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This thesis comprises a number of studies, all directed at different linkages between municipal landownership and housing in Sweden. In all, the thesis consists of four papers. Of these, initial Paper I targets the emergence of the municipal landownership that still today are of crucial importance for the Swedish housing market. The main functions of the municipal landownership from the beginning of the 20th century and up until present time are retrospectively investigated and its role within Swedish housing during different times is elaborated upon. Paper II thereafter redirects focus to present time solely, and studies the management of the municipal land from particularly a housing perspective. More concretely, the disposal procedure – or land allocation practice – of the municipal land aimed for housing is investigated empirically, based on current practice in more than 25 municipalities. Paper III builds on preceding Paper II, but with a narrowed focus to a fundamental sequence of the disposal procedure – namely the developer selection. Accordingly, four different assigning methods, all derived from municipal practice, are discerned and their individual strengths and weaknesses are systematically discussed. Lastly, Paper IV attempts to illuminate an often overlooked dimension of the municipal landownership – as a potential and powerful instrument to counter polarizations between different social-groups, within the built environment. Necessary prerequisites in order to enable this are presented and an empirical study investigates whether this, somewhat concealed, potential in the municipal landownership seems to be utilized in practice. / <p>QC 20161103</p>

Magister Philosophiae (Land and Agrarian Studies) - MPhil(LAS) / This thesis examines debates concerning large-scale land acquisitions in Kenya by looking at the case of the Dominion Farms Limited takeover of Yala Swamp. The case study illustrates actual practices of Kenya’s land governance system in terms of how large-scale land acquisitions take shape and their results on the ground. The study explores changes that have taken place at Yala Swamp from 2003 to 2013 and assesses them against the backdrop of recent and emerging land governance regulatory frameworks at national, regional and global levels. The study’s research methodology and data analysis reveal that the new large-scale land acquisition phenomenon has a historical dimension in that it perpetuates a continued legacy of land dispossession of local communities of the unregistered land thereby disrupting their livelihoods. This thesis contributes to a lively intellectual debate and literature on land governance by examining land issues from a governance and political economy perspective. Yala Swamp was chosen as a case study of large-scale land acquisition. The case shows how new land regulatory policies are being shaped and constrained by what is considered beneficial for foreign investment but not necessarily in tandem with local communities’ needs and expectations. This thesis is anchored on the assumption that land governance frameworks’ transformative potential depends on the extent to which they are able to address the structural factors that entrench continued poverty, food insecurity, gender inequality, environmental degradation and land conflicts. The thesis argues that initiatives that facilitate the corporate takeover of land and other resources from the poor in order to give to large-scale investors foreclose the smallholder agricultural space for future expansion. It further argues that an understanding of land reform processes from a governance and political economy perspective offers insight that could not only improve the design of land governance regulatory frameworks, but also provide pathways to support implementation.

With the advent of democracy in South Africa in 1994, the newly elected ANC government embarked on an ambitious program of land reform. The land reform programme in South Africa rests on 3 pillars: <ul> <li> Land redistribution</li> <li> Land restitution</li> <li> Land tenure reform</li> </ul> Land tenure reform is at the core of this case study and of the 3 pillars, has faced the most challenges during implementation. The renovation of public policy in general, and particularly in land policy, appears in numerous cases to be a priority on national agendas to relieve the numerous challenges rural Africans face: land conflicts, land insecurity, important demographic pressures and weight, high prevalence of poverty in rural areas, to identify just a few of these challenges. By analysing the development process of the Communal Land Rights Act of 2004 (CLaRA), this case study sought to understand the renovation of public land policy in South Africa. Review of literature on land tenure reform yielded a dichotomy of views with one side favouring freehold title for landless communities whilst on the other hand, there are proponents of a hybrid tenure system that recognizes the functioning aspects of traditional communal tenure. Those favouring freehold title pointed to the fact that this would increase investments on the land and access of the landowners to capital through formal financial markets. Those who would not be in a position to work the land would be able to sell it and invest the money elsewhere. Contrastingly, communal tenure was seen to have benefits for the wider community and for holders of secondary land rights such as women and children who could be excluded under freehold tenure arrangements. The notion that cash poor landless people could sell the land also raises political issues which might be politically detrimental to the government of the day. The research was primarily qualitative, interviewing a broad spectrum of stakeholders in the CLaRA development process. Stakeholders included government officials, traditional leadership, communities, legal advisors, land based NGOs, civil society, academia, research institutions, parliamentarians and politicians. The objective of this research was to determine the extent of participation by various stakeholders at the national level in policy development, with CLaRA as a case study. This was done through analyzing the various positions taken by different stakeholders and the extent to which these were included or the extent to which these influenced the content of the final Act. The outcome of the analysis indicates that to a greater extent, participatory processes seemed to have taken place during the development of the CLaRA, including numerous submissions by various groups to parliamentary portfolio committees, but the final content of the Act reflected predominantly the views of government and not other affected stakeholders. This led to the immediate challenge of the legislation in court by some communities and civil society leading to the eventual nullification of the legislation by the constitutional court. Copyright / Dissertation (MSc(Agric))--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Agricultural Economics, Extension and Rural Development / unrestricted

