Municipal land allocations: a key for understanding tenure and social mix patterns in Stockholm

A socially mixed population is a political ambition in Stockholm. By providing a mix of tenure alternatives throughout all neighbourhoods this objective could, at least partially, be fulfilled. Since current tenure proportions display a weak balance in many neighbourhoods it could be assumed that governing politicians – by primarily utilizing Stockholm’s vast landownership and municipal housing developers – attempt to bridge observed gaps. Distribution of new rental and ownership apartments in municipal land allocations should acknowledge the existing tenure composition in a neighbourhood. Methodically this article focuses on all (nearly 50,000) apartments channelled through Stockholm’s land allocation system between 2002 and 2012. After classification of all apartments based on tenure, location, year and developer (private or municipal) the information is merged with yearly housing stock characteristics for 128 neighbourhoods. The outcome is a unique data set allowing for statistical assessment of whether Stockholm’s tenure (and in extension social) mix ambition is reflected in practice. The present article aims to highlight the crucial importance of landownership in Swedish municipalities with an aspiration to achieve or maintain a balanced tenure mix. While the findings indicate Stockholm is complying fairly well with its ambition, the results do reveal some contradicting signs.     

EXPLORING THE CONNECTIONS: LAND TENURE, SOCIAL IDENTITIES, AND AGROBIODIVERSITY PRACTICES IN GHANA

This article employs qualitative and quantitative evidence from primary social research in Ghana to examine the link between land tenure security and social identities (of wealth/income and gender), and how they condition farmers' investments in practices that contribute to the rehabilitation of tree biodiversity (agrobiodiversity). Statistical analyses of the significance of the effects of farmers' de jure land tenure security regimes, and income and gender on agrobiodiversity practices were inconclusive. The conventional causation link between investments and more secure formal land tenure rights, for instance, was confirmed in investments in four out of eight agrobiodiversity practices. Testimonial-based evidence of farmers provided a clearer concept of land tenure security and an explanatory framework about the interacting and complex effects of income and gender on land tenure security. The theoretical and empirical argument developed from these testimonies portrays land tenure as embodying negotiated social processes, influenced by gender and income of individuals, whereby breadth of land rights, duration of rights over land, and assurance of rights are established, sustained, enhanced or changed through a variety of strategies to shape tenure security. These processes – tenure building and renewal processes – are critical because all farmers have lingering anxiety about land tenure rights, even among farmers with more secure formal rights. Investments are made in agrobiodiversity practices as a strategy to strengthen land tenure security and thereby minimize anxiety, leading to reverse causation effects between land tenure, social identities, and investments.     

基于夏普里值法的城市更新单元规划空间增量分配方法探析——以深圳市岗厦河园片区为例

本文以深圳市岗厦河园片区改造为例,根据合作博弈和夏普里值法的相关理论,分析了城市更新改造过程中利益形成和分配的微观机制。研究发现,城市更新改造能够实现权利关系的合理再建,其前提是保证各方的收益与其在改造中的价值贡献比例对等。换而言之,城市更新改造过程所产生的总收益可以认为是权利主体所投入的空间资本、公共资本和改造资金等要素所创造的合作收益,应该按照各项要素在收益创造过程中的贡献情况以及权利主体对于要素的占有情况来分配改造后的收益。以此为基础,在空间结构优化完成的同时也能够实现对于利益相关者权利关系的理顺和明晰。     

The Role of Future Discounting in Subsistence Decisions: The Case of Hohokam Agave Bajada Cultivation

This article demonstrates the relevance of future discounting behavior to studies of prehistoric subsistence strategies. The case study of Agave spp. bajada cultivation among the Classic Period, a.d. 1150–1450, Hohokam of southern Arizona illustrates how slight discounting of future rewards can significantly alter agriculture investment strategies. Despite a higher kcal/hour return than maize agriculture, agave cultivation lessened or ceased in several communities during a time in which intensification would be predicted due to inferred subsistence stress. We surmise the decade-long maturation of agave made it unattractive relative to more immediate return resources in any context that presented risks to land tenure. The cessation of agave cultivation can be understood on two levels of explanation. The long-term investments required by agave and tendency to discount future rewards are the ultimate causes. Political and social instability during the tumultuous Classic period, causing increased insecurity in land tenure, are the proximal causes.     

Land Tenure, Archaeology, and the Ancestral Pueblo Social Landscape

Archaeology relies upon evidence of past human modification of the natural landscape in order to infer past human social dynamics on the site, local, and regional levels. Given the inferential linkages between past landscape use and social relationships, archaeology can benefit from an approach that more explicitly delineates relationships between systems of land use and land tenure, the social means through which people define and assert land use rights. This research outlines a set of methods for modeling prehistoric land tenure systems and developing a middle range theory of land tenure relationships that may assist archaeologists in their investigations of prehistoric resource access systems. Land tenure systems are complex risk-buffering strategies that are conditioned by the labor invested in food production, the size of groups holding direct access to productive lands and resources, and the temporal duration of land access rights. The role of these variables is supported by cross-cultural data from a worldwide sample of food-producing societies. The land tenure model is applied to data from the prehistoric Southwest to help explain local and regional changes in food production, settlement size, and community organization in southwest Colorado between 900 and 1300 A.D.     

