerzo actualizó 1.734.622 predios, de los cuales 102.531 pertenecen a la categoría de nuevos predios (formación). Simultáneamente, el valor catastral de base aumentó de 66,61 mil millones a 88,25 mil millones de pesos colombianos, equivalente a un aumento de 21,64 mil millones de pesos (aproximadamente US$ 8 millones; US$1 = 2.700 pesos colombianos). Un cálculo rápido del impacto sobre las rentas públicas indica que el Distrito recaudaría un ingreso adicional de 65 mil millones de pesos (US$ 24 millones) en impuestos prediales por año. La ciudad gastó apenas unos 11 millones de pesos (US$ 4 millones) en el proceso de actualización, por lo que obtuvo un resultado costo-beneficio muy positivo, especialmente porque esta inversión se realiza sólo una vez y los recursos adicionales resultantes son permanentes.

El tener un catastro actualizado es importante no sólo desde la perspectiva de las finanzas públicas, sino también en vista de otras ventajas, tales como la búsqueda de igualdad tributaria, la depuración de los registros catastrales, la mejora de la nomenclatura urbana y la incorporación de la cartografía. Todos estos efectos pueden servir como herramientas útiles para administrar el desarrollo futuro de la ciudad. De esta manera, se hace imprescindible mantener actualizado el catastro a fin de conservar la sólida situación fiscal del Distrito, garantizar la justa distribución de las cargas tributarias entre los diferentes grupos sociales y aportar los recursos financieros para los procesos de planeación y desarrollo.

El resultado positivo de esta iniciativa llevó al DACD a examinar la experiencia catastral de otros países, con miras a encontrar nuevas estrategias e ideas que pudieran contribuir a lograr un mejor desempeño en el futuro. Ello dio pie para el Primer Foro sobre Metodologías de Actualización Catastral, el cual se llevó a cabo en noviembre de 2003 y contó con la participación de expertos de España, Francia y los Estados Unidos, quienes compartieron información sobre diversos temas. El catastro español es el más parecido al de Colombia y ofreció información valiosa sobre la legitimidad y simplificación del proceso. El Instituto Geográfico Nacional de Francia compartió su experiencia obtenida en la integración de los datos catastrales y los desarrollos tecnológicos para la actualización de las bases de datos gráficas. El Instituto Lincoln, que lleva tiempo trabajando en Bogotá sobre varios aspectos de la gestión del suelo y la tributación predial, aportó información acerca de los procesos de avalúo colectivo. Finalmente, el IGAC manifestó su deseo de integrar los datos de su catastro al catastro internacional mediante un acuerdo con sistemas semejantes en otros países del mundo.

Liliana Bustamante es asesora del director del catastro y Nestor Gaviria es el gerente del proyecto de actualización catastral en el Departamento Administrativo del Catastro Distrital en Bogotá, Colombia.

For the past eight years, each of our annual land policy conferences has addressed a different theme; last year’s explored the changing links between education, land, and location in light of the growing importance of school choice. The volume resulting from our 2013 conference—Education, Land, and Location, coedited by Lincoln Institute Fellow Daphne A. Kenyon and me—includes contributions from eminent scholars in a range of social science disciplines from across the U.S., Chile, and England.

When children attend schools near their homes, a strong link arises between residential location and quality of education. That link is strengthened when schools rely heavily on funding from the local property tax, as in the United States. Indeed, part of a house price can be thought of as paying for a ticket into a particular school system. But what if school choice is unlinked from choice of residence?

In the 1960s, approximately one in ten schoolchildren in the United States attended a private school. Now, there are new forms of school choice such as magnet schools, interdistrict and intra-district choice, charter schools, vouchers, and homeschooling. The best available data indicate that today between one-quarter and one-third of schoolchildren exercise some form of school choice.

This volume focuses on three policy issues. The first is racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic segregation. Within the decentralized system of U.S. local government, a great deal of such stratification is evident. As John R. Logan notes, the “average white child attends a school that is over 78 percent white.” The second is academic achievement gaps. Eric A. Hanushek concludes that the “gaps in achievement are stunning,” even though differences in high school attainment rates and scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress among whites, blacks, and Hispanics have converged somewhat. The third is a lack of equal opportunity flowing from residential segregation and academic achievement gaps. As Elizabeth J. Mueller and Shannon S. Van Zandt state, “Opportunities, in the form of good schools and other public services . . . are neither evenly distributed across regions nor accessible to all.”

The book is divided into four sections. The first reviews the literature, including Ellen B. Goldring and Walker Swain’s loosely chronological account of residential location–schooling linkages in the United States. The second examines questions of school district organization and finance, including William A. Fischel’s economic history of the structure of school districts, Andrew Reschovsky’s assessment of the property tax as the key funding source for K–12 education, and Henry A. Coleman’s examination of nontraditional sources of school funding. The third considers the effects of charter school location, with contributions from Robert Bilfulco and John R. Logan; Julia Burdick-Will and Elisabeta Minca; and Stephen Machin and Anne West, who analyze academy schools—the equivalent of charter schools in England. The fourth section examines cases where education and location are unlinked, such as homeschooling in Virginia, analyzed by Luke C. Miller.

