Política habitacional en mercados de suelo desregulados. Gobierno local, población beneficiaria y cambios jurídicos en la implementación del PRO.CRE.AR en la ciudad de La Plata, Argentina (Housing policy in deregulated urban land markets. Local government, beneficiary population and legal changes in the implementation of PRO.CRE.AR in the city of La Plata, Argentina) (Housing policy in deregulated urban land markets. Local government, beneficiary population and legal changes in the implementation of PRO.CRE.AR in the city of La Plata, Argentina)

El trabajo analiza la implementación del Programa Crédito Argentino del Bicentenario (PRO.CRE.AR) en la ciudad de La Plata. En particular, se estudia cómo se construyó la respuesta estatal frente a la demanda de suelo urbano planteada por los colectivos de beneficiarios y qué rol desempeñaron los mismos en la resolución del problema. Desde una perspectiva socio-jurídica se reconstruye el proceso social previo a la respuesta estatal normativa, recuperando la dimensión política del fenómeno jurídico. Asimismo, se busca dar cuenta de cómo se reconfiguraron las estrategias de los actores a partir de sus expectativas jurídicas y cuál fue influencia en la orientación de la norma. Se concluye que las formas de resolución del problema suelo por parte de la gestión municipal, convalidadas por el nivel provincial estatal, se basaron principalmente en la flexibilización de la regulación normativa y habilitaron procesos de urbanización periférica, con bajos estándares urbano-ambientales y apropiación privada de plusvalías urbanas. In the paper is analyzed the implementation of the Programa Crédito Argentino del Bicentenario (PRO.CRE.AR) in the city of La Plata. Specifically, it is studied how did the state deal with the urban land demands of PRO.CRE.AR’s beneficiaries, and their role in the policy making process. From a socio-legal perspective is reconstructed/analyzed the social process prior to the state’s legal response, recovering the political scope of the legal phenomenon. It also considered how the actor’s strategies were restructured facing into account their legal expectative and its influence in the urban legislation. It is concluded that the ways of resolving the land problem by local government, validated by the provincial state, were based mainly on the relaxation of urban legislation and enabled peripheral urbanization processes, with low quality urban environmental and appropriation of urban surplus values.

Transfer of development rights and urban land markets

Transfer of development rights (TDR) is seen as an important tool for land use planning, in large part because it leverages market mechanisms. TDR extends market concepts used primarily in emissions trading programs to the arena of land use. However, with the exception of a handful of success stories, TDR programs generate few transfers. Although researchers generally attribute the weak performance of TDR to program design flaws, this study demonstrates that the unique conditions presented by urban land markets explain, in part, why TDR programs often underperform. I present a case study of a TDR program in Sarasota, Florida, to address two questions. First, what attributes of urban land markets may impact TDR program design and outcomes? Second, is TDR a planning tool that can achieve desired planning goals, given the conditions of land markets? I find that the unique features of land markets—specifically (1) the sensitivity of development to timing; (2) imperfect information, uncertainty, and speculative activity; (3) unique features of land; (4) the limited number of buyers and sellers; and (5) the development orientation of urban political and planning institutions—distort the market for transferable development rights. The Sarasota case demonstrates how local land market characteristics contributed to a set of incremental program design and implementation decisions that, in sum, amounted to significant departures from fundamental program principles and mechanisms. These resulted in imperfect market conditions and rendered the TDR program ineffective.