31 August 2019

Bangkok and Phnom Penh land sharing cases illustrate that the land sharing technique has several limitations.

The Phnom Penh cases demonstrate that perhaps the most important limitation of land sharing is that, in an environment with still weak legal and institutional protection of the poor, the process is unlikely to lead to an agreement that benefits slum dwellers, particularly in the absence of active and impartial mediation between slum dwellers and developers.

The main challenges in Phnom Penh to the successful implementation of land sharing cases during the first decade of the 21st century were mainly institutional, and specifically, the lack of impartial and active intermediaries to help negotiate a land sharing agreement. Without such intermediaries, slum communities ended up having to negotiate directly with land developers and government authorities (as landowners)—a task for which they were poorly equipped.

A noteworthy urban trend across the region (and in other developing country regions) is the transformation of many city centers into enclaves of middle class and higher income zones, through beautification campaigns, policies to banish the poor and informal activities from city centers, and “passive” land policies that result in ever-shrinking spaces for the urban poor and ever-expanding spaces for commercial real estate development that exclude the urban poor. In short, there are very few land market policies that favor the urban poor—and decreasing political will to change these policies.

full https://isocarp.org/news/challenges-to- ... -rabe-ihs/