Urban land economics

The role of commercial property, its conceptualisation and measurement in economic theory has changed significantly over time. At the beginning, land in economics covered the physical universe outside of humans and used as a primary input for commercial gain. Virtually all resource allocation and commercial trade takes place on land and gives rise to the commercial value of the land offered in trade and industry.

Oiling the Urban Economy is a pioneering book with a very apt title. Its focus on the impact of the Ghanaian oil boom on urbanization is timely. Recent exploration has revealed oil wealth in several low-income African countries, now eager to achieve economic development. But as Obeng-Odoom observes Africa's prodigious offshore oil wealth tends to be conflated with the Niger Delta quagmire. Many assume that African oil extraction will inevitably be mired in corruption, impoverishment and violence. This book tells a different, far more complex story of the vitality and pitfalls of Ghana's newly evolving oil economy based on offshore crude oil, gas condesate and natural gas.

My Churchill Fellowship report is based on interviews with over 60 people drawn from community organisations, elected politicians, public officials and professionals in North American cities in April and May 2014.

I have used my experience and observations of community land trusts (CLTs), and other forms of citizen inspired housing, to examine the relationship between the citizen and state, to reflect on the current state of political and civic life in the UK, and to propose practical institutional reforms through which citizens and the state could work together more effectively to ensure housing and land markets serve the common good.

Citizen inspired housing is characterised as the response of citizens organising to meet the housing needs of their community, where either or both the market and public policy cannot or will not.  More significantly, I see the unique achievement of CLTs as the agency of citizens to campaign for land tenure reform, and to tackle land market speculation with practical actions, at a time when the state appears to be unwilling or unable to act.

In a series of nine narratives, I describe situations in both the USA and UK in which citizens and the state have found productive ways of working together, to promote what is now described in the USA as ‘equitable development’, and where the action of citizens have expanded the agency of the state to tackle long term structural problems which the state could not achieve so effectively (or at all), on its own. Some of these narratives describe a reaction to situations in which citizens have lost trust in politicians and professionals to act in their interest, and others which have grown from a political culture in which representative democracy sees participative democracy as a natural and necessary partner in achieving the common good.

I have contrasted these positive narratives with examples of situations in the UK, in which the action or inaction of the state is already inflicting long term and structural social and economic damage on vulnerable populations and areas of cities, and undermining the trust of citizens in the good intentions and competence of the state.

I conclude that new public interest institutions are needed to rebalance the operation of land markets to meet social and economic need: in the use of public land, and the securing of public goods from private development through the planning system.

My three areas of inquiry were:
• Can participative democracy be recognised by politicians, public bodies and professionals as having as important a role to play in civic life, policy making and practice, as representative democracy? Can politicians and professionals learn to be more generous and respectful in their dealings with citizens?
• Can citizens become more effective agents of the changes needed to improve their quality of life, rehumanise the process of development, especially in urban areas, and also extend the agency of the state?
• Are CLTs (and similar citizen organisations), merely a small and interesting way of meeting very local needs, or could they be a phenomenon with global significance? How can citizens (re)claim their ‘Right to the city’, and the right to a genuinely affordable home related to income, as the foundation of a normal healthy life?

My findings are set out in three self-contained chapters that explore in turn the domains of civic life - the (land) professional, the politician, and the citizen, the public at large - and their capacity, or incapacity, to act for the common good, and to work within a conceptual framework which acknowledges our common humanity as citizens, ‘all in it together’.