This volume presents some evidence, highlighted in Eric J. Brunner’s chapter, that introduction of school choice reduces both the housing price premium associated with location in a high-quality school district and residential segregation. So far, however, these effects are less dramatic than one might suppose. One reason is that parents strongly prefer to send their children to neighborhood schools. Another reason is that the expense and availability of transportation limit the effective range of school choice. (Transportation costs are analyzed in the chapter by Kevin J. Krizek, Elizabeth J. Wilson, Ryan Wilson, and Julian D. Marshall.) One fascinating chapter on Chile, which implemented universal school vouchers in the 1980s, is instructive. One might have thought that school choice would reduce the school segregation inherent in residential segregation, but Carolina Flores found that socioeconomic segregation in schools is even greater than in residential neighborhoods. There are a number of reasons for this, including some schools’ ability to select students or to charge fees.

It is possible, however, that a decade from now school choice may have a more profound impact on housing markets and residential choice. Technological changes have begun to upend college education. Perhaps elementary and secondary education will soon face changes just as fundamental, some of which have been foreshadowed by the analysis in this volume.

How have infrastructure investments shaped global city regions? What have been the effects on the residents? Do the effects differ among residents in different sections of the city? Is the process different by type of infrastructure, such as highways, mass transit, airports or seaports? What if high-technology telecommunications infrastructures are included among our considerations? When the forces of globalization and technological change interact, do cities fare differently? Do their residents experience these changes differently?

These were among the questions generated at the second meeting of the global city regions consortium coordinated in July by Roger Simmonds, senior lecturer of planning at Oxford Brookes University. Most of the participants at the first conference held at the Lincoln Institute in September 1995 reconvened in El Escorial, Spain, to present the results of their latest research on the relationship between the location and timing of infrastructure development and the spatial form of the region. Teams from 11 city regions made presentations: Ankara, Turkey; Bangkok, Thailand; Madrid, Spain; San Diego, California; Santiago, Chile; and Sao Paulo, Brazil; Seattle, Washington; Taipei, Taiwan; The Randstad, Holland; Tokyo, Japan; and West Midlands, England.

Commenting on the relationship between infrastructure, governance and regional planning, Pedro Ortiz Castano, director of planning for the municipal government of Madrid, described the municipality’s extensive infrastructure plan. Existing highways, roads and transit lines will be woven together with other planned development to cover the region in a matrix or grid. This configuration is meant to reduce congestion and increase accessibility across city sectors as well as among social and economic classes.

Madrid’s grid-system of infrastructure and settlements presents a sharp contrast to the concentric rings of highways found in Seattle, as described by Anne Vernez-Moudon, professor of architecture and urban planning at the University of Washington. Despite the presence of Puget Sound to the west and the Cascade Mountains to the east, Seattle reflects the typical North American affection for beltways. Furthermore, with one highway dubbed the “Boeing Beltway,” the relationship between government-funded infrastructure and the private sector is clear.

This comparison also illustrates the role of Madrid’s strong regional government in attempting to have infrastructure-whether government-funded or privatized-shape the urban form. In most global city regions with weaker governments, infrastructure only plays catch-up with existing demand.

Consortium commentator Gary Hack argued that the polynucleated ‘spread city’ is the more typical reality, usually accompanied by an increase in spatial segregation by class. Since the powerful economic and technological forces at work around the globe are likely to accelerate and reinforce these trends, he concludes that planners should focus on specific sites within city regions where they can exert their influence with the most positive results.

The comparative analysis between Ortiz’s metropolitan-wide infrastructure plan and Hack’s site-specific approach reminds us that, despite the similarities among forces shaping city regions across the globe, the ways these forces play out vary widely. These variances reflect important differences in institutional arrangements, history, culture, attitudes about private property, and notions of the public interest, among other factors. Furthermore, these differences also affect how researchers see their own cities in comparison to others.

The role of informal markets, for example, illustrates the challenge researchers face in attempting to understand both the unique and common features of international forces. While it is hard to understand land markets and land use in cities as different as Ankara and Santiago de Chile without understanding the informal sector, western European and North American researchers rarely attempt to understand their cities’ land markets from this perspective.

The regional city teams are continuing to work on their respective reports in preparation for publication of a book by International Thomson Publishing in the United Kingdom.

Rosalind Greenstein is a senior fellow of the Lincoln Institute and director of the Program on Land Use and Regulation.

Colombia’s cadastral administration is a meeting point for authorities from the various levels of the country’s political-administrative system. At the national level, cadastral activities are determined by the technical norms established by Law 14 of 1983 and modeled on guidelines of the International Federation of Surveyors (FIG). The national government agency Agustin Codazzi Geographic Institute (IGAC) is responsible for all cadastral administration and oversight of more than 7 million parcels. In addition, there are municipal-level cadastres in the cities of Cali and Medellín, a department-level system in the Department of Antioquia, and a district-level cadastre for Bogotá’s Capital District.

