Una versión más actualizada de este artículo está disponible como parte del capítulo 7 del CD-ROM Perspectivas urbanas: Temas críticos en políticas de suelo de América Latina.

Muchos centros históricos de América Latina han sido el objeto de iniciativas gubernamentales y privadas para la rehabilitación de los edificios y para situar estas zonas al servicio de la industria del turismo. En la mayoría de los casos estas iniciativas han tenido como consecuencia el desplazamiento de los residentes de bajos ingresos o de toda la actividad residencial en conjunto, debido a la comercialización y el aburguesamiento del distrito (Scarpaci 2005). Más recientemente, la rehabilitación de estos centros históricos se ha enmarcado dentro de debates e iniciativas más amplios que pretenden la recuperación de los centros de las ciudades (históricos o de otro tipo) dado su papel crucial como símbolos colectivos o como espacios de interacción social, o bien por su eficacia potencial en calidad de distritos urbanos densos con buena cobertura de servicios (Pérez, Pujol y Polèse 2003; Rojas 2004).

Este artículo pretende profundizar este debate basándose en la experiencia del centro histórico de Ciudad de Panamá, el llamado “Casco Antiguo”. En él se describen algunas políticas innovadoras recientes que han explorado las intersecciones entre el turismo, la vivienda asequible, el empleo y la cultura dentro de un contexto histórico, y deduce algunas enseñanzas y perspectivas útiles.

El Casco Antiguo y la política de desarrollo inclusivo

El Casco Antiguo es la segunda ciudad de Panamá colonial, fundada en 1673 después de que el primer asentamiento se incendiara durante una invasión pirata. Su máximo apogeo tuvo lugar entre 1850 y 1920, cuando se desarrollaron los proyectos de construcción del ferrocarril y los canales que atraviesan el istmo, y la mayor parte de su arquitectura refleja la influencia de esa época. El barrio (aproximadamente 44 hectáreas) fue declarado monumento histórico nacional en 1976 y Patrimonio de la Humanidad de la UNESCO en 1997.

El Casco Antiguo comenzó a pasar de ser un centro urbano multifuncional y socialmente diverso a un vecindario residencial predominantemente de alquiler para las clases medias y los inmigrantes procedentes de las zonas rurales hacia la década de 1920, cuando la élite económica se mudó a nuevos asentamientos suburbanos de estilo estadounidense y la ciudad comenzaba su expansión hacia el este. En las décadas siguientes, el Casco Antiguo perdió muchas de sus funciones urbanas centrales, mientras que su población fue empobreciéndose cada vez más. Hacia la década de los setenta, muchos edificios habían sido abandonados por sus propietarios, y la ocupación de edificios comenzó a ser patente. No obstante, algunas instalaciones gubernamentales importantes, como el Palacio Presidencial y un puñado de otras instituciones, permanecieron en la zona, manteniendo cierta relevancia metropolitana para lo que primordialmente era un vecindario residencial grande de bajos ingresos.

Durante la década de 1970 y 1980 el gobierno elaboró sus primeros planes de reurbanización pensados para el turismo. Se renovaron plazas públicas y monumentos, pero los trabajos se interrumpieron por la crisis política que ocupó la mayor parte de la década de los ochenta. A principios de los años noventa, el sector privado inició sus propios proyectos de renovación, que han seguido siendo en su mayoría proyectos de construcción de bloques de apartamentos de lujo con espacio comercial en las plantas bajas. Los incentivos fiscales y económicos aprobados en 1997 propiciaron una oleada de proyectos y planes privados, pero muchos edificios sencillamente quedaron vacíos y sin restaurar. Entre 1990 y 2000 el censo reveló que el vecindario había perdido cerca de la tercera parte de su población, y en 2004 uno de cada seis edificios estaba cerrado y cubierto por tablones o en ruinas.

En los últimos años se han producido dos hechos significativos. Por un lado, Ciudad de Panamá ha entrado en un período de bonanza inmobiliaria propiciada por el turismo y por el mercado internacional de jubilados, hecho que ha beneficiado al Casco Antiguo en forma de numerosos proyectos de construcción de bloques de apartamentos y hoteles. También han ayudado las sanciones del gobierno para los edificios abandonados. Por otro lado, se ha implementado una política social explícita para la comunidad de bajos ingresos, que reemplaza el consenso tácito asentado desde hace mucho tiempo entre el gobierno y el sector privado sobre la necesidad de expulsar a esos residentes y aburguesar y/o comercializar toda la zona.

