Urban LandMark is a South African-based initiative that aims to shed light on how urban land markets work, and why they are often dysfunctional. Through the ‘making markets work for the poor’ approach, Urban LandMark hopes to influence urban policies and practices as a means of improving poor people’s access to well-located land.
Urban LandMark will host a conference entitled ‘Rethinking emerging land markets in rapidly growing Southern African cities’ from 1 to 2 November 2010, in Johannesburg (South Africa).
The conference organizers encourage graduate students under the age of 35, who are undertaking their thesis research in the area, to submit abstracts. Those with accepted abstracts may have their attendance of the conference funded.
The conference will be structured according to the following themes:
- Theme 1: Recognising land rights - identifying alternative ways of recognising and rights
- Theme 2: The political economy of urban land markets in Africa
- Theme 3: Urban land governance
The conference organizers encourage papers ‘that present innovative regulatory approaches to land, state-land release programmes for settlement by the poor, their challenges, opportunities and best practice approaches’.
They also explain that, ‘although this conference focuses on southern Africa, we welcome papers from other regions that are comparative and promote learning between countries and regions from the African continent’.
More information is available by downloading the ‘call for abstracts’ (click here to download) or by visiting the Urban LandMark website.