The intensification of land uses in the United States results from population growth, rapid expansion in the service sector, and residential land use growth. These trends cause diminishment of open space and increase sprawl-type land development. So-called "livability" issues are of growing importance in many metropolitan and rural areas across the country. Exasperating this transformation of land use, current demographic trends in the U.S. imply a near-future turnover of a large percentage of farmland and open space land in the form of estate transfer. Current U.S. estate tax policy could be accelerating the transfer of open spaces to developed land uses. Local zoning ordinances, as well as state and federal infrastructure subsidies are also compounding this trend. To date, no method exists which evaluates the economic feasibility of open space preservation. This thesis proposes to establish such a method. A landholder may conserve their land parcel in a non-developed use in perpetuity by placing a Conservation Easement on the property. This land value, the development rights of the land parcel, can be donated to a non-profit organization. The landowner may then deduct the development right value from their income tax as a charitable donation. This thesis compares the economic viability of a landholder that donates a Conservation Easement and invests the tax benefits, with that of a landholder that sells their land parcel to development interests. Further, this thesis explores the demographic profile for which preserving open space may be economically beneficial for the donor of a conservation easement. This thesis is the intersection of three literatures, drawing together three separate land preservation paradigms. First, the altruistic philanthropy landowners exhibit when donating development rights without economic impetus. Second, the thesis introduces the income tax benefits, and their investment potential, available in the Internal Revenue Code for charitable donations. Third, federal land preservation mandates and subsequent funding availability is examined. These tools function together to provide implications for facilitating the deterrence of sprawl-type development. Further, these tools will be compared to the current methods of land preservation, consisting of local zoning ordinances and the purchase of development rights by governmental agencies. These current policies possess serious shortcomings in ameliorating conflict between land uses, as well as diverting sub-urban development from prime farm and open space land. Conservation Easements are shown to have applications in the protection of land subject to estate turnover, control of land uses that cause nuisance externalities, and general local land policy. A spreadsheet algorithm in Microsoft Excel Solver format is included that determines the economic feasibility of performing an easement at the individual landholder level. / Master of Science

Thesis (M.A. (Political Science))--University of Limpopo, 2007 / Since 1913 black South Africans have been forcefully dispossessed of land under the racist land laws of the successive white South African governments. In 1994 the black government began to pass land laws that were supposed to provide blacks with land ownership rights. Ten years later blacks have re-claimed less than four percent of the eighty seven percent of the land they were dispossessed of. The failure to return dispossessed land to blacks is attributed to the ideology of the current government with respect to its land policy. This study attempts to fill the void regarding the ideological implications of the land reform policy of the post-apartheid government. We speculate that neo-liberal implications are dominant within this policy. Social democracy can overcome the failure of the policy as it is cost-effective and efficient and attempts to achieve social justice. It can therefore afford dispossessed and landless blacks land ownership.

