ABSTRACT
In most Latin American cities, wealth and opportunity coexist with urban informality, poor housing affordability, social residential segregation, urban sprawl, and high inequality of the spatial distribution of urban infrastructure and services. And yet the importance of land markets and land policies, as well as their centrality to all these matters, is often underestimated. Active land policy can change this.
This chapter examines the challenges faced by urban policymakers whose decisions will dramatically shape the future of cities in the region. It looks at how their decisions over land-use regulation, planning, and taxation affect urban development, especially how the redistribution of the costs and benefits of that development addresses the challenges ahead. It concludes with an analysis of how socially responsible governments are introducing a set of innovative tools (often referred to as value capture) intended to promote more equitable land-market outcomes.
