scholarly journals Fit-For-Purpose, Private-Sector Led Land Regularization and Financing of Informal Settlements in Brazil

Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 797
Author(s):  
Malcolm Childress ◽  
Selina Carter ◽  
Edgard Barki

This paper aims to analyze the financial and operational approach to land regularization and financing used in Brazil by an innovative private social enterprise in order to demonstrate that the approach widens the concept fit-for-purpose land regularization to include fit-for-purpose land financing, with relevance for wider efforts in informal settlement regularization and upgrading. In this approach, the enterprise acts as a coordinator and broker to organize the residents of informal settlements to regularize their settlements by negotiating buyouts of the underlying private owners at discounted values, handling titling and registration of the occupants, and coordinating with municipal governments to provide infrastructure. The analysis of parcel-level repayment and price data provides evidence of the sustainability of the business model and increase of property values of the regularized parcels. The results presented from the enterprise’s own repayment data demonstrate that under (non-pandemic) historical conditions residents are largely able to pay an affordable monthly payment over 7–10 years to the enterprise for the service to purchase the plots and maintain the enterprise. In operation since 2001, the enterprise has regularized over 20,000 parcels in more than 30 settlements, primarily in the cities of Sao Paolo and Curitiba in Brazil. The approach suggests that it could be widely replicable and add to the set of options for regularizing informal settlements, especially when purchase of private land is required.

Author(s):  
Jedidiah S. Snyder ◽  
Graeme Prentice-Mott ◽  
Charles Boera ◽  
Alex Mwaki ◽  
Kelly T. Alexander ◽  
...  

There are considerable challenges to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals’ target of universal access to basic sanitation in schools. Schools require safe, clean, and sex-segregated facilities for a large number of students. Robust and affordable solutions are needed to address the economic, spatial, social, institutional, and political factors which contribute to poor sanitary conditions in informal settlements. In 2015, we undertook a randomized controlled trial to assess the feasibility of private sector sanitation delivery (PSSD) in 20 primary schools, in informal settlements of Nairobi, Kenya. Our preliminary evaluation after one year of service delivery suggested that PSSD of urine-diverting dry latrines with routine waste collection and maintenance provided a feasible, lower-cost alternative to the government standard delivery (GSD) of cistern-flush toilets or ventilated improved pit latrines. We conducted a mixed-methods follow-up study to assess sanitation delivery over 3–4 years and investigate prevailing drivers and barriers that may influence the scalability of PSSD. The conditions of newly constructed and rehabilitated GSD facilities diminished quickly, reverting to the conditions of existing facilities, indicating lower sustainability compared to sanitation delivered from the private sector. Barriers in financial aspects related to the ongoing implementation of PSSD emerged, particularly among public schools, and few were able to pay for continued service. Our study demonstrates that the engagement of the private sector may lead to improvements in affordable, safely managed sanitation for schools and their students. Yet, to reach a sustained scale, additional guidance is needed on how to develop these partnerships, streamline procurement and contracting processes, and incorporate appropriate financing mechanisms.


Author(s):  
Christina Joy Ditmore ◽  
Angela K. Miller

Mobility as a Service (MaaS) is the concept through which travelers plan, book, and pay for public or private transport on a single platform using either a service or subscription-based model. Observations of current projects identified two distinct approaches to enabling MaaS: the private-sector approach defined as a “business model,” and the public sector approach that manifests as an “operating model.” The distinction between these models is significant. MaaS provides a unique opportunity for the public sector to set and achieve public policy goals by leveraging emerging technologies in favor of the public good. Common policy goals that relate to transportation include equity and access considerations, environmental impact, congestion mitigation, and so forth. Strategies to address these policy goals include behavioral incentivization and infrastructure reallocation. This study substantiates two models for implementing MaaS and expanding on the public sector approach, to enable policy in favor of the public good.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yu Wang ◽  
Lesley Gibson ◽  
Mohamed Beshir ◽  
David Rush

AbstractApproximately one billion people across the globe are living in informal settlements with a large potential fire risk. Due to the high dwelling density, a single informal settlement dwelling fire may result in a very serious fire disaster leaving thousands of people homeless. In this work, a simple physics-based theoretical model was employed to assess the critical fire separation distance between dwellings. The heat flux and ejected flame length were obtained from a full-scale dwelling tests with ISO 9705 dimension (3.6 m × 2.4 m × 2.4 m) to estimate the radiation decay coefficient of the radiation heat flux away from the open door. The ignition potential of combustible materials in adjacent dwellings are analyzed based on the critical heat flux from cone calorimeter tests. To verify the critical distance in real informal settlement fire, a parallel method using aerial photography within geographic information systems (GIS), was employed to determine the critical separation distances in four real informal settlement fires of 2014–2015 in Masiphumelele, Cape Town, South Africa. The fire-spread distances were obtained as well through the real fires. The probabilistic analysis was conducted by Weibull distribution and logistic regression, and the corresponding separation distances were given with different fire spread probabilities. From the experiments with the assumption of no interventions and open doors and windows, it was established that the heat flux would decay from around 36 kW/m2 within a distance of 1.0 m to a value smaller than 5 kW/m2 at a distance of 4.0 m. Both experiments and GIS results agree well and suggest the ignition probabilities at distances of 1.0 m, 2.0 m and 3.0 m are 97%, 52% and 5% respectively. While wind is not explicitly considered in the work, it is implicit within the GIS analyses of fire spread risk, therefore, it is reasonable to say that there is a relatively low fire spread risk at distances greater than 3 m. The distance of 1.0 m in GIS is verified to well and conservatively predict the fire spread risk in the informal settlements.


