This week-long professional development course provides participants the opportunity to develop knowledge and systematize their understanding of the urban informal economy, as well as to develop instruments of economic analysis on informality, land markets and price formation, and the processes that generate informal settlements in cities of Latin America and the Caribbean. Participants deepen their knowledge of the economic dimension of the urban informal economy, technical intervention mechanisms, planning and scale program management, and mechanisms of regularization of tenure of the land through the analysis of experiences and cases in cities of Latin America and the Caribbean and other regions. The course is developed in collaboration with the United Nations Program for Human Settlements (UN-Habitat), the General Directorate of Planning and Territorial Development (DGODT) and the Agency to Promote Development Initiatives (APID) of Dominican Republic.

This course brings together different and critical perspectives on urban informality and the approach regarding regularization to this phenomenon. It uses theory and debates from sociology, urban planning and law to help students sharpen their concept of urban informality and to design feasible practices that address it. In conceptual terms, it is a question of breaking with stereotypical and one-dimensional images of informal settlements. Students learn to appreciate the formal and functional multiplicity of informal urban settlements.

This course, offered in Spanish, aims to present a general approach to Large-Scale Urban Projects (LSUP). Based on a definition of what is meant by large scale urban projects and why their analysis is important, the course covers the role of the LSUP’s in the development of cities in Latin America and analyzes the types of projects and the diversity of entities that have been developed for their implementation. A particular emphasis is given to the analysis of local and international cases of LSUP and instruments for planning and financing major projects, such as urban operations (CEPAC y Otorga Onerosa del Derecho de Construir -OODC-), partial plans (distribution of burdens and benefits) and the public-private partnerships.

Prerequisites: It is important that the participant has knowledge on concepts such as price formation of land and its relationship to urban planning. Also, it is recommended that prior to the start of the course selected participants reinforce concepts with audio lectures.