La nueva política social se ha centrado en dos tipos de programas: vivienda asequible y capacitación laboral. Hasta el momento se han rehabilitado cuatro edificios históricos propiedad del gobierno, que han producido 52 apartamentos de uno y dos dormitorios; éstos a su vez son alquilados por un órgano gubernamental, la Oficina del Casco Antiguo (OCA), a residentes de largo plazo, la mayoría de los cuales carecen de historial crediticio. Otros tres edificios están en proceso de rehabilitación y cinco más en fase de planificación. Los edificios ofrecen alternativas de vivienda adecuadas, además de espacios comerciales en las plantas bajas, que actualmente se alquilan a establecimientos asentados en el vecindario durante mucho tiempo, que también se enfrentaban a un desalojo.

En el ámbito de la capacitación laboral, se han ofrecido cursos en las áreas de rehabilitación de edificios, servicios de hostelería y restauración, artes culinarias, servicios turísticos e idiomas. Esta experiencia ha cambiado la línea de trabajo que ha pasado de ser simplemente uno de los muchos tipos de programa establecidos por OCA (junto con la rehabilitación de monumentos o la mejora de infraestructuras) a formar parte central de la nueva visión de “desarrollo inclusivo” del barrio.

Las enseñanzas han sido muchas e importantes y nos han permitido comprender mucho mejor los desafíos y el impacto que tienen las políticas de vivienda asequible, turismo y patrimonio cultural.

Siete enseñanzas clave

1. Vivienda asequible es mucho más que construir nueva vivienda que sea accesible.

A pesar de las condiciones deplorables de la vivienda, muchos residentes del Casco Antiguo se aferran al vecindario debido a sus lazos emocionales y por una serie de razones prácticas. En Ciudad de Panamá, las familias de bajos ingresos por lo general tienen que construir sus propias viviendas ocupadas en suelo ubicado en la periferia urbana, lejos de donde se concentra el empleo y los servicios urbanos adecuados, y aquí es también donde se suelen ubicar los nuevos proyectos de vivienda pública. El tiempo de desplazamiento al trabajo y los costos de transporte asociados pueden ser enormes − hasta 5 horas diarias y un 40 por ciento de los ingresos familiares, respectivamente. En este contexto, las políticas de vivienda asequible que mejoran las condiciones de la vivienda a costa del exilio urbano son contraproducentes e irresponsables (Espino 2007).

2. Para muchas familias de bajos ingresos, su hogar es también su negocio. Mientras que las clases medias y altas por lo general pueden permitirse separar su residencia del lugar de trabajo, y por lo tanto, viven y trabajan casi en cualquier lugar de la ciudad adonde se pueda ir en automóvil, los pobres de la ciudad a menudo necesitan combinar ambos usos. En muchas ciudades de América Latina la actividad informal constituye una importante fuente de ingresos familiares, y el lugar de residencia típicamente alberga una actividad comercial, que a su vez requiere una buena ubicación comercial. Los residentes se benefician en gran medida de vivir en partes de la ciudad accesibles y animadas, y los barrios históricos como el Casco Antiguo tienen la estructura urbana adecuada para este tipo de actividad.

En el Casco, muchos de los ocupantes de las nuevas unidades de vivienda asequible han establecido sus negocios y servicios, por ejemplo, de artesanía, calzado o sastrería, que sirven a una clientela metropolitana procedente del creciente tráfico peatonal local e internacional que el turismo ha llevado al barrio. Irónicamente, ahora que estos vecindarios ubicados en el centro por fin pueden comenzar a beneficiarse de la mayor seguridad y del ambiente que les proporciona el turismo, las familias suelen ser desplazadas.

3. La mezcla social urbana es esencial para el desarrollo inclusivo. Rehabilitar un barrio histórico sólo para los pobres tiene tan poco sentido como aburguesarlo por completo. Todo el mundo necesita seguridad, paisajes urbanos agradables y tráfico peatonal con poder adquisitivo, y los pobres de la ciudad no son una excepción. Una mezcla saludable de urbanizaciones asequibles y de categoría beneficia a todos.

4. Los proyectos de vivienda asequible no son una amenaza para la inversión de alto nivel (al menos no en los barrios históricos). En el Casco Antiguo, los proyectos de vivienda asequible de hecho se han convertido en punta de lanza de una inversión privada de alto nivel, al actuar como pioneros en zonas del barrio muy deterioradas y abrir la puerta a promotores privados menos atrevidos. Para empezar, los residentes y usuarios de altos ingresos del Casco suelen ser más tolerantes de la diversidad social que los núcleos familiares de clase media típicos. En consecuencia, los valores de la propiedad en el Casco Antiguo continúan su tendencia a la alza.