In each of the three central chapters, I have set out the UK context, against which I have developed the nine narratives. These prepare the ground for the propositions in the final chapter, which focus on these ideas:
• Power through institutions…the creation of new institutions, and the strengthening of existing institutions are necessary to enable systemic and long term change to happen, and for it to be sustained and be adaptive to changing needs and circumstances in the future. Institutions also create the environment in which new cultures and attitudes can grow.
• Knowledge and information…we all need to own the information that informs our work, so that we can develop a sense of our own power and capacity to do ‘the right thing’
• Ethics…we have to take personal responsibility for developing and deploying our ethical intelligence in shaping the actions of individuals and institutions to achieve the common good

My conclusion, drawn from my interviewees, is that CLTs (and other forms of citizen inspired housing) have a vital political role to play both in the field of housing and development, and civic life more widely, by:
• Championing the principles of ‘Equitable Development’ and land reform
• Bearing witness to political and market failure
• Planning for the way people want to live
• Citizens and the state working together to achieve more than they could on their own
• Increasing the capacity of public bodies to bring about change for the common good
• Protecting the value of public support
• Safeguarding genuine and permanent affordability
• Offering social and technical innovation, and real choices in the housing market
• Humanising and democratising social and physical change 
• Creating more resilient and adaptive places through long term vision and responsibility
• Enabling ‘ordinary citizens’ to be recognised and valued as extraordinary
• Creating new potential political leaders and spatial planners grounded in their experience of urban governance

My three recommendations are practical propositions to establish three new community organised institutions through which civil society can play a more direct and instrumental role in the shaping of housing and planning policy, and lead a change in the political and popular culture about the operation of land and housing markets:

• A People’s Land Commission, national or city-scale, to bring public interest oversight and accountability to the use or sale of public land, and the granting of planning permissions on major projects, networked to local ‘Citizens’ Land Watch’ Panels set up by community organisers to work with local authorities
• Public Interest Sounding Boards set up by the built environment professional bodies to increase public accountability for their public interest purposes
• A Citizens’ Housing Alliance bringing together organisations representing or supporting a national demand side voice in housing policy

These new institutions build on the current public expectation to hold any institution to account for its capacity to achieve both social as well as economic outcomes in serving the common good.

The paper aims to contribute to the empirical scarce literature on the causes of inaccuracy of property valuation in commercial office buildings by providing meaningful insights on the different causes likely to affect valuation accuracy in a developing country like Nigeria. Using Mean ranking, regression and factor analysis the causes have been ranked from a questionnaire distributed to a sample of 90 practitioners with a total of 61 completing the survey. The key findings of the statistical analysis indicated that professionals ranked the existing valuation methodology as the most established cause while only four of the causes make statistically unique contribution to the valuation methodology namely skill, experience and judgment of the valuer, types of property, the integrity of the individual Surveyor and lack of valuation standard manual. In a forward looking approach, the paper provides some recommendations that should minimise valuation inaccuracies in reports. The key limi...

Through a comprehensive review on the current land condition in Hong Kong, the book aims to dispute on the Hong Kong land regime usually conceived as the most successful model in the world. Aggregating facts and figures that critically question the validity of the "increasing land supply" agenda of HKSAR government, the conclusion brings a new vision of sustainable land development policies and a deep comtemplation on the distributive mechanism on land resources in Hong Kong.

For more information of the book
https://inpressbks.wordpress.com/2013/03/23/002-4/

From its inception, the United States and its citizenry have placed tremendous importance on the education of its youth. While education occurs both publicly and privately, the public school systems have been a longstanding strength of this country. In recent years however, there has been great debate over many issues involved in the processes of funding public education, including but not limited to: Who is responsible for funding? How much should local, state, and federal sources contribute? How should funds be distributed? These questions and more have not been successfully answered in the United States, because many problems with education funding persist despite various efforts to address these issues.
One of the most pertinent of these problems is the inequality in education caused by taxation of property values. As this essay will show, many organizations and researchers have consistently shown the unequal effects that funding from local property taxes has upon the education levels offered by the corresponding school districts.  This essay will attempt to answer the question: Is there a more equitable alternative to funding public schools than is currently in place through local property taxation? The following discussion will demonstrate the causal effect that this source of funding often has upon the level of education received by students, and will seek to prove the hypothesis that a more equitable funding method exists to satisfy the large financial contribution that local property taxes typically provide the public school systems.

