There exist various indicators that measure land tenure security for urbanites. Most of those indicators measure the degree to which land titling promotes the security of tenure. Based on the reviewed literature, it is admitted that land titling is not a panacea to land tenure security. Measuring the degree of land tenure security should not rely only on the legalisation of landownership. This paper makes a meta-analysis and conceptual modelling to connect spatial justice and land tenure security. It discusses the potential of inclusive urban development grounded on the claim that spatial justice enhances land tenure security. A comprehensive framework of indicators which can measure the degree of land tenure security from a spatial justice lens is thereafter derived. The meta-analysis and conceptual modelling were coupled with research synthesis to perform an in-depth review and qualitative content analysis of the literature on concepts of spatial justice, land tenure security, and urban (re)development processes. This study proposes 60 indicators which measure the degree of spatial justice and land tenure security along a continuum of spatial justice and land tenure security. Those indicators provide a more holistic approach for measuring land tenure security from a spatial justice lens than the separated sets of existing indicators.
The key question in this article is the extent to which current real property expropriation practices in Kigali city promote spatial justice. Current studies focus on the ambiguous manner in which real property valuation had been regulated by the expropriation law of 2007, leading to unfair compensation and various conflicts between expropriating agencies and expropriated people. Following its amendment in 2015, the law currently provides clearer procedures for valuation and fair compensation, based on the market prices. Using indicators that measure spatial justice, this study evaluates if the current expropriation processes result in spatial justice, consisting of procedural, recognitional and redistributive justice. These indicators are described using three dimensions of spatial justice: rules, processes and outcomes. Data were collected through household surveys, focus group discussions, stakeholders’ interviews and observations in four urban neighbourhoods where expropriation has taken place in Kigali city. Interpretative and statistical analysis of the data reveals some patterns of procedural, recognitional and redistributive justice in the rules dimension. There is no indication of any pattern for other dimensions. This relates to limited budgets of expropriating agencies which insufficiently follow the law. The consequence is the decreased redistributive justice in the compensation and the increase in the displacement effect of expropriation. Although, counter-valuations result in fair compensation, there is limited evidence for good trends of spatial justice in the whole process of expropriation.
The government of Rwanda recently passed housing development regulations and funding schemes which aim at promoting access to affordable houses for the low- and middle-income Kigali city inhabitants. The existing studies on housing affordability in this city did not yet discuss whether this government-supported programme is likely to promote access to housing for these target beneficiaries. This study applies the price-to-income ratio (PIR) approach and the 30-percent of household income standard through the bank loan to assess whether housing units developed in the framework of affordable housing schemes are, for the target recipients, affordable at all. It relies mainly on housing prices schemes held by real estate developers, data on households’ incomes collected through the household survey and a review of the existing studies and socio-economic censuses reports. Findings reveal that the developed housing units are seriously and severely unaffordable for most of the target beneficiaries, especially the lowest-income urban dwellers, due to the high costs of housing development, combined with the high profits expected by real estate developers. The study suggests policy and practical options for promoting inclusive urban (re)development and housing affordability for various categories of Kigali city inhabitants. These options include upgrading the existing informal settlements, combined with their conversion into shared apartments through the collaboration between property owners and real estate developers, the development of affordable rental housing for the low-income tenants, tax exemption on construction materials, progressive housing ownership through a rent-to-own approach, and incremental self-help housing development using the low-cost local materials.
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