5. Las oportunidades de vivienda asequible en el centro deberían ser permanentes. En entornos de inflación alta como el Casco Antiguo, la construcción de unidades de vivienda asequibles y su posterior venta en el mercado pueden estimular la reventa, la especulación y la pérdida de viviendas asequibles. La reventa de unidades asequibles debe estar estrictamente controlada por medio de restricciones en los títulos de propiedad, y el alquiler sin fines de lucro debería considerarse como una opción seria en tales casos. El romanticismo de la propiedad debe reemplazarse por un firme compromiso de servir a la población existente y de ampliar las ventajas de la inclusión urbana a las generaciones venideras. Los gobiernos y las agencias sin fines de lucro deben garantizar un conjunto razonable de edificios para este fin.

6. Es positivo un cierto grado de separación, pero sin extremismo. Los proyectos de vivienda asequible del gobierno de Panamá se centran en una zona específica por motivos históricos (accidentales). Sin embargo, esta zona está rodeada de otras destinadas a una urbanización de lujo. Esta geografía permite tanto cohesión como interacción social, concentrando una vida comunitaria activa y unos servicios comunitarios adecuados. Los negocios como las tiendas de alimentación y las peluquerías que sirven a las poblaciones de bajos ingresos son bastante diferentes de sus contrapartidas para la clase media, en cuanto a los productos y servicios que ofrecen, los precios y los horarios de atención. Una densidad crítica de clientes permite a estos establecimientos desempeñar sus funciones, mientras que una estructura urbana abierta aumenta su base de clientes potenciales, abriéndose a otras clases sociales.

Hay que tener presente que la segregación urbana, tanto en sus aspectos positivos como negativos, no sólo afecta a la vivienda, sino también a todo el repertorio de actividades que componen un vecindario. Por este motivo, proteger los negocios formales de bajos ingresos del vecindario para evitar que sean desplazados es un componente integral de los programas de vivienda asequible en las zonas de rehabilitación. Por otro lado, debe reservarse y fomentar espacio para instituciones de categoría que se sitúen dentro o en las cercanías de estas zonas. Museos, fundaciones, centros culturales o atracciones turísticas pueden beneficiarse de estar en estas comunidades y viceversa.

7. La cultural popular interesa al turismo más allá de lo evidente.

Las poblaciones de bajos ingresos están tan ansiosas por participar en el comercio turístico como cualquier otro sector, pero normalmente sólo se las incluye si tienen algo de folklore que vender o aportar. La cultura contemporánea cotidiana de estos grupos, incluidas su comida y su música, tiende a ser despreciada y tildada de vulgar o poco interesante. Hasta la fecha la OCA ha tratado de promocionar sobre todo la cultura culinaria del barrio, ayudando a organizar a los proveedores para que participen en eventos culturales masivos en la zona. En otro proyecto, la historia familiar y vital de algunos residentes de toda la vida en el barrio se ha registrado y publicado en formato de libro. Se ha dado publicidad a sus residencias como lugares que los turistas pueden visitar para mantener una conversación informal sobre “los viejos tiempos”. Este prometedor campo de las industrias de la cultura popular tiene mucho por descubrir.

Conclusiones

Dado su carácter de atracción cultural, los distritos históricos se benefician de una forma única de diversidad social. Por encima de todo, los turistas desean explorar un barrio que es representativo de la cultura local, y no encontrar otro centro comercial internacional exclusivo al aire libre. Para mantener el barrio asentado en el aspecto cultural, es imprescindible la diversidad social, tanto en el aspecto de vivienda como en el comercial. Por otro lado, la planificación de distritos históricos está inevitablemente ligada a debates más amplios sobre la centralidad, la vivienda asequible y el “derecho a la ciudad” (Lefebvre 1996).

En Panamá, la experiencia del Casco Antiguo ha formado parte de una iniciativa más amplia en el centro de la ciudad encaminada a restablecer la dignidad a la política de vivienda asequible a través de la rehabilitación de edificios y barrios tradicionales. Representa una desviación de las políticas anteriores enfocadas a la urbanización periférica o la construcción de bloques de apartamentos monótonos y sin vida en zonas residuales. Por tanto, trasciende el planteamiento limitado sobre la vivienda y aborda asuntos relacionados con el empleo, la cultura y la ubicación.

Creemos que estas enseñanzas y experiencias tienen mucho que aportar sobre la forma que puede adoptar el desarrollo urbano inclusivo. Estas enseñanzas son interesantes porque no se ocupan de abstracciones, sino de las necesidades y deseos concretos de diferentes agentes vinculados a un espacio urbano. Asimismo, dependen de una acción premeditada y no de expectativas simplistas sobre el goteo de beneficios sociales o económicos. ¿Pueden contribuir a un debate más general sobre los paradigmas de desarrollo urbano en América Latina y en otros lugares?

Sobre el autor

Ariel Espino, AICP, es director ejecutivo de la Oficina del Casco Antiguo (OCA) de Ciudad de Panamá. Es licenciado en arquitectura por la Universidad Católica de Panamá y posee una maestría en ciencias en planificación de la Universidad de Arizona y un doctorado en antropología de Rice University. La OCA es un órgano gubernamental cuyo objetivo es la implementación del plan maestro Casco Antiguo.