This review paper aims at linking in a direct way labour markets' transformations with gentrification processes, in the Greek context. Departing from a thorough review of the relevant literature, spanning from the coining of the term in the 1960s up to recent research, it seeks to delineate our conceptualization of gentrification. Gentrification is presented as a process triggered by capital switching that seeks opportunities opened by rent gaps, carried out by a multiplicity of public and private actors (from national governments, finance institutions and big realtors, to private owners/developers), which often have conflicting interests, and " consumed " by segments of the workforce that have come to the forefront due to shifting international divisions of labour. Despite the critique, the Greek context features documented and undocumented gentrification tendencies, that present many similarities and stark differences with international cases, as registered in the relevant literature.

El mercado inmobiliario desempeña un papel importante en la economía y la sociedad, por lo tanto, la desactualización de las valuaciones catastrales, en particular del suelo urbano, tiene efectos nocivos sobre las políticas públicas impositivas, territoriales y de vivienda, como en la estabilidad del sistema financiero. Los catastros afrontan el desafío de desarrollar valuaciones masivas de una jurisdicción con el fin de proveer datos actualizados y de calidad, de manera rápida y eficiente. Dado el avance tecnológico, la generación de grandes volúmenes de información y los progresos asociados a las ciencias de la computación, el objetivo del presente artículo consiste en evaluar la capacidad predictiva en la estimación del valor del suelo urbano mediante la aplicación de una técnica algorítmica de aprendizaje automático, conocida como Random Forest, en combinación con una técnica geo-estadística llamada Kriging Ordinario para el tratamiento de los residuos.

Постсоциалистические города нуждаются в инструменте работы с планировочной структурой, доставшейся им со времен социализма. Положение полупериферийных жилых районов (в том числе микрорайонных территорий, территорий, застроенных по принципам свободной планировки) между джентрифицируемым центром и активно растущими пригородами обостряет необходимость новой стратегии их развития. В настоящей статье рассматривается мягкая (бесконфликтная) методика трансформации существующих жилых районов и создания в них сети пешеходных связей — дворулиц. Такое планировочное преобразование позволяет организовать рыхлые пространства микрорайонов, увеличить пешеходную связанность и проницаемость территории города, открывая возможности для развития новой городской экономики.

En este texto se actualizan los datos sobre precios inmobiliarios referidos a la vivienda en Bogota producidos por el Observatorio del Mercado del Espacio Construido del CEDE, cuya última versión publicada data ya de una década. En este texto se presentan datos entre 1970 y 2013 de tres precios inmobiliarios claves: el monto del canon de alquiler, el precio de compraventa de las edificaciones y el precio del suelo destinado a vivienda. Los dos primeros son producidos por el CEDE a partir de las ofertas publicadas en los periódicos, y el último se apoya en los datos generados por la Lonja de Propiedad Raíz de Bogotá. Una característica importante de estos datos es que tienen control espacial y son enteramente compatibles entre sí: se refieren a siete áreas de vivienda en Bogotá, que se mantienen fijas durante estos 43 años. Las cifras de precios del suelo son anuales, las relacionadas con los precios y alquileres de los inmuebles son anuales hasta 1984 y de allí en adelante son semestrales. Se presentan cifras para tres estratos y un promedio general. Se realiza una estimación de la rentabilidad de la inversión en alquiler de vivienda y se compara con otras opciones de inversión similares. También se comparan las series aquí presentadas con cifras producidas por otras entidades: cifras de alquiler generadas por el DANE y cifras de vivienda usada producidas por el Banco de la República.

