Community Development, Land Tenure and Social Innovation under Conditions of Rapid Urban Transformation: Issues and Strategies

Questions of land tenure have been of major interest to urban development policy makers and practitioners in cities of the South. Many communities, and particularly the urban poor communities fell victim to eviction, displacement, lack of tenure rights and exclusion from urban services (drainage, water supply, waste collection, maintenance, etc.). In the last 50 years, approaches to these problems have evolved from outright negative attitudes or neglect by public agencies and urban professionals to a more empathic and constructive approach looking for potentially more positive solutions. The Side-Event contributes to the New Urban Agenda by debating and presenting innovative land development approaches which are more accessible particularly for the urban poor or deprived communities The immediate objective of the Side-Event is to 1) explicitate state-of-the-art in innovative approaches to land development, 2) summarize presentations and debates of the Parallel-Event , 3) widely distribute results (including the preparation of a publication), make these results available world-wide and disseminate particularly among government delegates (including local authorities), NGOs and community-based organizations participating at HABITAT III events.