Post‐Conflict Ambon: Forced Migration and the Ethno‐Territorial Effects of Customary Tenure

In post‐conflict contexts characterized by large‐scale migration and increasing levels of legal pluralism, customary land tenure risks being deployed as a tool of ethno‐territorialization in which displaced communities are denied return and secure land rights. This thesis will be illustrated through a case study of the Indonesian island of Ambon where a recognition of customary tenure — also called adat — was initiated in 2005 at the end of a high‐intensity conflict between Christians and Muslims. Although a system of land tenure providing multiple forms of social security for the indigenous in‐group, adat in Ambon also constitutes an arena of power in which populations considered as non‐indigenous to a fixed historical territory are pushed into an inferior legal position. The legal registration of customary tenure therefore tends to be deployed to settle long‐standing land contests with a growing migrant community, hereby legally enforcing some of the forced expulsions that were brought about by the recent communal violence.     

Anchoring of Firms in the Neighbourhood: Does Local Social and Physical Order Affect Local Firms' Investment Strategies?

An increasing number of small- and medium-sized firms, whose low relocation propensity seems to point to strong local anchors, have moved to residential neighbourhoods. On the one hand, the neighbourhood context, an attractive production milieu with rich social network potential, may enable entrepreneurs to increase investments in either human capital (personnel) or physical capital (premises, production goods). These investments further anchor firms in a neighbourhood, where they contribute to a thriving local economy. On the other hand, high crime rates, a deteriorated physical environment and a lack of social capital can discourage entrepreneurs from investing locally. In this study, we conducted a multilevel analysis on the relative contribution of neighbourhood characteristics to entrepreneurial investment strategies and controlled for firm and entrepreneur characteristics. We found that neighbourhood cohesiveness and liveability—but not local market characteristics—make a small but significant contribution to explaining local entrepreneurs' investments. This contribution is even stronger for the smallest firms. Therefore, a spatially targeted policy aimed at improving social cohesion and safety is likely to benefit both residents and small local firms.     

The importance of communal forests in carbon storage: Using and destabilizing carbon measurement in understanding Guatemala's payments for ecosystem services

Payments for ecosystem services (PES) are a conservation initiative that offer payments to people who own or manage lands that provide desired ecosystem services. Utilizing mixed methods, I examine how PES in the form of government-issued forestry incentives interact with land tenure to affect carbon storage in Guatemala's Western Highlands. Land tenure is a larger determining factor for carbon storage than payments, as communal forests managed by Indigenous Maya K'iche' communities have significantly higher carbon stocks than private landholdings in these same communities. No statistically significant differences were found in carbon stocks between incentivized and non-incentivized plots, and participants enrolled only a fraction of their land, likely prioritizing enrollment of degraded plots. These results indicate the importance of using both social and physical science methods to understand the physical outcomes and social context of forest management. I also reflect on why carbon storage is often prioritized, drawing on a critical physical geography framework to analyze carbon accounting methods. Measuring carbon storage gives us the tools to describe the success of communal forest management, yet I also caution relying on the quantification of ecosystem services as a method for landscape valuation and suggest avoiding prioritizing carbon storage and sequestration.     

基于地域性认同的土地利用规划模式反思

传统封闭式"自上而下"土地利用规划模式在包容社会主体的土地利用需求矛盾、协调土地利用对人地关系的复杂影响、统筹区域多元增长目标等方面存在不足。地域性认同理论及相关研究成果,可为创新国内土地利用规划模式提供借鉴。本文以社会建构论为切入点,在剖析封闭式、公开式等两种主要土地利用规划模式的基础上,将以社会建构为核心的地域性认同理论融入我国现有土地利用规划体系,构建基于地域性认同的土地利用规划模式,以提升土地利用规划的过程和结果质量。     

Living with toxic development: Shipbreaking in the industrializing zone of Sitakunda,Bangladesh

Based on ethnographic fieldwork among local communities and shipbreaking workers, this essay focuses on the lived experiences of toxicity in the rapidly industrializing zone of Sitakunda, Bangladesh. Shipbreaking is receiving attention as a zone of toxic exposure. There is pressure for increased regulation and protection for workers. In contrast, other forms of pollution in the industrial zone of Sitakunda, such as water, air and noise pollution, are neglected or ignored. Worries about pollution and health highlight the unevenness of promises of development to come, also expressed by marginalized fishing communities structurally excluded from industrialization. My interlocutors describe unnayan (economic development) as bishakto (poisonous, toxic). I conceptualize this as ‘toxic development’ to draw attention to how ‘ordinary people’ (migrant workers, fishing and agricultural communities, shipbreaking workers and manual labourers) without capital, land or social networks of influence endure poisonous industrial activities that both create livelihoods and destroy them.     