Waqf is defined as the act of charity where the donors sustain their property from personal use and share it for the benefits of the public.  In Malaysia, the administration and management of waqf land lay under each State Islamic Religious Councils (SIRCs) that acted as legal trustees of waqf land. The SIRCs faces several issues that encompass waqf land development, thus reflect the weaknesses in the administration systems that need an immediate attention. Currently, there are no standard administration and management aspects that guided the SIRCs.  The aim of this thesis is to formulate an evaluation framework for the administration and management that is adopted from land administration evaluation framework.  The evaluation framework can serve as self evaluation for the SIRC or to the monitoring agency such as the Department of Waqf, Zakah and Hajj (JAWHAR) in order to improve the waqf land administration which eventually, can result in standardised waqf land administration and management throughout Malaysia. The study comprises two methodologies for triangulation and validity purposes. The first one is a content analysis of the literature reviews to identify the waqf administration and management strategies that will be used as evaluation tools. The second method is the analysis of selected case studies that adopts the land administration evaluation framework in order to come out with refined evaluation aspects. The findings from content analysis revealed current and innovative strategies in the administration of waqf land. Meanwhile, analyses of case studies revealed significant strategies practiced by the selected SIRCs that worth emulated by other SIRCs. Both findings are incorporated into a comprehensive waqf land administration evaluation framework. The final stage is to quantify the evaluation aspects by using Goal Achievement Matrix approach. The quantified evaluation framework calculates the score of the selected case studies. The result from the evaluation serves as a great reflection to waqf institutions, where the religious councils will have a better idea on their strength and weaknesses as well as their opportunity and threat from the evaluation framework. Additionally, the proposed evaluation framework provides solutions to the problems since the evaluation aspects listed from the sets of strategies are to improve waqf land administration. Hence, hopefully the evaluation framework contributes to the betterment of waqf land administration and management.

The discourse around land in South Africa is largely framed as a rural issue, and discussions about urban land rarely address questions of ownership or use. This paper seeks to broaden the empirical base of urban land profiles in South African cities, particularly in relation to ownership.

Land ownership can influence urban development and, consequently, spatial transformation. Land ownership can shape how development occurs, through the decisions owners make over land in terms of land use and when to sell. In addition, the tenure type can determine how the costs and benefits of development are distributed, as development outcomes differ for property owners and for tenants. 

Therefore, if South Africa is to achieve its development goals of inclusivity and spatial equity, a quantitative basis is needed for discussing how this relationship between land ownership and development evolves in practice. 

After a discussion about what it means to own land, including a brief outline of the functioning of the land market in South Africa, the paper considers the theoretical links between land ownership and various characteristics and outcomes of development. Three Corridors of Freedom case studies, which are examples of transit orientated development (TOD) projects, are used to explore practically how land ownership could potentially shape the progress of development with respect to zoning and density. A closer examination of the demographic profiles and predominant tenure types of the wards along the Louis Botha Corridor illustrates how ownership and the different tenure types can affect the outcomes of the corridor development.

With recent imperatives in South Africa to align nodal development with urban networks, this dissertation adds to an understanding of economic factors influencing development. By identifying principles, relationships and factors that bear on the economic performance and impact of urban interventions, the study aims to contribute to an informed perspective that enable actors in the built environment to design and implement achievable visions that support sustainable growth. The research engages with transport orientated development,
factors influencing development, competitiveness of cities and locations, as well as the spatial economy, characterising the primary economic factors influencing the built environment. The research finds that users and firms guide the actions of developers, but their relationship is under considered and at times taken for granted. The current paradigm believes that good economics are a result of good urban interventions. This dissertation, however, views an interdependent system of cause and effect in which users and firms, as a sign of good economics, are an origin and result – they’re what we react to and plan for. If we understand this catalytic influence of users and firms in the context of spatial economic dynamics we can begin guiding city growth and addressing socio economic inefficiencies, a critical issue in post-Apartheid South Africa. With focus on transport orientated development in Cape Town, a proposed design intervention is rationalised on various scales according to principles drawn from the research. The site, in Mitchells Plain, is identified as a priority urban area to develop sustainable economic growth and address issues of inequity and inefficiency in the city of Cape Town.

