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Example of a settlement layout plan (photo by the author, May 2015) (source: Agrupacion Familiar 12 de Octubre)
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Land trafficking, responsible for the unprecedented rate of urbanization in many Latin American cities, is often conceptualized through corruption as ‘abuses of public office for private gain’. While those involved in the practice rely at times on violence and illegality, their repertoire is sophisticated, allowing them to move in and out of legali...
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Context 1
... layout plan follows planning conventions; the settlement's spatial organization must, in turn, be implemented according to the layout plan. Consequently, the plan functions as the legal text preceding territory and ensures that actions on the ground comply with urban norms and regulations (see Figure 4). ...
Citations
... Moving onward, institutional-institutional conflicts shift the focus to power distribution in land tenure systems, often entwined with unclear government mechanisms (Chirisa & Muhomba, 2013). In local-national/ international conflicts, the concept of "expropriation" unfolds, involving expulsion and destruction for public interest protection, thus reflecting conflicts over world-class developments and market-led transitions (Demirtas-Milz, 2013;Lambert, 2021;Ortega, 2016). ...
... Transitioning to the broader context of unbalanced power distribution, conflicts rooted in actor behavior, governance mechanisms, and functional aspects come into view. Land conflicts, portraying diverse interests, emanate from informal markets and the clash between formal and informal rights (Bouwmeester & Hartmann, 2021;Nkurunziza, 2007;Opoko et al., 2020;Pamuk, 1996).Traditional social institutions contribute significantly, leading to power imbalances based on social norms (Adam, 2014;Demirtas-Milz, 2013;McMichael, 2016;Nkurunziza, 2007;Wigle, 2010), encapsulated in the concept of 'gray urban governance' (Chiodelli & Gentili, 2021;Chiodelli & Moroni, 2014;Lambert, 2021). ...
... Simultaneously, urban development and power transfer to 'customary institutions' (Nkurunziza, 2008) may escalate conflicts, introducing 'gray urban governance' shades such as violator organizations and corruption practices rooted in macroeconomic efficiency and lack of accountability (Chiodelli & Gentili, 2021;Chiodelli & Moroni, 2014;Elfversson & Höglund, 2018;Lambert, 2021). Transitioning to the pivotal category of land governance, marked by power relations, diverse claims, and overlapping jurisdictions, we find a crucial role in land conflict analysis (Lombard, 2016;Marx, 2016). ...
The rapid urbanization in the 21st century has led to the growth and expansion of cities, especially metropolises, resulting in increased demand for land and housing. This process often gives rise to informal or unplanned tenure patterns, commonly referred to as gray spaces. These transformations create the potential for conflicts over land ownership in cities, particularly in these gray areas, which are often complex and lead to diverse approaches, resulting in inconsistent development of urban spaces. Despite numerous studies on land tenure approaches, a significant gap persists in understanding and interpreting conflicts in these urban spaces. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive and systematic investigation of the underlying issues related to land tenure and ownership patterns in gray spaces. The findings reveal that the conflict pattern in gray spaces has three dimensions: (1) land governance, (2) the pattern of real estate tenure and ownership, and (3) the pattern of land and housing supply and demand. Furthermore, based on the number of studies, conflicts in gray spaces can be categorized into four main groups: interest conflicts (28 %), power relation conflicts (51 %), legal framework conflicts (16 %), and normative conflicts (5 %). Considering these factors, it becomes evident that comprehensively explaining conflicts in gray spaces from various perspectives is crucial for achieving planned and guided urban development.
... Desde nuestro punto de vista, las políticas públicas de vivienda en Perú giran en torno a tres conceptos centrales: programas de titulación, subsidios estatales y facilidades de acceso a créditos hipotecarios. En relación con el primero, desde hace algunas décadas, la prioridad del Estado ha sido otorgar títulos de propiedad a familias (en su mayoría migrantes de las zonas rurales de la región andina) que, ante la imposibilidad de acceder a una vivienda formal, optaron por ocupar grandes extensiones de terreno sin contar con un título habilitante (Calderón, 2011(Calderón, , 2012Lambert, 2021;Payne, 2001Payne, , 2004Payne et al., 2009aPayne et al., , 2009b. ...
