Stepping out of the Twilight? Assessing the Governance Implications of Land Titling and Regularization Programmes

Abstract

This article engages with the discussions on the benefits and drawbacks of land titling programmes that seek to regularize informal urban settlements in developing countries. It is based on fieldwork in two neighbourhoods of Maputo, Mozambique, that are currently part of a municipal government regularization programme supported by the World Bank. The fieldwork explored an informal titling system administrated by the neighbourhood authorities upon which local residents rely to prevent land conflicts and to provide proof of residence. The findings add to the literature that demonstrates growing unease with a strictly dyadic formal/informal analysis of land occupation, and further queries the assumption that the state and the informal settler are diametrically opposed, with the former granting formal rights to the latter. In the process of these discussions, the article highlights the limited scholarly attention that has been granted to the governance implications of land titling programmes.

Comparative Urbanism: New Geographies and Cultures of Theorizing the Urban

“…Perhaps more graphically, the limits to extant theorizations of land markets are evident from the extensive critical literature on land title registration initiatives across cities in Africa and elsewhere, inspired by Hernando de Soto's (2000) stringent policy advice. The diversity of ownership forms in a vast number of cities, including traditional, collec tive, informal, illegal and public ownership, as well as peremptory violent appropriation to advance territorial political agendas (and war), mean that any theorization of urban land needs to be willing to think again about starting points and to delimit the scope of located conceptualizations (Payne et al, 2007;Myers, 2008;Marx, 2009;Earle, 2013;Hasan et al, 2013).…”

Sustainable Urbanization on Occupied Land? The Politics of Infrastructure Development and Resettlement in Beira City, Mozambique

“…Urban land governance in Mozambique has historically evolved amidst the contradictions and gaps of successive state regimes [28][29][30][31]. This has given rise to a set of institutional practices which bear little relationship to formal bureaucratic laws and regulations [32][33][34]. This is not a simple story of formality vs. informality however, as these practices are underpinned and regulated by lower levels of the formal municipality bureaucracy.…”

“…In addition to constituting a relatively stable set of institutional practices, this mode of urban land governance enjoys considerable social legitimacy, arguably more so than 'formal' urban land governance arrangements which often exist only on paper. As a result scholars have described urban land governance in Mozambique as being structured by 'alternative formality' and 'twilight' institutions [32] (p. 424) [33], as they fall outside the (normative) categorizations of formality and informality.…”

Hernando de Soto on Land Titling: Consensus and Criticism

“…Additionally, some big organizations, like the United Stated Agency for International Development (USAID), Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and World Bank revived their interest in land titling programs, clearly declaring the influence of de Soto on some of their projects (Rossini and Thomas, 1990;Panaritis, 2001;Gilbert, 2002;Bruce, 2006;Payne, 2008;Rutten, 2009;Payne, Durand-Lasserve and Rakodi, 2009;McFarlane, 2012;Earle, 2014). Among the different programs influenced by de Soto's theory, Building Opportunity for the Majority -an initiative launched by IDB in 2006 -and Peruvian property rights reforms, such as the Urban Property Right Program, are the most relevant ones (Panaritis, 2001;IDB, 2006;Gilbert, 2002;.…”