2017 ◽  
Vol 53 (5) ◽  
pp. 782-796 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olumuyiwa Bayode Adegun

Addressing intertwined socio-economic and environmental problems in informal urban areas underscores the need for just sustainability. The co-production of urban housing provides a useful domain to link issues related to sustainability with social and environmental justice. Using the example of an informal settlement re-blocking project, this paper shows how co-production as an approach might or might not promote principles ingrained in just sustainability. The study relied on data collected through semi-structured interviews with residents and key informants as well as transect walks within the settlement. The case shows that working towards just sustainability is not straight-forward. It demands efforts that navigate, with foresight rather than hindsight, the dynamics in multi-scalar contexts into which informal settlements are embedded. Social and institutional structures, processes and relationships producing and reproducing material distribution are crucial to entrenching the just sustainability praxis.


Author(s):  
Peter North

Building on the diverse economies perspective of JK Gibson-Graham, this chapter discusses how conceptions of just and sustainable economies in the context of the Anthropocene can be generated and, more importantly, performed through social and solidarity economies in the global North. It reviews concepts of the SSE in the global North, and discusses the extent that the UK social economy sector has been tamed and neoliberalised as more antagonistic conceptions of co-operative and grassroots economies created by green and socialist activists in the 1970s and 1980s have been transformed into neoliberal conceptions of social enterprise, with an inbuilt assumption that the private sector is more effective than the public. It discusses how in conditions of austerity social enterprise can legitimate the abandonment of socially excluded communities, and that to counter this, the social economy sector in the UK should develop more antagonistic perspectives, learning from Latin Americans. Finally, it discusses the contribution of Transition Initiatives in rekindling conceptions of grassroots sustainable economies.


1996 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
P Longley ◽  
G Higgs ◽  
D Martin

In this paper the detailed patterns of British property valuation and local revenue raising under the council tax are compared with those prevailing under the domestic rates. The results of matching individual council-tax valuations with rateable values for the 47000 domestic properties that make up the Inner Area of Cardiff, Wales, are reported. A geographical information system is used to identify the disaggregate pattern of properties which have been assigned higher or lower relative values after the abolition of the domestic rates. The findings are seen as significant in describing the intraurban geography of property values in Britain: properties constructed by local authorities now attract significantly lower relative valuations; pre-1919 private-sector housing is now more highly valued; and different construction types (for example, purpose-built flats, converted flats, and ends of terraces) attract quite different valuations under the two regimes. Overall, the distribution of rateable values vis-à-vis that of council-tax bands is likely to have had a multifaceted effect upon local revenue raising, and the authors begin to explore its changed geography in some detail.


2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 22
Author(s):  
Javad Barati ◽  
Sahar Soltani ◽  
Simin Froogh-Zadeh ◽  
Farzaneh Razaghian

This paper investigates the determinants of multi-dimension poverty in informal settlements of Mashhad City. It specially analyzes human capital factors, among factors that influence poverty level. Education, skills, experience and knowledge have important role in promoting income level and in access to sustainable jobs, especially in informal settlements that have lower human capital level than the urban areas other. Mashhad city has most marginal settlements in Iran. Sheikh-Hasan Neighborhood in Mashhad Municipality region 4 has been selected as case study. This study is based on information gathered from household level in 2016 and the ordered logit model is employed to estimate factors influencing urban poverty. Data were obtained from 300 households using the questionnaire Through the Systematic Random technique. Calculation of poverty indexes reveals that nearly 87% of households are below absolute poverty line and 20% of households are below extreme poverty line. Marginal effects show variables of “job stability”, “Ownership”, “Household size” and “Education of household head” have the greatest impact on poverty alleviation. Also, variables of “Education level” and “highest level of education of household members” have positive effect and significant on poverty. Results represent that poverty in informal settlements of Mashhad is strongly linked to factors such as human capital. In addition, with increasing the level of knowledge of household heads and creation of favorable conditions for increasing of the education level of household members can reduce poverty.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel D. Pressick

Currently, 1 in 6 people live in slums, or informal settlements in cities throughout the developing world. They are built illegally and are characterized by lack of proper sanitation, unsafe housing, and crowded living conditions. Despite their appearance, informal settlements are legitimate communities; they are vibrant, with sophisticated social, economic and cultural networks that support the livelihoods of residents who call them home. These communities give the urban poor a physical place within the city, giving them access to the opportunities and advantages that the current age of the 'global city' can offer to any willing participant. As architects who see the responsibility in choosing the informal settlement as a realm for engagement, this thesis proposes that any architectural intervention be mindful of the importance of the networks contained within the streets and buildings of the informal settlement. By preserving the built-fabric of the settlement, the architect legitimizes the settlement's density and scale, while ensuring the urban poor have a physical place in the city. They have managed to develop their own communities without any investment from outside forces, any intervention should only support that autonomous development. These structures, as well as the people and activities with them, are vital to the survival of residents of informal settlements.


2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (11) ◽  
pp. 966-971
Author(s):  
Munala Gerryshom Kweya ◽  
Mugwima B.N. ◽  
Omotto J. ◽  
Rosana, E.

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