... La política de vivienda basada en la formalización de la propiedad informal fomentó el fenómeno de las invasiones de tierras, que ya no eran solo de familias que migraban del campo a la ciudad en busca de un techo, sino que ahora se 'sofisticaron' al punto de operar a través de grandes mafias de tráfico de tierras. Las mafias organizadas de tráfico de tierras empezaron a desempeñar gradualmente un papel en la provisión de viviendas para las familias más necesitadas, dando lugar al fenómeno de los 'loteos piratas' o 'habilitaciones encubiertas' (parcelaciones de terrenos rústicos con la finalidad de evitar las normas sobre habilitaciones urbanas) (Lambert, 2021;Shanee & Shanee, 2016). ...
... UU., Inglaterra y Canadá). En atención a este hecho, incluso con un FCT en marcha, puede seguir siendo aún más convenientes para las personas de escasos recursos recurrir a mercados informales de suelo (Lambert, 2021;Shanee & Shanee, 2016). ...
El Fideicomiso Comunitario de Tierras es un modelo de gestión colectiva de la propiedad privada de origen norteamericano que ha demostrado ser efectivo para generar y mantener asequible la vivienda en distintas partes del mundo. En el presente trabajo, evidenciamos la necesidad de incorporar este modelo como alternativa a las actuales soluciones habitacionales promovidas por las políticas de vivienda. Posteriormente, identificamos los elementos que presenta el Fideicomiso Comunitario de Tierras, conforme a la normativa y práctica norteamericana. Seguidamente, sobre la base de la revisión de la literatura especializada, recogemos las experiencias de la implementación de dicho modelo en Estados Unidos, Inglaterra y Canadá, así como su propagación en Puerto Rico y Brasil. Por último, identificamos los retos, potenciales objeciones y oportunidades de su implementación en el Perú.
... La asociación entre los submercados de lotizaciones informales, el clientelismo político y la corrupción implican la configuración de un armazón privadopúblico. Esta asociación apela a dos tipos de dispositivos: a las leyes generales que amnistían regularmente a los compradores ilegales o a los invasores o enervan demandas judiciales de personas afectadas, y a dispositivos técnicos y administrativos como constancias de posesión municipal, reconocimiento de planos perimétricos y de distribución de lotes, memorias descriptivas, constancias de pago de arbitrios, resoluciones de gerencias, reconocimiento de organizaciones sociales, distribución de alimentos, etcétera, los cuales, forman parte de la "caja negra" (Lambert, 2021). ...
Este artículo plantea la hipótesis que en el siglo XXI los procesos de mercantilización en la ciudad de Lima han generado cambios en la producción del espacio, la expansión urbana y las modalidades de acceso al suelo urbano para los sectores de menores ingresos. Los submercados de lotizaciones informales están reemplazando a los mecanismos no mercantiles como las invasiones y los programas de distribución pública de la tierra. La metodología utilizada fue el estudio de caso y se recurrió a técnicas cuantitativas y cualitativas. Entre las conclusiones se encuentran las siguientes: la ciudad de Lima, entre 2001 y 2018, se ha expandido en un 91% por mecanismos ilegales, donde las transacciones mercantiles tienen mayor peso que las no mercantiles. El crecimiento se produce sobre suelo de naturaleza no productiva de propiedad pública o comunal, y los submercados tienen un carácter político que sin la participación de las autoridades no podrían existir.
... La informalidad genera un crecimiento urbano insostenible, un mayor deterioro del medio ambiente, ocupación de lomas y áreas de riesgo, deforestación, pérdida de estabilidad del suelo, inadecuadas condiciones de hábitat sin que la población cuente con servicios básicos (Escalante, 2020;Álvarez, 2019;Arriola, 2019;Lambert, 2020). Entre 2009 y 2020 solo en tres lomas de Lima se han perdido 968 hectáreas en manos de los promotores ilegales de suelo, "traficantes de lotes", un subsector de la economía delictiva criminal en el país en ascenso vertiginoso. ...
El artículo aborda la problemática y retos del desarrollo urbano sostenible (en adelante DUS) en las ciudades peruanas, deteniéndose en la Ley de Desarrollo Urbano Sostenible (en adelante LDUS), número 31313, aprobada en 2021. Considera la sustentabilidad urbana, tanto en el Perú como en la región latinoamericana, dando cuenta del efecto de la política y legislación innovadora, especialmente en Brasil y Colombia, así como algunas de sus dificultades y logros. En segundo lugar, considera la LDUS en su contexto político y social, destacando su intención de regular el acondicionamiento territorial y planificación urbana optimizando el aprovechamiento del suelo en “armonía con el bien común y el interés general”. Finalmente, las conclusiones y recomendaciones plantean una serie de retos para la sostenibilidad urbana en el Perú.