Each of these entities represents the cadastral authority in its assigned territory. As such, each is in charge of the processes of establishing protocols and updating and maintaining the cadastres, which record the proper physical, legal, fiscal and economic identification of all real estate properties. These authorities update the cadastres every five years in order to check their physical and legal elements and to eliminate eventual disparities in cadastral valuation due to physical mutations, use or productivity changes, public works or local real estate market conditions. The authorities also reset the cadastral valuations every year, which enables them to determine the base payment level of the property tax.

Bogotá’s Administrative Department for the District Cadastre (DACD) was established in 1981 but was not fully operational until 1991. The process for updating the cadastre database was provided in Article 5 of Law 14 of 1983, but was started in 1997. The Bogotá cadastre relied on the national cadastre program guidelines before formulating a program that reflected local interests and concerns. Mayor Antanas Mockus set a goal for his administration in 2000–2003 to undertake a complete updating of Bogotá’s real properties. In spite of the unpopularity of this task, the mayor’s political will, his commitment of the necessary budget and resources, and the persistence of the District Cadastre’s staff ensured that the goal was met.

This endeavor updated 1,734,622 properties, 102,531 of which belong to the incorporated-as-new category. At the same time, the cadastral base value was increased from $66.61 billion to $88.25 billion Colombian pesos, thus increasing $21.64 billion pesos (approximately US$8 million; US$1=2,700 Colombian pesos). A quick calculation of the revenue impact suggested the District would receive an additional income of $65 billion pesos (US$24 million) in property taxes per year. The city spent only about $11 billion pesos (US$4 million) on the updating process, so it obtained a very positive cost-benefit result, especially because this investment is done only once and the resulting additional resources are permanent.

Having an updated cadastre is important not only from a public finance perspective but also for other benefits, such as addressing taxation inequity, purging cadastral archives, improving the urban nomenclature and incorporating cartography. All of these effects may be used as valuable tools for administrating the city’s future development. Thus, keeping the cadastre updated becomes imperative to preserve the District’s solid fiscal status, ensure the just distribution of the tax burden among the different social groups, and provide financial resources for planning and development processes.

The positive outcome of this experience led DACD to examine other countries’ experiences with cadastres, in search of new strategies and ideas that could help improve future performance. This led to the First Cadastral Updating Methodologies Forum, which took place in November 2003 with experts from Spain, France and the U.S. sharing information on different issues. Spain’s cadastre most resembles Colombia’s and offered valuable information on the legitimacy and simplification of the process. The National Geographic Institute of France shared experiences in linking registered cadastre data and technological developments in updating graphic databases. The Lincoln Institute, which has long worked in Bogotá on various aspects of land management and taxation, contributed information regarding mass valuation processes. Finally, the IGAC manifested its desire to integrate its cadastre data with the international cadastre through an agreement with similar systems worldwide.

Liliana Bustamante is adviser to the director of the cadastre and Nestor Gaviria is project manager for updating the cadastre in the Administrative Department for the District Cadastre in Bogotá, Colombia.

Hace cinco años, Mandy Pumilia, residente de Nueva Orleáns, estaba preocupada por la gran cantidad de estructuras aparentemente deterioradas que existían en su barrio, conocido como Bywater, donde actualmente se desempeña como vicepresidente de la asociación de vecinos. A pesar de todos los esfuerzos realizados con posterioridad a la catástrofe de Katrina, resultaba muy difícil identificar y rastrear las propiedades que verdaderamente presentaban problemas y, además, Pumilia no tenía acceso a los datos municipales que podrían haberle sido de utilidad. En lugar de ello, elaboró su propia planilla de cálculo en Google y la llenó con los resultados de su propia investigación y trabajo de campo. Según recuerda, “fue un proceso arduo”. Y a pesar de sus conocimientos tecnológicos y su determinación, esta tarea sólo fue una solución limitada: no resultaba fácil compartir la información más allá de las personas que ella conocía directamente y, además, estar al día de las audiencias municipales relacionadas con temas de la propiedad era una tarea enorme.

A partir de entonces, la aplicación web BlightStatus (blightstatus.nola.gov) –que se traduciría como “status de deterioro”– se ha convertido en una nueva y valiosa herramienta a la hora de tomar medidas de recuperación en su barrio. Creada en el año 2012 por Code for America, una organización sin fines de lucro especializada en proyectos de código abierto dirigidos al gobierno municipal, BlightStatus facilita a ciudadanos como Pumilia el acceso a datos sobre propiedades, permitiéndoles participar de manera más estrecha en la gestión del deterioro y otros desafíos de planificación. Esta iniciativa llamó la atención de otras ciudades, lo que generó una iniciativa derivada, denominada Civic Insight, que actualmente despliega su tecnología en Dallas, Atlanta, Palo Alto, Sacramento y otros lugares.

