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| Newsletter |
Read the October 2011 issue!
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| Training materials |
Download teaching learning materials and case studies.
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| Handbook |
Download a Handbook on Urban Land Markets for
Africa.
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| LANDfirst |
LANDfirst, as an approach to settlement development, emphasises the provision of planned secure land with
basic services as a first step towards a longer-term
housing and settlement upgrading process.
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| Affordable Land and Housing Data Centre |
The Affordable Land and Housing Data Centre (al+hdc) aims to provide a better understanding of the dynamics of the low-income and affordable land and housing market in South Africa by encouraging researchers, students and professionals to explore property transactions at suburb level. The al & hdc newsletter provides quarterly data on the performance of the affordable property market. Download [300KB]
the first issue.
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Green paper consultation on land reform to be completed in March
The robust engagement on the Green Paper on Land Reform will be completed before the end of March, according to Deputy Rural Development Minister Lechesa Tsenoli.
No bond for 83% of households
Four out of five households in South Africa do not qualify for mortgages, according to an SA Institute of Race Relations survey. The survey estimated that the incomes of about 83% of the country's nearly 14 million households are not enough to qualify for bank loans.
Cape Town: Eviction fight over unsafe building
The provincial government in the Western Cape has turned to the courts in an attempt to evict a group of people squatting on a piece of land it owns in Woodstock. The department said in papers before the Western Cape High Court that the structure of the building on the property is not safe.
Informal settlements could be our cities of the future
SA is one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of shantytowns, commonly known as informal settlements. Independent consultant Greg Mills argues that by seeing these settlements as pointers to new forms of urban design, and by working with and on behalf of their inhabitants, these places can be transformed and developed "from the bottom up into decent living environments".
» Read more news
Governance of urban land markets in Zimbabwe
Land is of central economic and political importance in Zimbabwe, and urban land has received greater prominence during the recent years of economic decline during which many of the formal processes for land transfer have been weakened. Notwithstanding the challenges, there are signs of community-driven innovation and participation in urban management. With donors considering future assistance to the reform of legal and policy frameworks for urban development, Urban LandMark commissioned a scoping study on the governance of Zimbabwe's urban land markets which also proposes a potential programme of work to contribute to their more effective functioning.
Urban LandMark investigates the slow delivery of title deeds to housing subsidy beneficiaries
One million housing subsidy beneficiaries in South Africa – accounting for 52% of all houses reported as delivered through the housing subsidy scheme – have not received the title deeds to their properties, and the situation is worsening. As a result, poor households cannot fully benefit from the ownership of a property and use it to improve their financial circumstances. A study commissioned by Urban LandMark finds that this delay in issuing title deeds fundamentally undermines the asset quality of government-subsidised housing and compromises the integrity of our Deeds Registry. It is a critical challenge facing the state, to be addressed urgently.
Urban LandMark's land release assessment model applied in Western Cape and Gauteng case studies
Urban Landmark, in collaboration with the Western Cape Department of Human Settlements and the City of Cape Town, has developed a model to assess the costs and benefits of different residential land uses - including market-driven housing, GAP housing and subsidy housing - resulting from public land release programmes. The Land Release Assessment tool has been applied in two Western Cape and more recently two Gauteng case studies to test the model, expand the key inputs into the model and compare the Gauteng experience with that of the Western Cape.
The 'living law' of land in Msinga, KwaZulu-Natal
A new report by the Mdukutshani Rural Development Programme, LEAP and the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies describes the 'living law' of land in one part of Msinga, a deep rural area of KwaZulu-Natal. Launched in 2007, at a time when implementation of the Communal Land Rights Act of 2004 appeared imminent, the project aimed to gain a detailed understanding of land tenure
in Msinga and facilitate local-level discussion of potential solutions to emerging problems around land rights.
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