Land tenure-related conflicts in peri-urban areas: A review

Abstract

The rapid increase of urban population during the 21 st century has led to the expansion of metropolises and increased demand for land in peri-urban areas, which are often the object of compulsory land acquisition to cover urban development processes. Such a process leads to widespread land tenure changes in a specific system of rights, relationships, and institutions that contradict the nature of land as an essential and limited commodity. These changes continuously create the potential for land tenure conflicts in peri-urban areas, which are often complex and lead to violent, insecure, and unstable disputes. While many efforts have been made to explain the conflicts related to land tenure, and researchers have examined it from various aspects, there is still a deep gap in the integrated understanding of land tenure-related conflicts in peri-urban areas. Thus, the purpose of this study is to provide a comprehensive and systematic review of selected sources in order to explain the conflicts related to land tenure in peri-urban areas. In this regard, a meta-synthesis approach was used to review the types of land tenure-related conflicts in the conducted studies to integrate their results. So, 126 sources of land tenure conflicts were identified. The frequency of these sources shows that land tenure-related conflicts in peri-urban areas can be classified into three main categories. The first category considers conflicts in relation to the different interests of land (conflicts of interests-55.3%). The second category attributes them to conflicts among individuals, institutions with one another, or between individuals and institutions (conflicts of power - 23.8%), and 20.9% emphasize on the "conflict in legal and normative frameworks". With these in mind, it is obvious that the explanation of land tenure conflicts in peri-urban areas from different levels and dimensions is crucial for achieving sustainable land tenure.