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New Regulatory Guidelines project outputs
27th November 2002
The New Regulatory Guidelines project outputs are now online.
Introduction
Why do so many people in the urban areas of developing countries live in housing which is
classified as illegal? Is it because they are inherently defiant or delinquent? Are they
intent on challenging the authority of the state and undermining respect for law and order?
In Manila, you are currently encouraged to put a blue ribbon on you car aerial if you support
the plans of the MMDA Director to remove illegal settlements and street traders and the
campaign is winning considerable support. In Delhi and many other cities, similar campaigns
are being launched by determined officials to "clean up" their cities and ensure the rule of
law.
But what if you are too poor to afford a car to put a ribbon on? What if you cannot afford
the cost of conforming to the numerous rules, regulations and administrative procedures
required by many urban authorities before they will grant planning and building permission?
If ten percent of the population do not conform to legal requirements, it might be reasonably
assumed that they are at fault. However, if 90 percent of the population do not conform, is
it not equally reasonable to assume that the law itself is at fault, - or more accurately
those who framed the laws?
The fact is that urban planning regulations, standards and administrative procedures by
which authorities seek to manage the processes of urban development, are not value free or
politically neutral. They inevitable express the world view of political elites and
professionals who seek a form of urban development conditioned by the world they are
familiar with, or seek to emulate or aspire to. This puts them at odds with the mass of
largely poor people already in the urban areas and those who join them daily from even less
developed rural areas - people who want a better life for themselves and particularly their
children, but do not have the wherewithal to satisfy the norms of a wealthy minority.
In most developing countries, the proportion of urban populations living in settlements
considered illegal or unplanned is large and increasing. Efforts to stem migration from
rural areas have proved futile as the funds needed to boost rural incomes are invariably
generated from the urban areas where jobs - and therefore opportunities - are concentrated.
Similarly, programmes to demolish illegal settlements simply move the problem somewhere
else. Both approaches deal with symptoms rather than causes. The central cause is a
fundamentally narrow economic base in which an urban elite has the lion's share of what
wealth exists and finds it impossible - or unacceptable - to adapt its norms to those of a
poor majority. The situation is compounded by the increasing impact of market forces which
increase the commercial value of land and accord rising prices to even marginal sites. As
land loses its historically based use value, (as exemplified in the customary land tenure
systems of sub-Saharan Africa and other parts of the world), and is regarded increasingly
as an economic asset to be traded and exploited like any other, the cost of conforming to
official norms becomes daily more unaffordable. The result is that the cost of getting on
the bottom rung of the legal ladder has been raised too high - and is getting higher.
It is impractical to deny the penetration of market forces in land when they are permeating
all other sectors of the global economy and being forced on developing countries by
strictures from the IMF and WTO. Land and property prices are conditioned by the same demand
and supply forces which condition all other transactions and the ever growing demand for
land in growing urban areas is not being met by planned development. Increasing the supply
of planned land would certainly help contain land price increases, though sites need to be
developed in conjunction with employment opportunities and services to be effective.
If market forces cannot be stopped, what can be done to increase access to legal and
officially acceptable shelter? One major option is to review the regulatory framework of
planning standards, regulations and administrative procedures which together impose a range
of access costs and to see where changes can be made.
In early 2001, the UK Department for International Development (DFID) approved funding for a
regulatory review, or audit, of urban planning regulations, standards and administrative
practices for new urban land and shelter developments in five countries in different parts
of the world and at different levels of economic development and with different legal and
political systems. Since then, a sixth country has been added to the project. The countries
are Bolivia, India, Lesotho, South Africa, Tanzania and Turkey. The project is being
directed by Geoffrey Payne and Associates in close collaboration with local professionals
and is scheduled for completion by March 2004. The project is being carried out in
conjunction with a parallel project being undertaken by a team at the Intermediate
Technology Development Group (ITDG) which is reviewing regulatory frameworks for upgrading
existing urban settlements.
The project is being carried out in three phases. Phase 1, which was carried out between
September and December 2000, involved the collection of information on planning regulations,
standards and administrative procedures in all selected countries except Bolivia which
joined the project in mid 2002. Phase 2 started in January 2001 and involved a regulatory
audit to assess the imputed costs of access to legal shelter and was completed in March 2002.
Following this, work started in Phase 3 to negotiate options for initial implementation.
This website posting contains the executive summaries of each national audit and includes
the work carried out in Phase 2.
To download executive summaries for;
South Africa click
Here .
India click
Here .
Lesotho click
Here .
Tanzania click
Here .
Turkey click
Here .
These papers can be downloaded; however any reference to any part of these works must be
properly acknowledged and the papers cannot under any circumstances be modified and then
re-distributed.
If you wish to receive more information about the project, please email us and we will be
pleased to include you in a mailing list of project updates.
(To save the file, right click on the link and select "save target as...", alternatively use SHIFT-Left Mouse Click and then select "Save As...")
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Geoffrey Payne contributed to "Approaches to Urban Slums.
A multimedia sourcebook on adaptive and proactive strategies",
edited by Barjor Mehta & Arish Dastur, with multimedia by Steffen Janus. The book was published
by the World Bank Institute (World Bank, Washington DC, 2008) and
launched on 21 February 2008. Geoff contributed extensively
to the Proactive Approaches section of the multimedia sourcebook by drawing
upon his previous work, experience, and publications. He was also interviewed
on innovating tenure policies.
For more information, visit the World Bank Institute website.
GPA is pleased to announce the publication in early September 2004 of ‘The Urban Housing Manual: Making regulatory guidelines work for the poor’. The manual and its accompanying CD-Rom provides professionals, communities and administrators with the means to review the extent to which existing planning regulations, standards and administrative procedures represent a constraint on access by the urban poor to new legal shelter or the upgrading of informal settlements in developing countries.