The paper aims to verify what are the most appropriate intervention strategies to ensure that operations of urban regeneration branded by a strong "green" characterization do not generate events of gentrification in the areas involved by the project. The search path winds through famous cases of urban regeneration and experiments on the evaluation of the economic value of ecosystem services in urban areas, to arrive, in the conclusion of the paper, to make a synthesis of these two aspects and observe what dynamics (both positive and negative) can be generated if they operated at the same time. In particular, the general purpose of the research is the understanding of socioeconomic aspects that, often, are not taken into proper consideration in urban projects, as well as policies of marginalization hidden by sparkling slogans.

Special economic zones (SEZs) concept has evolved across the globe and several developing countries have adopted this policy for set-up of industrial zones that focus on exports and helps in generating economic opportunity and able to attract Foreign direct investment. So SEZs can be defined as a geographically delimited area which is physically secured, has single window clearance system, less complicated administrative unit and duty free environment. So objective behind this paper is to evaluate the performance of SEZs in India in terms of generation of employment, attraction of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and contribution in Indian export. To fulfill the objective data related to employment, investment and export from SEZs are collected from different sources like Ministry of Commerce and Industries, economic survey of India and official website of SEZ. These data are organized in Ms Excel and simple tabular analysis is done. Simple and compound growth rate is calculated to show the change in the performance of SEZs. It is found in the study that SEZs helps in generation of employment, attraction of FDI and contribution in Indian export. At present scenario 1688.34 thousand people is working in SEZs at national level, FDI in SEZs is 433142 crores in 2017 and export output from SEZs in 2016 was 467337 crores which is 19.88% of total export from India.

The paper opens with a statement on the social embeddedness of knowledge. The disciplinary situation and practices of economic geographers are reviewed in the light of this statement. The rise of a new geographical economics is noted, and its main thrust is summarized in terms of a description of the core model as formulated by Krugman. The geographers’ reception of the new geographical economics is described, and some key aspects of this reception are assessed. I then subject the core model itself to critical evaluation. Its claims about pecuniary externalities in the context of chamberlinian competition provide a number of useful insights. However, I argue that the model is deficient overall in the manner in which it tackles the central problem of agglomeration. The discussion then moves on to consideration of the recent interest shown by many economic geographers in issues of culture. After a brief exposition of what this means for economic geography, I offer the verdict that this shift of emphasis has much to recommend it, but that in some of its more extreme versions it is strongly susceptible to the temptations of philosophical idealism and political voluntarism. In the final part of the paper, I attempt to pinpoint some of the major tasks ahead for economic geography in the phase of post-“late capitalism.” I suggest, in particular, that a new cognitive map of capitalist society as a whole is urgently needed, and I offer some brief remarks about how its basic specifications might be identified.

The paper reports on both methodological and substantive findings. It presents a method for generating simplified representations for regional urban populations, their geographical sub-populations and communities. the method generates greatly simplified high-resolution socio-economic profiles of populated geographical areas from complex large census data sets.

From 1852 to 1948, the British colonial government developed and relied heavily upon particular land control practices to enact forms of urban planning and population control designed to advance the economic development of Rangoon and maximize revenue for the colonial state. There are three main colonial land control policies with long-standing legacies: the annihilation of pre-conquest property rights, the intentional under-equipping and underservicing of Burman majority or outlying areas, and the use of forced evictions in urban development and city expansion. While these forms of state crime linked to the state organizational goal of land control began in the colonial period, their legacies continue in contemporary Yangon.

"Le nombre de plus en plus élevé de villes moyennes en Afrique nécessite de développer une analyse du phénomène urbain qui ne soit subordonnée ni à l’étude des métropoles ni à celle des communautés, lesquelles ont fait les beaux jours des études anthropologiques. Après être revenu sur l’histoire de la discipline, cet article esquisse les jalons d’une approche globale de la ville permettant d’étudier de manière comparative les centres secondaires.

An important feature of urbanization process in Africa is the proliferation of small and medium urban centers which constitute the major part of the urban population today. However in the literature these towns remain often in the shadow of studies devoted to the analysis of metropolis or small communities in the city. After a retrospective of urban anthropology’s history, this paper outlines a global approach able to grasp secondary cities in a comparative perspective."