En Nueva Orleáns, BlightStatus reúne información sobre inspecciones, quejas relativas a las normas, audiencias, juicios, ejecuciones hipotecarias, etc. Por lo general, estos datos se encuentran encriptados o resulta muy difícil acceder a los mismos; sin embargo, esta aplicación reúne y actualiza la mayoría de los datos a diario. Los usuarios pueden buscar por dirección o utilizar un mapa interactivo para buscar a nivel de barrio o de ciudad. Un aspecto particularmente útil es la función “lista de observación”, que permite a un usuario como Pumilia mantener pestañas abiertas relacionadas con ciertas propiedades específicas y oportunamente envía alertas sobre audiencias o cualquier otra novedad. Pumilia agrega: “Además, me facilita empoderar a otros residentes, por lo que no soy la única persona que posee esta información”.

Cuando otras ciudades conocieron el uso extensivo que Nueva Orleáns hacía de esta aplicación y, como consecuencia, expresaron su interés en disponer de una herramienta similar, Code for America adaptó la tecnología para que pudiera funcionar en cualquier lugar. Tal como lo expresa Eddie Tejeda, uno de los creadores de BlightStatus: “Parecía que habíamos tocado una fibra sensible”. Los aspectos específicos variaban de un lugar a otro, pero la lucha para obtener datos inmobiliarios oficiales era, claramente, una frustración común a todos. Mucha gente quiere información sobre edificios y propiedades, pero lo único que suele estar disponible, según Tejeda, “es realmente muy difícil de utilizar”, ya que profundizar en estos datos requiere conocimientos y experiencia.

Con una inversión de la Fundación Knight, el grupo creó Civic Insight en el año 2013, utilizando el trabajo que habían realizado en Nueva Orleáns como un modelo que pudiera adaptarse a otras ciudades, ya fueran más grandes o más pequeñas, con diferentes necesidades y conjuntos de datos (las cuotas de configuración y suscripción anual varían según la población: aproximadamente de US$1.000 a US$10.000 para la tarifa básica, más un monto de entre 20 y 70 centavos de dólar per cápita). Entre los nuevos clientes, Dallas está resultando ser un caso de estudio particularmente importante. Esta metrópoli en franco crecimiento, que presenta una gran variedad de barrios muy diferentes entre sí –desde los caros y prósperos hasta aquellos con graves problemas económicos–, demuestra que esta estrategia de tecnología de datos de código abierto no sólo sirve en casos selectivos como el de Nueva Orleáns después del huracán Katrina.

La conexión se dio a través de la organización Hábitat para la Humanidad. La delegación que esta entidad sin fines de lucro tiene en Nueva Orleáns ha sido un usuario entusiasta de la aplicación BlightStatus. Los miembros de esta organización hicieron correr la voz a sus colegas en Dallas, ciudad que ha estado luchando por lograr estrategias para utilizar datos con el fin de definir, rastrear y abordar el problema del deterioro y otras cuestiones, como la identificación de propietarios problemáticos. La versión de Blight-Status para Dallas, cuyo lanzamiento fue a finales del año 2014 con datos similares a la información recabada en Nueva Orleáns, incorporará estadísticas adicionales relativas a delincuencia y tributación, ya que los residentes desean acceder a estos datos más fácilmente, como afirma Theresa O’Donnell, directora de planificación municipal que habló sobre la aplicación en la conferencia de Directores de Planificación de Grandes Ciudades organizada por el Instituto Lincoln en Cambridge en octubre de 2014. Según O’Donnell, “a medida que estos programas se configuren y se comiencen a utilizar, podremos contar cada vez más con los ciudadanos para que nos hagan saber si [las medidas que tomamos contra el deterioro] están funcionando o no”.

Atlanta y Sacramento están poniendo en funcionamiento sus propios programas para poder utilizar la aplicación este año, y Civic Insight está tomando medidas para que pueda utilizarse muy pronto en Fort Worth, Texas, y otros lugares. Los objetivos de los clientes no se limitan a los problemas relacionados con el deterioro, según destaca Tejeda, que actualmente se desempeña como director ejecutivo de Civic Insight: en Palo Alto, donde la zonificación, el desarrollo y la construcción son temas candentes, tanto arquitectos como propietarios utilizan la aplicación para mantenerse al día en los procesos de obtención de permisos. Esta flexibilidad es deliberada. Tal como explica Tejeda, “podemos cartografiar con relativa rapidez [datos sin procesar] en nuestra aplicación. El papel que desempeñamos es el de un traductor que interpreta lo que tiene la ciudad y las necesidades de la comunidad” (la aplicación está diseñada también para recibir nuevos conjuntos de datos, y no es de sorprender que ciudadanos activos de Nueva Orleáns, como Pumilia, tengan muchísimas sugerencias que Civic Insight está tratando de incorporar).

Los conjuntos de datos integrales y otras herramientas digitales han servido de guía a los planificadores y otros funcionarios municipales durante años, pero Civic Insight está ahora pensando en dar el siguiente paso lógico. Según Peter Pollock, fellow del Instituto Lincoln y exdirector de planificación de Boulder, Colorado, “tenemos la gran oportunidad de aprovechar estos datos –que, para muchas ciudades, son datos ocultos– y sacarlos a la luz”, de manera que resulten útiles tanto para los ciudadanos como para los planificadores.