Land Tenures as Policy Instruments: Transitions on Cape York Peninsula

Over the last four decades, Australia's most remote marginal lands have provided an expansive space towards realisation of emergent national goals, involving recognition of Aboriginal land rights together with protection of ‘wilderness’ and semi‐natural ecosystems. This has been achieved by the revival of land tenures as instruments for the delivery of public policy, requiring innovative federal and state legislation, often driven by judicial determinations. More so than any other bioregion, Cape York Peninsula has experienced radical shifts in landownership, land titles, and property rights, reflecting its pivotal role as an arena in which emerging national goals are contested. The most immediately visible evidence of these changes is depicted in the tenure maps for 1970, 1990, and 2010. However, these maps provide an incomplete account of tenure changes, including new titles such as non‐transferable communal freehold and common‐law recognition of traditional native title, requiring belated responses by state and federal governments. The three benchmark maps provide a starting point for an examination of the currently resurrected role of land titles and land rights as policy instruments. The time‐specific attributes of each tenure category are discussed and linked to the policies underpinning each tenure and to the communities, political constituencies, resources, enterprises, and national values engaged with each tenure. Land titles and land rights are pivotal in political contests about regional futures, with the peninsula acting as a crucible in shaping wider national directions.     

Photography,public pedagogy and the politics of place-making in post-industrial areas

This paper discusses the way in which public photographic depictions of places and place-based communities contribute to the construction of local identity and community building. Being public and visualised statements about what a place and the people living there are and what they are not, photographs incite public debate about place and community. The paper discusses two interventions, one in Ghent, Belgium, involving professional photographers from outside the neighbourhood, and one in Bonnybridge, Scotland, involving amateur photography by local residents. Both are attempts by community workers to encourage citizens to discuss alternative realities of themselves, their neighbours and their neighbourhood. Starting from theories of place-making and public pedagogy, we reveal how both nonetheless exemplify very different strategies to democratise community-building processes.     

Engaging with risk (or not): shared responsibility for biosecurity surveillance and the role of community gardens

Governance of risks to native flora and fauna and agriculture from disease and pests increasingly emphasises the importance of a ‘shared responsibility’ for biosecurity. Few studies, however, have examined factors that influence stakeholders' engagement with such risks and responsibilities, particularly in community, rather than agricultural, settings. In this paper, we focus on a group of stakeholders in a context of heightened regional biosecurity activity, in northern Queensland, Australia. We explore the role that community garden actors may or may not play in biosecurity surveillance. Through interviews with 16 community garden group leaders and local government representatives, we unpack external social factors that contributed to stakeholders' engagement, unengagement, or disengagement with and from biosecurity risks. These factors included institutional characteristics such as land tenure and the presence or absence of management policies and guidelines. However, we found that less formal institutional characteristics such as social networks played a greater role in shaping stakeholder engagement. Unengaged stakeholders were typically unaware of risks posed by plant pests and diseases and had limited network connections to relevant government agencies but expressed an interest in learning and participating in biosecurity surveillance networks. Disengaged stakeholders were more knowledgeable of biosecurity risks and had established network connections but expressed a low interest in or willingness to report a potential biosecurity threat. This case study provides insights into important social dimensions of governing risk among stakeholders and offers recommendations to improve stakeholder engagement within biosecurity surveillance networks.     

Facilitating native land reacquisition in the rural USA through collaborative research and Geographic Information Systems

A large proportion of American Indian reservation lands are owned by non‐Indian entities. A Geographic Information System (GIS) is a powerful tool for visualising land tenure changes, and public participation GIS (PPGIS) is one approach for using spatial technologies to facilitate the identification and reacquisition of reservation lands by tribes. While some tribes have successfully harnessed GIS for land management and for systematically identifying lands for reacquisition, others struggle to implement land management systems such as GIS for these purposes. This paper situates PPGIS in relation to other forms of participatory action research and outlines our use of a PPGIS framework to engage undergraduate geography students in the mapping of land tenure status on ten rural Minnesota Indian reservations as part of a collaborative partnership with the Indian Land Tenure Foundation (ILTF). A PPGIS framework allowed us to collaboratively define research goals in response to tribal community needs and provided structure for student work with partner reservations to develop and implement tailored mapping and analysis techniques. Two sets of findings are significant. First, the assembly of a standardised set of maps for American Indian reservations in Minnesota provides a tremendous visual and analytical resource for ILTF and individual tribes to pursue land reacquisition within reservation boundaries. Second, from a PPGIS perspective, we found that working with a coordinating or ‘bridging’ organisation provided key benefits by enabling education of both the student–faculty partners and the individual tribes. The PPGIS model empowered both partners by allowing tribes to harness a powerful technology to assist in visualising land‐based assets and allowing students to contribute to native land reacquisition efforts through application of their GIS skills. This mapping helps facilitate economic and cultural viability in tribal communities by providing an important visual catalogue of existing land‐based assets, in support of future land acquisition and economic development planning.     

