Informal Land Rights and Infrastructure Retrofit: A Typology of Land Rights in Informal Settlements

Mahsa Mesgar and Diego Ramirez-Lovering
Additional contact information
Mahsa Mesgar: Monash Art Design and Architecture, Department of Architecture, Monash University, Caulfield East, VIC 3145, Australia
Diego Ramirez-Lovering: Monash Art Design and Architecture, Department of Architecture, Monash University, Caulfield East, VIC 3145, Australia

Land, 2021, vol. 10, issue 3, 1-17

Abstract: Informal settlements represent a challenging operational context for local government service providers due to precarious contextual conditions. Location choice and land procurement for public infrastructure raise the complicated question: who has the right to occupy, control, and use a piece of land in informal settlements? There is currently a dearth of intelligence on how to identify well-located land for public infrastructure, spatially and with careful consideration for safeguarding the claimed rights and preventing conflicts. Drawing on a case study of green infrastructure retrofit in seven informal settlements in Makassar, Indonesia, we classify the informal settlers’ land rights into four types: ownership, use, control, and management. This exploratory study uses a typological approach to investigate the spatial dimension of land rights in informal settlements. We introduce non-registrable land interests and the partial, dynamic, and informal land use rights that impact the land procurement for infrastructure retrofit. We also create a simple spatial matrix describing the control/power, responsibilities and land interests of different stakeholders involved in the location decision making for public infrastructure. We argue that without sufficient understanding of non-formal land rights, land procurement proposals for the public infrastructure upgrades can be frustrated by the individual or group claims on the land, making the service provision impossible in informal settlements.

Keywords: informal settlements; morphological study; land tenure; land rights; infrastructure retrofit; green infrastructure; WASH (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/10/3/273/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/10/3/273/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jlands:v:10:y:2021:i:3:p:273-:d:512385

Access Statistics for this article

Land is currently edited by Ms. Carol Ma

More articles in Land from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().