Special economic zone (SEZ) is a geographically delimited area which is physically secured, has single
management and administrative unit and duty free environment (Zeng, 2015). In India SEZs established to
solve the problem of infrastructural deficiency, complex business procedure, bureaucratic hassles and
barriers raised by monetary, trade, fiscal, taxation, tariff and labour policies (Doharmann, 2008). SEZ in
India was conceived by the Commerce and Industries Minister Murosoli Maran during a visit to Special
Economic Zone in China in 1999. The scheme was announced at the time of annual review of Export Import
Policies from 1.4.2000. The basic idea is to establish the zone as area where economic activities could take
place free from all rules and regulations and to give them operational flexibility. So this paper aims at
analyzing establishment of SEZ in India and to assess their spatial and sectoral distribution. To fulfill this
objective data related to notification, establishment of SEZs, spatial and sectoral distribution of SEZs and
contribution of SEZs in Indian GDP are collected from different sources such as Development
Commissioner of SEZ and ministry of commerce and industries on temporal basis. These data are tabulated
in MS Excel, where analysis part is carried out. The whole research is based on descriptive research and
comparative study and analytical logic developed through the understandings from various research papers,
reports, books, journals, newspapers and online data bases. Simple growth rate is calculated to show the
temporal change in approval of SEZs in India. It is found in this study that SEZs causes uneven
geographical developments in India. Recent developments of SEZs suggest that advanced state and city
regions have attracted much of the investment in SEZs like Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu,
Karnataka, Gujarat and Haryana have attracted a large number of SEZs in comparison to other states while
under-developed areas have been ignored by the SEZ developers. In the sector-wise composition of SEZs,
majority of IT/ITES SEZs are either formally approved or notified. However, as far as SEZs in principle are
concerned, the numbers of Multi-product SEZs are greater as compared to other categories of SEZs. Typewise
distribution of SEZs provides that most of the SEZs belong to the category of IT/ITES, but a large area
is allocated to multi-product SEZs. Size-wise distribution of SEZs shows that maximum numbers of SEZs
are either tiny or small. But most of the area is allocated to large SEZs. It has also been observed that most
of the tiny SEZs carry out IT/ITES activities and almost all the large size SEZs are Multi-product SEZs. It is
evident from the analysis that SEZs contributes in the export and GDP of India.

YOUTH, SOCIAL MOVEMENT AND PROTEST IN NAMIBIA
I share a brief piece I wrote on the development of a movement of urban youth in Namibia, which took off from a spectacular and audacious occupation of a piece of land in an affluent suburb of Windhoek in November 2014 and challenged the Namibian political establishment and the country's ruling party.

This essay engages with the commodification of land in an urban periphery of India. It argues against the tendency to reduce commodification of land to “primitive accumulation” or “accumulation by dispossession.” It presents an ethnography of the process of the commodification of land under speculative conditions. The growing demand for land for urbanization and industrialization, along with the availability of speculative finance capital in the real estate market, has made land a scarce commodity. In this land market, local capitals piggyback on finance capital and bid up the prices exponentially in the micromarkets. Speculation makes it impossible for the state to match the market price, and its compensation for the land losers is always quite low, which the latter refuse to accept. The landowning farmers, on the other hand, have developed a capacity to adjust to the speculative conditions and to control the supply of land in the market. Even though they can receive a very good price for their land, they show no urgency to sell it. As a consequence, the state’s plan to urbanize a given area, to create a stable arrangement of clear property titles, and to control land prices become uncertain.