Este nivel de accesibilidad es muy importante, ya que los gestores de políticas deben “coproducir la buena ciudad” junto con los residentes, tal como lo expresa Pollock, quien continúa: “Los planificadores tienen la tarea de aprovechar la energía de la comunidad y encauzarla hacia una visión para el futuro”. Esto implica aspectos tales como la zonificación y la obtención de permisos, pero también los referentes al mantenimiento y el cumplimiento de normas. Pollock concluye: “No se trata sólo de construir la ciudad, sino de cuidar y alimentar a la ciudad a lo largo del tiempo”.

Aun así, la propuesta de Civic Insight puede parecer confusa al principio: ¿Cómo se beneficia una ciudad al esperar que los ciudadanos analicen cuidadosamente la información que ya posee? Sin embargo, esa es la cuestión. Poner los datos a disposición de las personas que realmente conocen los barrios donde viven y trabajan equivale a una especie de estrategia de crowdsourcing –o externalización distribuida– para el mantenimiento de la ciudad en lo relativo a la planificación.

Si no, preguntémosle a Pumilia. Esta es la esencia de lo que ella trataba de hacer en Nueva Orleáns hace unos pocos años con su planilla de cálculo casera y muchísimo coraje. Ahora puede monitorear su barrio más fácilmente, y puede además recomendar BlightStatus a otras personas para que puedan también obtener rápidamente la información que necesitan y presionar al municipio para que tome medidas respecto a las propiedades problemáticas.

Mientras hablamos, Pumilia busca unos datos y nos cuenta la historia de una dirección en particular: “Sobre esta propiedad pesan no una, dos, tres, ni cuatro causas, sino ¡cinco!”. En pocas palabras, Pumilia acaba de improvisar un expediente listo para usar sobre el abandono de la propiedad, que ayudó a persuadir a los funcionarios públicos a iniciar un proceso que debería desembocar en la subasta pública de la propiedad.

A veces, Pumilia dice, riendo: “Se necesita la acción de los ciudadanos para animar a la gente a realizar su trabajo”.

Rob Walker (robwalker.net) colabora con Yahoo Tech, Design Observer y The New York Times.

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 abril se reunió en Chile un grupo de expertos, funcionarios y asesores fiscales latinoamericanos que se encargan de monitorear los sistemas de información de los mercados urbanos y publican informes estadísticos sobre el comportamiento del mercado. La reunión, que tuvo la finalidad de facilitar el intercambio de experiencias y explorar planes de cooperación futura, contó con la asistencia de representantes de Ciudad de México; San Salvador, El Salvador; São Paulo y Porto Alegre, Brasil; Montevideo, Uruguay; Santiago, Chile; Quito, Ecuador; y Bogotá, Colombia, como también especialistas del Banco Mundial, el Banco Interamericano del Desarrollo y el Programa de Desarrollo de las Naciones Unidas (UNDP).

La mayoría de las iniciativas surgieron de empresas pequeñas con el objetivo original de obtener información para fines de evaluación de proyectos, requisitos de investigación o análisis de mercados; subsiguientemente se ampliaron a sistemas de gran escala para monitorear diferentes tipos de mercados y regiones geográficas.

Los mercados más frecuentemente estudiados son inmuebles residenciales, industriales y comerciales recién construidos, siendo las variables básicas consideradas, el precio, la ubicación y el tipo de producto. En casos específicos se emplean otras variables para obtener información más precisa sobre cada transacción o cada producto que se envía al mercado. En todos los casos se obtienen los datos estadísticos a partir del mercado formal, aun cuando un estimado de Bogotá indica que dicho mercado representa apenas un tercio de todas las transacciones.

Las más importantes fuentes de datos del mercado son periódicos, revistas o publicaciones especializadas, aunque también se consiguen informaciones útiles a través de permisos de construcción o visitas a obras. En San Salvador, la fuente principal son los datos bancarios sobre préstamos hipotecarios para la adquisición de bienes inmuebles.

El área geográfica y el período de computación de las estadísticas varía según el caso; no obstante, todos los sistemas se enfrentan al mismo problema, que es la pérdida de validez estadística al reducirse el tamaño de la unidad de análisis o al acortarse el período. Por otra parte, ampliar el área geográfica significa perder la homogeneidad de barrios bien definidos, y ampliar el marco temporal limita el ajuste fino del estudio.

Las estadísticas generales y las tendencias del mercado aparecen en periódicos y publicaciones especializadas, mientras que boletines periódicos e informes publican estadísticas más detalladas. Los listados de obras nuevas constituyen un mecanismo abierto y útil para corregir la información, dado que cuando un caso no aparece en una lista, el abastecedor es el primero en hacerlo público.