... Shatkin and Soemarwi (2021) illustrate how the Indonesian state has long exploited unregistered urban landholdings for corporate development and political patronage and is now subverting its own land law to expropriate such land in the name of flood risk reduction. Similar findings are documented in Lima, Peru (Lambert, 2021) and Mexico City (Tellman et al., 2021), in which formal planning tools, public agencies and legal instruments are used to facilitate urbanization of land considered illegal for development, particularly in relation to flooding and hydrological hazards. As a result, urban form and development trajectories then exhibit seemingly ''irrational" or ''inefficient" and risky patterns, defying predictions of rational land markets, as has been observed in Nairobi (Henderson, Venables, Regan, & Samsonov, 2016). ...
Urban economic development is one of the primary engines of hazard exposure and differential social vulnerability, nevertheless, the drivers of urban development are rarely explicitly tackled in work on climate adaptation or resilience governance. When the imperative of urban economic and spatial growth is taken as a given, the mechanisms that perpetuate it remain unexplored and unquestioned. Lack of attention to such mechanisms, and specifically the politics of urban land use, can lead to ineffective planning and maladaptation. In this review, we explore the intersection of scholarship on urban climate adaptation governance and the political economy of urban development to identify the specific contemporary mechanisms that perpetuate uneven patterns of urban vulnerability and undermine adaptation planning. We are guided by three questions: What are the mechanisms that urban managers employ to assign rights and responsibilities to land, and thus allocate spatial exposure to risk? How is land implicated in cities’ efforts to finance themselves and their activities, and what are the implications for adaptation? What mechanisms enable urban actors to protect themselves from risk and respond to uncertainty? We emphasize the need to place urban climate governance within the broader political dynamics of urban development for more effective, equitable and ultimately sustainable vulnerability interventions. We find that instruments of urban development are often supporting the prioritization of economic rewards over equitable and just distribution of risk and rights to adaptation benefits. We conclude by highlighting the “uncomfortable knowledge” that if sustainable adaptation is to be achieved, the mechanisms of urban development and associated actors that shape, steer and utilize these instruments for a variety of means and goals, must be made visible and addressed.
... This kind of urban expansion involves an ordered social and institutional process with four distinct types: i) so-called 'ant' urbanization (direct sale of one plot to one settler), ii) illegal subdivision (one actor who buys and sells many plots of land), iii) land invasion (a group of settlers illegally squatting on land, usually facilitated by a political group), and, iv) via social or public housing (city or federal subsidized housing for low or middle income populations; Tellman et al., 2021). The last type is not typically considered informal in the literature (Berglund, 2019;Lambert, 2021). Evidence from Mexico City, however, demonstrates that this development is often deeply embedded in social transactions that deviate from stated legal norms and procedures. ...
Informal urban land expansion is produced through a diversity of social and political transactions, yet ‘pixelizable’ data capturing these transactions is commonly unavailable. Understanding informal urbanization entails differentiating spatial patterns of informal settlement from formal growth, associating such patterns with the social transactions that produce them, and evaluating the social and environmental outcomes of distinct settlement types. Demonstrating causality between distinct urban spatial patterns and social-institutional processes requires both high-resolution spatial temporal time-series data of urban change and insights into social transactions giving rise to these patterns. We demonstrate an example of linking distinct spatial patterns of informal urban expansion to the institutional processes each engenders in Mexico City. The approach presented here can be applied across cases, potentially improving land projection models in the rapidly urbanizing Global South, characterized by high informality. We conclude with a research agenda to identify, project, and evaluate informal urban expansion patterns.
... Practices under this label range from those of local community organisations gradually occupying the slopes to capture small surpluses in order to ameliorate the area, to the large-scale operations of organised mafias of land traffickers (Lambert, 2021). In the first case, newcomers gain the right to occupy a designated area either by paying a fee or by joining an Agrupacio´n Familiar (AF) or recognised community-based organisation. ...
