Many local and regional governments face housing shortages while, at the same time, there is lots of vacant land and often many vacant properties.
and when formal land markets are too expensive. Informal markets can vary in size (accounting for most of the sales and purchases of land for housing in many cities) and in quality (cost and their degree of illegality). One key measure is to provide support for serviced site schemes at different scales and to enable them to successfully compete with informal land markets in terms of the locations, types of tenure, basic services and costs that they offer. One issue, which was raised in Asia is how city planning guided by comprehensive, long-term policies has been replaced by smaller projects. This problem, which is also relevant for much of Africa, is one of the most negative effects of decades of market-driven urban development. This is especially true of housing and the management of its land use, which used to be a key element in town planning. Now, however, many cities no longer seem to bother very much about having well-coordinated and holistic urban planning and land use management policies. In India, for example, only 24% of cities have master plans. Instead of planning, cities have handed over more and more aspects of urban and housing development to a largely unregulated housing and land market. The result is that increasing numbers of poor families are being left behind. Many LRGs face housing shortages while, at the same time, there is lots of vacant land and often many vacant properties. This issue has recently gained importance as it has been highlighted by social movements that have protested against the existence of vacant and/or underused properties. Bogota and SĂŁo Paulo are among the cities that have sought to address this problem. They have taken measures to prevent the presence of vacant land, speculation, informal urbanization and urban sprawl and have encouraged better land management and the improved use of existing infrastructure, equipment and services. It is common for LRGs to require large private-sector housing developments to set aside part of the land that they develop or some of the houses that they build for social housing. They may also require some other contributions, such as obliging developers to cover the cost of infrastructure or services. In Colombia, some POTs (Land Management Plans) have allocated a minimum percentage of development land for the construction of social housing units for many years now, with the properties having to be built in urban expansion zones and renovation areas. In SĂŁo Paulo, projects involving the development of more than 20,000m2 of constructed space must set aside 10% of the area for the construction of social housing. However, to soften the impact of this measure on entrepreneurs, they can instead donate an equivalent area of land in a neighbouring region, or pay an amount of money corresponding to the value of the land in question; this effectively undermines the goal of promoting greater inclusion. Real estate developers can also limit their contributions by negotiating down the amount of land or housing that they must contribute. Box 25 presents the example of the Catalan Land Institute, which buys and sells urbanized land and actively supports social housing policies and helps local authorities with urban development.
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Rethinking Housing Policies