Por los momentos, sólo Brasil y México están gestionando sus sistemas de información con fines de lucro. En otros países, la venta de los datos del mercado apenas cubre los gastos de gestión, pero la diseminación de los datos facilita a consultores profesionales utilizarlos en actividades lucrativas. De tal manera, esta información asiste al sector privado porque aumenta la transparencia de los mercados y ayuda a los empresarios a evaluar proyectos urbanos y definir las tendencias geográficas y económicas. Para el sector público, los datos del mercado facilitan la tasación pública de inmuebles y las actividades de planificación.

Todavía quedan muchos problemas por resolver para poder mejorar la cobertura de las transacciones del mercado urbano, la calidad de la información, el análisis de los datos, y el debate que pueda originar esta información sobre las políticas del suelo urbano. Desde el punto de vista académico, el reto es mejorar el entendimiento del fenómeno observado, mientras que desde la perspectiva profesional, es utilizar la información disponible para mejorar el análisis de los proyectos y ajustar los planos de tasación, a fin de establecer registros más exactos y así optimizar el sistema del impuesto a la propiedad.

Dado que muchas ciudades latinoamericanas carecen de sistemas de monitoreo del mercado urbano, los participantes de este proyecto en curso deben abocarse a encontrar maneras de compartir sus experiencias para aumentar la eficiencia de las operaciones mercantiles y la planificación urbana de la región.

Sobre el autor

Pablo Trivelli es coordinador regional del Programa de Gestión Urbana, Programa de Desarrollo de las Naciones Unidas, Santiago, Chile. El seminario fue patrocinado junto con el Instituto Lincoln con el proyecto GTZ-MINVU, el Instituto de Estudio Urbanos de la Universidad Católica de Chile y el Ministerio de Vivienda y Urbanismo de Chile.

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 ejecución de cualquier programa nacional de planeación a escala regional o local puede ser un reto, incluso en las circunstancias más propicias. Colombia enfrenta muchos problemas sociales, políticos y económicos que bien podrían haber desvirtuado la expansión de su iniciativa principal de planeación: el programa nacional de catastro. Algunos de estos problemas tienen su origen en el gobierno descentralizado, los cambios de mando en la gestión pública local, la inestabilidad de la economía y las dificultades generalizadas vinculadas a la pobreza, el narcotráfico y la intervención internacional. No obstante esta situación, el Departamento Administrativo de Catastro Distrital de Bogota (DACD) está recibiendo un reconocimiento cada vez mayor como un precedente exitoso para los países en desarrollo de América Latina y más allá.

Aunque las transferencias legales, la política de suelos y la planeación han sido aspectos significativos en toda la historia de los catastros, la gestión fiscal ha sido el principal centro de atención en Bogotá para sus ciudadanos y el sector empresarial por igual. El proceso administrativo de los avalúos abarca el mantenimiento de una base de datos que se alimenta de la información aportada por las divisiones encargadas del modelo econométrico, los sistemas de información geográfica (SIG), la creación de códigos y normatividad, la cartografía, el análisis socioeconómico de sectores homogéneos, la matrícula inmobiliaria y la zonificación. Como se señaló en el artículo anterior, los números de inmuebles incorporados (formación catastral) y actualizados (actualización catastral) han aumentado considerablemente (véase la Figura 1).

El gran volumen de predios y mejoras ha podido manejarse en un lapso tan corto gracias a un plan administrativo minucioso e integral. El proceso reglamentario de participación pública no puso en riesgo la eficiencia con la cual se llevaron a cabo las actualizaciones y la certificación de inmuebles. Durante el año fiscal pasado, el modelo econométrico tomó en cuenta las variables típicas del avalúo y también consideró un elemento clave en el catastro de Bogotá, el “autoavalúo”. De conformidad con la Ley 44 de 1990, se utiliza un proceso de declaración y revisión públicas para actualizar y mantener la cédula catastral de cada inmueble. El propietario u ocupante presenta un estimado del valor del inmueble y su depreciación o apreciación, según lo estipulado en la Ley de Reforma del Impuesto Predial Unificado. Esta legislación busca simplificar la administración tributaria territorial y evitar la posibilidad de gravar los mismos factores dos veces. Si bien es importante recurrir a los ciudadanos para que suministren la información más actualizada con respecto a las condiciones del inmueble, también es imprescindible la verificación. De esta manera, un grupo de peritos profesionales debidamente capacitados han realizado inspecciones de todos los inmuebles registrados en el sistema catastral. Los ciudadanos han tenido muy buena disposición para suministrar información sobre las mejoras en terrenos desocupados, puesto que la tasa del impuesto sobre suelo no urbanizado es mayor que la tasa sobre suelo con mejoras. Este enfoque de planeación integral ha limitado la especulación y por ende ha estimulado la inversión de la comunidad.

