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Urban LandMark Conference

Rethinking emerging land markets in rapidly growing southern African cities

1 & 2 November 2010, Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa

The Urban Land Markets Programme of southern Africa is planning a regional event in early November. We would like to invite abstracts for papers on the subject, and/or organisational participation in the initiative. Our objective is to bring together key commentators on urban land issues in southern Africa (and beyond) to ascertain the state of knowledge on access to land and land markets by poor people, and build stronger links amongst practitioners and researchers.

The event will be centred on three main themes, which will inform the scope of the discussions.

Theme 1: Recognising land rights - identifying alternative ways of recognising land rights

Located within the broad idea of the "right to the city", this theme explores alternative ways of recognising land rights, and integrating these into existing legal systems.

Access to markets is integral to recognising land rights. At present the market rarely distributes land in a way which allows or promotes access to it by the poor. To this end we would welcome papers that look at:

1. local practices and social forms of recognition of rights which may not be administratively recognised but are nevertheless socially legitimate; and
2. alternative ways of trading and distributing urban land rights within African contexts.

The conference will explore the opportunities and obstacles that land markets present to securing land rights for poor urban dwellers.

Theme 2: The political economy of urban land markets in Africa

This session invites papers that explore the dynamics of power and the urban land market. How do existing property markets work in growing African cities? Who are the market players and how do they shape the power dynamics of the market?

Property economics is central to this theme and should be explored within the context of the local political economy.

We especially seek papers that focus on the following issues:

1. Empirical information which informs our view of how markets are working for and against land access by the poor;
2. The dynamics of urban land markets in post-conflict contexts;
3. The impact on cities of foreign investment in urban land;
4. The socio-political effects of ownership of slum land by elites.

Theme 3: Urban land governance

This theme area invites papers that address two major governance areas:

1. Country/regional experiences in integrating poor urban areas/slums/informal settlements into administrative and legally recognised systems. The papers should include in their analysis the effectiveness of legal instruments in effective and inclusive planning, recognising poor areas, and the outcomes these have for the poor.
2. Experiences of effective and inclusive (or pro-poor) urban planning. Issues related to location, planning, migration and urban growth strategies, and improving urban efficiency should be highlighted.

We are particularly looking for papers that present innovative regulatory approaches to land, state-land release programmes for settlement by the poor, their challenges, opportunities and best practice approaches.

Although this conference focuses on southern Africa, we welcome papers from other regions that are comparative and promote learning between countries and regions from the African continent.

We invite abstracts of not more than 500 words by Friday 6 August 2010. Please include your full contact details, and the thematic area/s that your proposed paper addresses. Please send abstracts to Caroline Kihato (ckihato@mweb.co.za) and Mark Napier (mark@urbanlandmark.org.za).

Abstracts will be reviewed by a panel which will report back to authors by mid-August. Final papers of not more than 5000 words (not including references) will be due by Friday 1 October 2010.