Based on the problem described above, this project aims at piloting the Participatory and Inclusive Land Readjustment (PILaR) in a developing country as a mechanism to develop more equitable and inclusive cities at scale in developing countries.
The purpose is to undertake the PILaR global pilot as a learning exercise both for the city of Medellin and Colombia as well as for UN-Habitat in order to learn how to support member states and municipalities to do PILaR. Through this project, the municipality may be able to shift and rapidly address its high rates of informality and deprivation therefore achieving a more sustainable urban development.
Land readjustment is a technique whereby a group of neighboring landowners in an urban-fringe area are combined in a partnership for the unified planning, servicing and subdivision of their land with the project costs and benefits being shared between the landowners.
The benefits of land readjustment are vast for urban development. The attraction of land readjustment for landowners is that they can develop their property and get value gains from urbanization. For local governments, it ensures efficient urbanization of land at reduced cost because the project site and infrastructure rights of way do not have to be purchased or compulsorily acquired. The cost of the infrastructure and subdivision can be financed with a short/medium-term loan which, depending on the land contribution ratio of participating landowners, may be repaid through the sale of some of the new building plots.
However, for land readjustment approach UN-Habitat is proposing to bear fruits, there needs to be a conducive legal framework, professional capability to manage the process and a genuine commitment to stakeholder and community engagement, which is often lacking in developing countries. Other limitations may include that the land may take many years to be developed and occupied, whereas the government's objective is to achieve early development and a flow of revenues. Another limitation is that the ability of land readjustment projects to engage with and provide access to land for lower-income groups is limited by the need to provide the original land owners with an increased value for the smaller plot areas they receive after land subdivision and servicing.
The Participatory and Inclusive Land Readjustment (PILaR) aims at enabling Medellin –and potentially developing countries– to use the land readjustment technique to undertake orderly and proactive city extension and densification in a pro-poor, participatory and gender-responsive manner, empowering the municipalities to facilitate this process. UN-Habitat aims at introducing PILaR as a new service for national governments and local authorities to better tackle urbanization challenges, such as urban sprawl and the slums, through a rights-based approach where participation and inclusivity will be central.
The project aims therefore at creating a conducive environment for PILaR in Medellin, Colombia: enhancing legislation, if needed, and building the capacity of the municipality in land readjustment and participatory processes. The project will also look at improving the supply of serviced urban land through orderly and negotiated process of PILaR (prior to investment phase). As a result of this project, an investment phase shall follow up creating a compact, well connected and inclusive neighborhood, if funding is available.
If the project is done, a sound participatory process will have been carried out in the selected site and an overall agreement will be reached for its redevelopment which will create a more compact, well connected, inclusive and sustainable neighborhood. If the project is not done, the situation in Medellin may remain as it is now: a territory with challenges to densify its space in a quick and inclusive manner. Medellin and UN-Habitat would also miss a good opportunity of participatory methodology in redevelopment processes.
The citizens of Medellin are expected to be the ultimate beneficiaries of this project (in particular those living and those that will end up living in the selected project site), including and with a particular focus on the most vulnerable. Once the project site is selected within the city, a community profile will be done, gathering data, including sex-disaggregated information.
The city of Medellin will directly benefit as it will gain knowledge and experienced on how to undertake PILaR for sustainable urban development together with UN-Habitat. The city can then use this knowledge gained in the selected pilot site to apply it to other sites in the city as soon as possible. Other beneficiaries include the Government of Colombia (Department of National Planning, Ministry of Housing, Cities and Territory), the private sector (including developers) benefiting from the densification of the site (and potentially the city), and community-based organizations that will learn how to engage and participate in a PILaR process and inclusive urban development.
This project has four levels of intervention. The first level is the city, and the selected site in particular, where most of the learning and negotiations will occur. A second layer will be the national level which will be accompanying this process and learning from it for possible replication. The third level is the regional one, in Latin America, where other cities may be interesting in learning from this experience. Last but not least, the global level will develop the learning of this process, including with awareness materials, technical tools, documented case studies and analysis of good practices on both the criteria needed for succeeding with land readjustment and how it can be effectively undertaken. The city and the global levels are the most time and resource-intensive levels.
Learning how to use land readjustment and experimenting PILaR will therefore be central to this innovate project. There will a refining through practice as all internal and external stakeholders learn from the pilot in Medellin. A loop of feedback to gather lessons learnt and development of policy inputs will also be nurtured from local to global level.