El uso de SIG ha sido un factor determinante para la integración y evaluación en todo el departamento de las revisiones de inmuebles, actualizaciones del sistema y la administración general del programa. El IGAC está en el proceso de desarrollo de un programa basado en el software ArcCadastre en coordinación con la Universidad de Bogotá. El objetivo es vincular todos los catastros regionales con la base de datos nacional. En el área de Bogotá un SIG central proporciona a los funcionarios catastrales una base de datos valiosa que incluye un inventario interactivo y multifuncional que se utiliza durante el proceso de disminución del impuesto predial. El SIG se ha ampliado recientemente para ofrecer al público general una herramienta de consulta de datos de los registros históricos de los inmuebles, además de listados de los bienes raíces de todos los vecindarios. Con el uso propuesto para el SIG y el aumento del número de terminales públicos, se tendrá un acceso mayor al sistema catastral. Mientras tanto, la página Web del DACD es una creativa herramienta educativa que mantiene a los usuarios informados a la vez que controla este complejo proceso.

El catastro de Bogotá ha logrado avances novedosos y tangibles en la creación, desarrollo y mantenimiento de un sistema catastral considerado por muchos una imposibilidad teórica. La visión y la tenacidad de los administradores públicos, la empresa privada y los ciudadanos contribuyeron a crear un catastro que debiera cumplir e incluso superar las metas previstas en el Catastro 2014 de la FIG (Van der Molen 2003). Este plan requiere que un catastro tenga “derechos inclusivos y restricciones sobre el suelo en los registros cartográficos, modelos integrales de mapas catastrales, colaboración continua entre los sectores público y privado y un catastro que permita la recuperación de costos”. En vista de sus retos políticos, administrativos, financieros, técnicos y prácticos, el catastro de Bogotá ha logrado convertir un sueño en una realidad innovadora.

Michelle Thompson es consultora de bienes raíces e investigación y dicta clases de sistemas de información geográfica en el Departamento de Planeación de Ciudades y Regiones de la Universidad de Cornell. Además pertenece al cuerpo docente asociado del Instituto Lincoln; participó en la conferencia sobre catastros realizada en Bogotá en noviembre de 2003.

Five years ago, New Orleans resident Mandy Pumilia was concerned about the number of apparently blighted structures in her neighborhood, known as Bywater, where she is currently vice president of the neighborhood association. Despite post-Katrina recovery efforts, it was hard to identify and track truly troubled properties, and she didn’t have access to city data that could have helped. Instead, she built her own Google spreadsheet and filled it in with the results of her own research and legwork. “It was an arduous process,” she recalls. And despite her tech savvy and determination, it was a solution with limits: it wasn’t easy to share the information beyond people she knew directly, and keeping up with property-specific city hearings was a chore.

Since then, a web app called BlightStatus (blightstatus.nola.gov) has become a valuable new tool for her neighborhood recovery efforts. Created in 2012 by Code for America, a nonprofit specializing in open-source projects that benefit local government, BlightStatus makes it simpler for citizens like Pumilia to access property details, more deeply engaging them in managing blight and other planning challenges. The effort caught the attention of other cities and led to a spinoff startup called Civic Insight, which is now deploying its technology in Dallas, Atlanta, Palo Alto, Sacramento, and other places.

In New Orleans, BlightStatus aggregates information on inspections, code complaints, hearings, judgments, foreclosures, and more. This data is generally siloed or hard to access, but the app gathers and updates most of it daily. Users can search by address or use an interactive map to search at the neighborhood or citywide level. Particularly useful: a “watch list” feature that lets someone like Pumilia keep tabs on specific properties, and sends timely alerts about hearings and other developments. “And it makes it easier for me to empower other residents,” she adds, “so I’m not the only keeper of information.”

When other cities noticed New Orleans’ embrace of the app and expressed interest in a similar tool, Code for America adapted the technology to work elsewhere. “We seemed to hit a nerve,” says Eddie Tejeda, one of the BlightStatus creators. Specifics varied from place to place, but grappling with official property data was clearly a widespread frustration. Lots of people want information about buildings and property, Tejeda continues, but what’s available is often “really hard to work with”; digging through it requires knowledge and experience.

With an investment from the Knight Foundation, the group formed Civic Insight in 2013, using their New Orleans work as a template that could be scaled for other cities large and small, with varied needs and data sets. (Setup and annual subscription-like fees vary by population: roughly $1,000 to $10,000 for the base rate plus 20 to 70 cents per capita.) Among its newer clients, Dallas is proving a particularly important case study. A sprawling metropolis with wildly diverse neighborhoods, from pricey and thriving to severely economically challenged, it’s helping demonstrate that this approach to open-data technology isn’t just for triage in a place like post-Katrina New Orleans.

The connection came via Habitat for Humanity. The nonprofit’s New Orleans chapter has been an enthusiastic user of BlightStatus. Members passed the word to colleagues in Dallas, where the city has been grappling with strategies for using data to define, track, and address blight and related issues, such as identifying problem landlords. Launched in late 2014 with data similar to the information collected in New Orleans, the Dallas version will incorporate additional crime and tax-related statistics that locals want to access more readily, says Theresa O’Donnell, the city’s chief planning officer, who spoke about the app at the Lincoln Institute’s Big City Planning Directors conference in Cambridge in October 2014. “As we get these programs up and started,” she says, “we can rely more on citizens to let us know if [our blight efforts] are working or not.”