This adaptation of a larger research study examines the intersections of the economy, property rights, land use planning, and housing within a tourism destination context. Housing is a human need, and when neither the public nor the private sectors are providing it, people will provide it for themselves in the form of self-help housing. Accommodation within informal settlements is an important segment of the housing market, and in many developing nations, the majority of housing that is available to the poor and working classes. The question then becomes not how to prevent informal housing but how to manage it. A substantial component of the housing stock in the study locale of Mazatlán, Mexico originated as informal settlements, and that most of those have now been serviced and incorporated into the community. The study's GIS analysis revealed that housing parcel sizes for the poor and working classes has remained modest over time. This focus on dense housing development and minimal urban streetscape improvements can be considered as part of housing strategies in other locations as they address their burgeoning informal housing crises. Allowing informal settlement, while not ideal, may bridge the gap until such time as formal provision is mobilized to meet the human need for shelter.

A review is presented of the requirements of a framework for the delineation of housing market areas (HMAs) in the context of undertaking a housing market assessment. This prompts adoption of a methodology that features an iterative application of information obtained from estate agents, to identify HMA cores, and a functional regionalisation of 2001 Census interward migration fl ows. The approach is demonstrated using data for North West England. The concluding section explores some implications of the HMA framework for policy and future research.

Monetary variables contain information to forecast stock price is still controversial. This paper examines the relationship between stock price and monetary variables in Thailand which is an Asian small open emerging economy. Monetary variables are consumer price index, nominal bilateral exchange rate in term of bath per US dollar, narrow money, and 14 days repurchased rate, employing a multivariate cointegration, VECM, variance decomposition and impulse response analysis covering the period of January 1999 to December 2012 with 168 observations. The study found a long run relationship between monetary variables and stock price. There is no short run adjustment toward the long run equilibrium but narrow money and interest rate have significant short run effect on stock price. The bidirectional causality between stock price and inflation and between stock price and narrow money are found. A unidirectional causality is found from exchange rate to stock price and from interest rate to stock price. Variance decomposition indicates that narrow money and the interest rate contribute the highest in stock price while the variance in stock price give the highest contribution to exchange rate, narrow money and inflation respectively. The impulse response analysis indicates that the stock price responses intensively to narrow money and interest rate. The monetary variables response to the shock in stock price intensively after 2 months and all responses appear to divert away along the horizon which confirms the VECM result that there is no short-run adjustment towards the long run equilibrium. The relationship facilitates investor and policy maker in making effective investment decision as well as the efficient policy designation.

Like other countries in the world, Malaysia is experiencing a rapid urbanisation where currently 76% of the population lives in the city and over 90% of the national economic activity revolves in and within the cities. Continued sprawling and expansion of cities due to the increase in industrial growth has resulted in pressure to balance between social aspects and environments. Thus, the main challenge for policy and decision makers is to mitigate the imbalance between socioeconomic activities with physical and economic needs. The concept of urban regeneration is important to restructure the urban planning concept, especially in Kuala Lumpur. Despite the importance of an urban regeneration concept in a long-term investment in urban development, the current lack of traditional sources from public and private participation in projects has halted much regeneration work, which becomes a major issue in urban regeneration policies. Therefore, there is a need to structure the emphasis on urban land and property development as a stimulator for urban regeneration.

Under Chicago’s Large Lots Program, existing property owners can buy up to two vacant residential lots on their blocks for $1 each. In return, these new owners are required to pay property taxes and maintain the lot. This program is part of a larger effort by cities to become “smarter” and more efficient through the use of civic technology. It is also a recognition that vacant lots are a ubiquitous feature of the urban landscape today in all kinds of cities (and rural areas), notwithstanding the trend towards urbanization. This Essay examines the limits of Chicago’s Large Lots Program and as a case study to explore how local governments can address inequality through different uses of urban vacant land in blighted communities. We propose reforming programs like the Large Lots Program consistent with a framework grounded in land stewardship, in which land use is not dependent on ownership, or its market exchange value, but rather on one’s (or a collective’s) ability to sustainably use land to provide goods and services that support adjacent communities. In particular, we look to the Co-City Framework , a new urban governance model based on the creation and governance of shared and common resources arising out of the collective action and active participation of urban communities in stewarding land and other resources .