Limits to Climate Change Adaptation: Case Study of the Australian Alps

Climate change is occurring and not being mitigated, motivating adaptation but adaptation strategies can have biophysical, economic, technological, and social limits. We review publicly available documents to assess how successful current and proposed adaptation strategies may be for the Australian Alps, including likely limits and potential collaborations and conflicts among stakeholders. Conservation managers, the tourism industry, and local communities have implemented or are proposing a range of adaptation strategies in the region. Some stakeholder strategies complement each other (e.g. invasive species control, fire management), while others are potential sources of conflict (water and electricity for snowmaking, year‐round tourism). Economic costs and biophysical constraints are the most important limits to these adaptation strategies. These types of limits and conflicts between different stakeholders on adaptation strategies are likely to occur in other regions and demonstrate that adaptation may only provide partial and short term solutions to the challenges of climate change.     

Troubled Encounters: Payments for Ecosystem Services in Chiapas,Mexico

Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) is a well-established conservation policy approach worldwide. Where forests are owned and managed by rural and indigenous communities, PES initiatives often aim to incentivize the joint adoption of forest protection and sustainable management practices. However, not all communities might have the will or capacity to maintain such practices over the long term. This article examines a PES programme in a rural community of Chiapas, Mexico. It shows that while a majority of the community's landowners have engaged in PES through two distinct working groups, a large share of the community forests remain outside the PES programme, and many landowners resist the extension of PES rules to non-targeted forests. The authors argue that this incipient form of fragmented collective action on forest management results from challenged leaderships, and from PES accommodating a history of increasing individuation of the commons. This accommodation, however, has ignited social conflict, reified tenure inequalities, and failed to strengthen local institutions to enable them to legitimately deal with the contested interests that underpin the fate of community forests. This article shows the limits of PES when parachuted into a context of uneven land tenure, weak collective action and contested leaderships.     

Land titling and poverty reduction in Southeast Asia: realising markets or realising rights?∗

AusAID has supported land titling projects in Southeast Asia with the World Bank for over two decades. These involve the first-time issuance of a land title in cases where the ownership rights of current occupiers are largely assured. Reflecting neoliberal thinking on private property rights and development, the rationale is that titling builds land markets and increases tenure security, investment and access to institutional credit. However, international research indicates that land titling can be neither sufficient or necessary to deliver such benefits and, under some circumstances, can harm poor landholders’ wellbeing. In this respect, attention is paid to political factors in addition to property rights per se which influence their tenure security. It is argued that the value which neoliberalism places on the exclusivity of ownership of land, to enable its efficient use and allocation, can be in conflict with the importance to poor people of secure access and use rights. If AusAID is to fully commit to poverty reduction goals, then there will need to be more attention paid to the social justice dimensions of land distribution in Southeast Asia and elsewhere.     

Defusing Land Disputes? The Politics of Land Certification and Dispute Resolution in Burundi

There is a growing interest in localized land registration, in which user rights are acknowledged and recorded through a community-based procedure, as an alternative to centralized titling to promote secure tenure in sub-Saharan Africa. Localized land registration is expected to reduce land disputes, yet it remains unclear how it impacts disputes in practice. This is an urgent question for war-affected settings that experience sensitive land disputes. This article discusses findings from ethnographic fieldwork in Burundi on pilot projects for land certification. It identifies three ways in which certification feeds into land conflicts rather than preventing or resolving them. First, land certification represents a chance for local people to enter a new round of claim making, as those ignored or disenfranchised in earlier rounds see new opportunities. Second, it offers an avenue for institutional competition between different land-governing institutions. Third, certification provides politicians with openings to interfere in tenure relations and to expand their support base. The authors conclude that these problems are not simply a matter of inadequate policy design. Rather, there are crucial political dimensions to land conflicts and land tenure in Burundi, which means that land registration programmes run the risk of inflaming conflictive property relations in rural communities.     

Land in Kwara'ae and development in Solomon Islands

This paper documents land tenure and the effects of economic development in Kwara'ae on the island of Malaita. It uses local histories to confirm the essential flexibility of a system of cognatic inheritance, based on social and economic values which contradict the more exclusive unilineal emphasis preferred and promoted by government land and development policy in Solomon Islands. In considering the resulting problem of land disputes, the paper questions the value of reforms which undermine the tradition of communal control of natural resources.