Urban land policy problems in Latin America

Abstract

From the first meetings held by the study group (in Bogota, 1977) it was found that there was a set of land development problems affecting in a similar way each one of the six cities. As in many other topics, it was felt that similar problems would give rise to some generalisations at a regional level. Differences between the cities were also found in many aspects of the land development process. The discussion of those differences placed the urban land problems in relation to historical factors, level of national economic development, political systems and so on. The study group was soon convinced that a systematic discussion of such similarities and differences would contribute to the general knowledge on urban land, which has become a critical problem in Latin America, and to the formulation of policies for each of the cities under study. Committed to this objective, the participants of the Bogota meeting agreed to form local research teams for each city and to carry out land development studies in collaboration with one another.