An increasing number of planners have explored the implication of Coase Theorem for planning theory and practice. As there are often a large and dispersed number of actors involved in planning issues, the application of 'Pure' Coasian solutions has proved to be limited. However, some studies argue that when the conditions for a 'Pure' Coasian solution do not exist, 'Impure' Coasian solutions may still be achievable. This paper examines how, when conditions of 'Impure' Coasian solutions are available, local authorities in Switzerland use Land Improvement Syndicates (LIS) as a policy instrument in order to achieve negotiated solutions in relation to development processes involving multiple landowners. With a syndicate in the commune of Cheseaux as an illustrative example, the paper analyses how this policy instrument has been utilised to reduce transaction costs, correct information asymmetries, and clarify property rights. The focus has been on an interpretation of the Coasian Theorem that identifies attempts to reduce transaction costs and clarify property rights as the main roles of governments or local authorities.

The rapid urbanization in China comes with several economic, social, and environmental issues, most of which are related to land use. This study contributes to research on the land–growth–environment nexus by investigating the effect of land urbanization and land finance on carbon emissions in China from 2004 to 2013 using the Stochastic Impacts by Regression on Population, Affluence, and Technology (STIRPAT) model. Results show that land finance and land urbanization significantly affect carbon emissions. The rate of land urbanization contributes to the reduction of carbon emissions; however, it has less impact compared with other determinants. The effect of land finance and land urbanization on carbon emissions indicates that a local government's willingness to lease land for revenue aggravates carbon emissions. Economic growth and industrial structure also influence carbon emissions. Furthermore, the land requisition system and rural land conversion market should be enhanced through the guidance provided by the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016–2020) to promote the diversification of land transfer, fully consider regional differences, and establish a distinct policy focus that can contribute to emission reduction and land use.

This study reconstructs Spain’s national wealth from 1900 to 2014.We compare the market value and book value definitions. Our results show that the national wealth-to-income ratio followed a J-shaped evolution over the last century, contrary to the U-shaped trend observed in other rich economies. Spain’s wealth accumulation also differs in that both agricultural and urban land represented a larger share of national wealth in the early twentieth and twenty-first centuries, respectively.

Land oriented economy in Puruliya is closely related to the ecological history of the tribal people of the district. The colonial period saw breakdown of the age-old customary system and introduction of market-linked systems of land resource utilization. Post-colonial era experienced random invasion of hybrid seeds, indiscriminate use of chemical fertilizers and introduction of groundwater irrigation techniques by the name of ‘green revolution’. The result was catastrophic as it permanently altered the sustainable nature of agriculture in Puruliya.
Constraints of land resource utilization in Puruliya are divided into physical and socio-economic groups. Harsh climate, particularly high summer temperature and vagaries of monsoon, highly erosive soil, scarcity of water and sometimes biotic influences cause severe loss to agriculture. On the other hand, instability in tenancy, recurring fragmentation of land and poverty restrict farmers to take initiative to improve the situation. Conservation of land resources starts with making utilization process eco-friendly. Switch over to less moisture demanding crops and efficient irrigation techniques can bridge the gap between supply and demand of water. Besides practice of agro forestry and animal husbandry in commercial way can reduce the vulnerability of farmers from crop failure.

This paper scrutinises the effects that the financialisation of land has on the land use planning process. Although finance is increasingly penetrating not only real estate but also land planning and development, there are few in-depth case studies describing and analysing this process. Contemporary urban development is characterised by the clustering of investments, the relocation of projects into peripheral areas, and an instrumental approach to planning. These trends are expressions of a change in the development process, characterised by the increased detachment between land use planning processes at the local level and financial investor logics located at other scales. We call this the decontextualisation of land capital. An in-depth analysis of the internal economic mechanics of an urban project in the Milan area is provided to illustrate these trends. We conclude by reflecting on the challenges that the conditions of financialised land capital pose to local and national governments. Keywords: financialization, urban redevelopment, real estate, land use planning, brownfield