Over the last two decades, a growing body of scholars from the fields of psychology, sociology, law and public health have devoted their attention to examining how and why stigma operates as a form of discrimination, paying particular attention to ethno-racially stigmatised groups. However, less attention has focused on how ordinary women and men engaged in peripheral urbanisation processes are stigmatised through multiple material, social and political mechanisms and with a myriad of outcomes. Building on this literature, and drawing on the trajectories of a man and a woman living in the periphery of metropolitan Lima, I explore how stigmatisation shapes the daily lives of poor and impoverished citizens as they try to find a place in the city, and how and why their everyday practices contribute, or not, to the transformation of stigma traps. I argue that the everyday city-making practices of the ‘unsheltered’ are inextricably linked to the politics of bare citizenship. As those stigmatised become individualised, isolated and undermined, they also are deprived of being part of a collective experience, and are deeply challenged to reclaim their agency as entitled citizens. The wider the range of stigmatisation mechanisms at work, the more difficult it is for those subjected to stigma to counteract them, as they become disadvantaged in a broad range of domains: from social relations, to tenure security, access to services and infrastructure, livelihood opportunities, and psychological and physical wellbeing. I further contend that a deep examination of the material world – the dwelling, the neighbourhood and the city – and of the practices and imaginaries that produce this material world, opens a window into the micro-politics of how stigma is negotiated, apportioned and resisted in the everyday lives of those who are politically and materially unsheltered.
... A todo esto, se suma la falta de control y gestión de suelo para detener las invasiones y acción de los traficantes de terrenos en terrenos inhabitables (Lambert y Allen, 2016). La labor del Estado, entendida como su rol de planificar estos espacios y determinar los instrumentos técnicos y legales para su gestión, lejos de corregir estas situaciones, las consolidan o instrumentalizan para legalizar la ilegalidad (Lambert, 2020a). ...
KNOW-Lima analiza y diagnostica la calidad de vida urbana en José Carlos Mariátegui de Lima, un asentamiento de ocupación informal en San Juan de Lurigancho, que surgió de un proceso de urbanización de la clase obrera. El documento muestra la incidencia de la fragmentación de las condiciones de desigualdad urbana en Lima, a escala metropolitana y local. Además, analiza el dinámicas territoriales que crean y reproducen la desigualdad, e identifica los tres aspectos principales de esta fragmentación: social, económico y espacial.
... People access land by buying a plot from organised groups, which can either be established settlers, or so-called 'pirate subdividers' or 'land traffickers'. These groups operate through the usurpation of government and peasant community land, subdividing areas and selling to those seeking a place to live (Lambert, 2021). In the process of land occupation, inhabitants organise through community organisations or Agrupaciones familiares (AF), which de facto govern all collective affairs in the neighbourhood and interface with governmental institutions and programmes. ...
Counteracting law violation and the haphazard occupation of marginal land as an explanation for how risk becomes inherent to informal urbanisation, I demonstrate in this paper that hazardous conditions are an outcome of practices that seek to comply with planning law. Risk on the steep slopes of Lima is reproduced by unchanged and inflexible planning regulations and instruments, and not by their absence. Building on scholarship at the nexus of planning and informality, and borrowing from socio-spatial and legal geography, I argue that planning law and legal texts regulate the spatial layouts of human settlements in ways that produce concrete abstraction and exacerbate unintended outcomes.
Using extensive case study research and ethnographic methods, I unpack three perverse spatial configurations on the peripheral slopes of Lima: the grid layout resulting in excessively steep access ways, electricity poles in the middle of staircases and dangerous evacuation routes. I demonstrate how manoeuvres of fragmentation, homogenisation, and hierarchical ordering, active in planning processes and legal texts, lead to material and corporeal violence that maintain dwellers in perpetual landscapes of risk.
The relationship between the state and informal land development in Global South metropolises has yet not received much attention in urban studies. Concerning that knowledge gap, this paper investigates how the state regulates and inspects irregular and clandestine land subdivisions in the Metropolitan Region of Belo Horizonte (MRBH). A mixed-methods approach, focused on the inner workings of the land development control policy led by the MRBH Agency between 2009 and 2018, provides new evidence of the relationships between inspectors, developers, and prosecutors, among other actors. By delving deep into the intricate nexus between a changing regulatory landscape and the bureaucratic, street-level, and everyday enforcement practices by officials, the paper reveals how land development control, directly and indirectly, shapes informal land development in the MRBH. Particularly, it sheds light on how land development control unrolls through a contradictory combination of overregulation on one side and tolerance on the other. In light of this, I argue that, as land development control evolves without effectively tackling the land question and the structural drivers of informality, the state becomes paradoxically entangled in the production of the same forms of informality it is expected to curb. Therefore, land development control is better understood as a fragile and ambivalent state compromise between the need to regulate urban expansion and market-driven informal urbanisation. By creating opportunities for rent extraction and capital accumulation which are explored by informal land developers, the state has been crucial for property-led informal urbanisation in metropolitan Brazil.
