Urban land Policy : issues and opportunities.

The origin of this book in the urban project work of the World Bank explains its format. The introductory chapter provides a context, or perspective, for more detailed consideration of the urban land issues that most clearly impinge on the preparation and implementation of urban projects and programs. This overview serves as a starting point for the following chapters on major problems of urban land by various authors with long experience in their respective fields. The second chapter deals with the economic valuation of land, based on the opportunity cost of using land for one purpose rather than another, and with the underlying relationships behind shifts in the provision of services. The third chapter provides perhaps the most thorough discussion available of different types of urban land tenure in relation to objectives of equity and efficiency. The following short chapter links these issues to the rationale for government intervention and to the forms that such intervention may take. A fifth chapter discusses measures to influence the allocation of surplus values created in the development of urban land, including various forms of land taxation and government acquisition and develop ment of land. Finally, two chapters deal with other forms of regulation of land use, the general limitations to which they are subject, and the characteristics of individual regulatory tools.

Urban land problems are inherently complex because of the many interactions between land uses, locational specificity, and the deep roots of land rights in legal and social systems. The subject is poor in accepted theory and rich in controversy. In developing countries conditions vary greatly, and the data base is generally extremely poor. In this context it was recognized that a comprehensive and fully consistent treatment of all the problem areas was not possible. Readers should not therefore be surprised to find some differences of opinion among authors, particularly on the relative merits of different solutions to the problems. Although generalized recommendations are of limited use in this field, the analyses. presented should nevertheless refine and illuminate many of the urban problems that confront the authorities of developing countries and provide some practical guidance to suitable and adaptable approaches for dealing with them.