Atlanta and Sacramento are rolling out their own programs to make use of the app this year, and other Civic Insight efforts are forthcoming in Fort Worth, Texas, and elsewhere. Client goals aren’t limited to blight issues, notes Tejeda, now Civic Insight’s CEO: in Palo Alto, where zoning, development, and construction are hot topics, architects and homeowners use the app to keep up with permitting processes. That flexibility is by intent. “It’s relatively quick for us to map [raw data] to our application,” he explains. “The role we play is being the translator between what the city has, and what the public needs.” (The app is also built to accommodate new data sets—and it’s no surprise that active citizens like Pumilia, in New Orleans, have lots of suggestions that Civic Insight is working to accommodate.)

Comprehensive data sets and other digital tools have helped to guide planners and other city officials for years, but what Civic Insight is up to is the next logical step. “There’s this great opportunity to harness this data—sort of hidden data, for many cities—and bring it to life” in ways that are useful to citizens and planners alike, points out Lincoln Institute fellow Peter Pollock, the former head of planning in Boulder, Colorado.

Such accessibility matters because policy makers must “coproduce the good city” with residents, Pollock continues. “Planners are in the business of harnessing community energy around a vision for the future,” he says. That means zoning and permitting—but also maintenance and compliance. “It’s not just building the city; it’s care and feeding of the city over time.”

Still, the Civic Insight proposition may seem confusing at first: How does a city benefit by hoping citizens will pore over information that it already owns? But that’s the point. Opening up data to people who really know the neighborhoods where they live and work amounts to a kind of crowd-sourcing strategy for planning-level city maintenance.

Just ask Pumilia. This is the essence of what she was trying to do in New Orleans with her DIY spreadsheet and a whole lot of grit a few years ago. Now she can monitor her neighborhood more easily and direct others to BlightStatus so they too can quickly round up the information they need and prod the city about troublesome properties.

Dipping into the data as we speak, she calls up the history of one local address: “So there are one, two, three, four, five cases against this property,” she says. In short, she has just whipped up a ready-made dossier of neglect—one that helped persuade officials to start a process that should lead to the auction of that property.

Sometimes, Pumilia says with a laugh, “It requires citizen action to inspire people to do their jobs.”

A group of Latin American scholars, practitioners and government officials who monitor urban market information systems and publish statistical reports on market behavior met in Chile in April to share their experiences and explore plans for future cooperation. Representatives came from Mexico City; San Salvador, El Salvador; Sao Paulo and Porto Alegre, Brazil; Montevideo, Uruguay; Santiago, Chile; Quito, Ecuador; and Bogota, Colombia. Specialists from the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) also participated.

Most of the cities’ initiatives originated from small ventures to obtain information for project evaluation, research requirements or market analysis, and later expanded into larger-scale systems to monitor different types of markets and broader geographic regions.

Newly constructed housing and office and commercial buildings are the most frequently studied markets; price, location and product type are the basic variables being computed. Other variables are used in specific cases to obtain more precise information about each product being supplied to the market or each transaction. In all cases, statistics are gathered from the formal market, even though an estimate from Bogota indicates that this market represents only about one third of all transactions.

Newspapers, magazines or specialized publications are the major sources of market data, but building permits or visits to construction sites also provide useful information. In San Salvador, the main source is data from the banking system on credit loans for the acquisition of real estate property.

The geographical area and the time period for which statistics are computed vary from case to case. Yet, all systems face the same dilemma of losing statistical validity when reducing the size of the unit of analysis or shortening the time period. On the other hand, broadening the geographic area means a loss of homogeneity of well-defined neighborhoods, and broadening the time frame limits fine tuning of the phenomena.

General statistics and market trends are disseminated through newspapers and specialized publications, while more detailed statistics are sold through periodical bulletins and reports. Published listings of new construction provide an open and useful mechanism for correcting information, because when a case is not listed the supplier is the first one to make it known.

At present, only Brazil and Mexico are operating their information systems on a profit basis. In other countries, income from the sale of market data covers only operating expenses, but dissemination of the data provides opportunities for professional consultants to use it for related profitable activities. Thus, this information aids the private sector by making markets more transparent and helping entrepreneurs evaluate urban projects and define geographic and economic trends. For the public sector, the market data assists in the public valuation of properties and in planning purposes.

Many challenges remain to improve the coverage of urban market transactions, the quality of the information, the analysis of the data, and the debate this information can stimulate regarding urban land policy. From an academic perspective, the challenge is to improve the understanding of the phenomena being observed. From a professional perspective, it is to use the available information for better project analysis and to adjust valuation maps to establish more accurate records for property tax purposes.

Since many Latin American cities lack any type of urban market monitoring systems, the special challenge facing the participants in this ongoing project is to find ways to share their experiences to improve the efficiency of market operations and urban planning throughout the region.

Pablo Trivelli is regional coordinator of the Urban Management Program, United Nations Development Program, Santiago, Chile. The seminar was cosponsored by the Lincoln Institute with the GTZ-MINVU project, the Urban Studies Institute of the Catholic University of Chile, and Chile’s Ministry of Housing and Urban Development.