L’objet de cette thèse est de questionner les modes de construction d’une action publique décentralisée. Plus spécifiquement, ce travail s’intéresse aux modalités d’institutionnalisation d’une politique foncière régionale volontariste en Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur au-delà du bloc de compétences transférées à la Région en 1983. Dans cette perspective, il s’agit d’étudier une forme originale de régionalisation à la marge du noyau dur des compétences régionales, jouant cependant un rôle important dans la construction de la Région et la structuration d’un domaine d’action. Adoptant une démarche de recherche croisant sociologie de l’action publique et sociologie politique, on appréhende les règles de cet espace d’action publique régional en privilégiant l’étude d’un champ d’action constitué au-delà du cadre fixé par la loi. L’on fait ainsi l’hypothèse que la politique foncière, à la croisée de multiples secteurs et de niveaux d’action déjà institutionnalisés, constitue un espace d’interactions privilégié pour l’analyse des processus de construction et d’institutionnalisation de la Région au travers d’une politique à laquelle elle participe. En adoptant une perspective diachronique et multi-niveaux, c’est-à-dire en privilégiant l’analyse du changement en longue durée au sein de l’espace régional, et en attachant une attention particulière aux jeux sociaux interdépendants qui interconnectent différents niveaux d’action publique, la thèse ambitionne de contribuer à l’étude sociologique des processus de régionalisation de l’action publique sous dynamique de décentralisation / The object of this thesis is to question the mode of construction of a decentralized public action. More specifically, this work is interested in the methods of institutionalization of a voluntarist regional land policy in Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur beyond the block of skills transferred to the Region in 1983. In this perspective, it is a question of studying an original shape of regionalization outside of the hard core of the regional skills, playing however an important role in the construction of the Region and the structuring of a sphere of action. Adopting an approach of search crossing sociology of the public action and the political sociology, we arrest the rules of this regional public space of action by favoring the study of a radius of action established beyond the frame fixed by the law.We so make the hypothesis as the land policy, between multiple sectors and between already institutionalized levels of action, constitutes a space of interactions favored for the analysis of the processes of construction and institutionalization of the Region through a policy in which it participates. By adopting a diachronic and multilevel perspective, that is by favoring the analysis of the change in long lasting within the regional space, and by attaching a particular attention on the interdependent social games which interconnect various levels of public action, the thesis aspires to contribute to the sociological study of the processes of regionalization of the public action under dynamics of decentralization

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Over the last ten years, there has been extensive scholarly debate about the nature of settler colonialism and the category ‘settler’. The central problem animating this dissertation is the question of how we understand the position of a settler group like the Doukhobors in Canadian settler colonialism. In 1899 approximately 7,500 members of the Doukhobor religious movement fled oppression in Russia and arrived in Canada with the hope of creating an earthly paradise based on communal economy, mutual aid, pacifism, and an anarchistic theology. Less than a decade after fleeing Tsarist oppression in Russia and settling in the Canadian prairies, the Doukhobors once again came into conflict with a government; this time the conflict revolved around land and compliance with homestead regulations. This moment marked the beginning of more than half a century of provincial and federal government attempts to assimilate recalcitrant factions of the Doukhobor community. A number of tactics including opportunistic land policy, imprisonment, removal and forced education of children, legislation targeting communal property and inducements to integrate into mainstream Canadian society were employed by provincial and federal governments to make the Doukhobors into proper settler subjects. By examining these government attempts to re-make Doukhobor subjectivity in the image of an idealized Anglo-settler identity, this project sheds light on the broad process through which ‘settlers’ are ‘made’ by government action. Drawing on archival iv sources, this dissertation exposes the intersection of Canadian government policy, and colonial ideas, directed towards Indigenous peoples and the Doukhobors from 1899 until 1960. I examine this intersection through the themes of land, education, and colonial knowledge creation in government reports. The dissertation finds that the twin elements of settler colonialism—settlement and dispossession—must be considered as a unified political project. During the period under study there is significant transfer of ideologies and policies between those officials working on the assimilation of settlers and those working toward the dispossession of Indigenous peoples. The dissertation concludes that an important element of the category ‘settler’ is its political nature, and therefore its contingent and contestable nature. / Graduate / 0615 / adam.burke.carmichael@gmail.com