Referencias

Espino, Ariel. 2007. The development of low-income housing in the central and historic neighborhoods of Panama City: New models for economic development and social integration? Documento de trabajo. Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Lefebvre, Henri. 1996. Writings on Cities, traducido y editado por Eleonore Kofman y Elizabeth Lebas. Oxford: Blackwell.

Pérez, Salvador, Rosendo Pujol y Mario Polèse. 2003. ¿Son importantes los centros de las ciudades? En Desafíos de las ciudades mesoamericanas. Los casos de tres metrópolis, editado por Salvador Pérez y Rosendo Pujol. San José: FLACSO.

Rojas, Eduardo. 2004. Volver al centro. La recuperación de áreas urbanas centrales. Washington, DC: Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo.

Scarpaci, Joseph L. 2005. Plazas and barrios. Heritage tourism and globalization in the Latin American centro histórico. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press.

The government of China has been concerned about its ability to continue feeding its growing population since the mid-1990s. It has targeted conversion of farmland to industrial and residential uses, especially in the most productive agricultural regions, as the chief threat to the nation’s continued capacity to produce adequate levels of staple cereal crops. China is land poor. Only about one-third of its total land area, which is roughly equal to that of the United States, can be utilized productively for agriculture. Several measures have been introduced with the aim of protecting farmland, especially farmland with the greatest production potential. For example, current regulations require each province to keep 80 percent of its land currently designated as primary farmland under cultivation. Other policies require each province to take measures to ensure self-sufficiency in grain production and to draw up farmland protection plans.

Cultivated Land versus Farmland

Most attention has been focused on “cultivated” land, that is, land used to grow major food grains, feed grains, soybeans, and tubers. Not included is land used for horticultural crops and aquaculture, which would be categorized as farmland in most countries. Roughly 20 to 25 percent of the observed reduction in cultivated land in China in recent years was due to its conversion to orchards and fish ponds (Smil 1999; Ministry of Land and Resources 2003).

Reallocation of cultivated land from cereals and tubers to fruits, vegetables, and fish is a natural accommodation to changing consumer demand and increased income rather than a sign of an inability to maintain staple food production. Urban Chinese households consume much less grain than rural households (Gale 2002). Thus, changes in diets caused by rural-to-urban migration have resulted in less consumption of grains in China between 1995 and 2002, even though total population increased by about one-eighth during that period.

Farmland and Food Security

Even after correcting for reallocations of cultivated land to other food products, China has lost a significant amount of cropland, although the exact amount is difficult to determine because of the poor quality of historical statistics. Estimates of gross cropland losses between 1987 and 1995 have ranged from 3 to 5 million hectares out of a total estimate of 125 to 145 million hectares. Some of that loss consisted of land that was marginal in terms of agricultural productivity, but was highly vulnerable to erosion, desertification, and other forms of land degradation; much of this land was subsequently allowed to revert to more sustainable uses, such as pasture, grassland, and forest. Because the productivity of this land was quite low, its removal from cultivation represents little reduction in agricultural production capacity.

Most observers believe that China can remain largely self-sufficient in food production because of its ability to increase the agricultural productivity of land. For example, China’s agricultural research system has been quite successful in developing and promulgating new crop varieties and cultivation methods that have increased potential grain yields an average of 1.5 to 2.5 percent annually (Jin et al. 2002). A study conducted under the auspices of the International Food Policy Research Institute indicates that China’s ability to remain self-sufficient in food production depends more on investment in irrigation, flood control, and agricultural research infrastructure than on farmland preservation (Huang, Rozelle, and Rosegrant 1999).

Water is likely to be more of a bottleneck than land. Many farming regions face shortages of water for irrigation, so farmers who rely on groundwater have been pumping at unsustainably high rates, causing water tables to fall rapidly. Even regions with abundant water resources have shortages because of poor maintenance and operation of irrigation systems. Improved flood control is also sorely needed to prevent natural disasters that affect cropland losses.

Impacts of Urbanization

Even if the loss of cultivated land does not threaten China’s food security, there are substantial inefficiencies in land allocation generally, and in the conversion of farmland to urbanizing areas in particular. The most worrisome aspect is that farmland conversion has been concentrated in the most productive farming areas of the country, notably the coastal and central provinces that have both fertile soils and climates that allow multiple crops and harvests. Net losses of cropland in these provinces alone between 1985 and 1995 were on the order of 2 to 4 million hectares. Urbanization, industrialization, infrastructure, and other nonagricultural uses have been the primary cause of farmland loss in these rapidly industrializing provinces.

The two sites selected for a recent Lincoln Institute/Ministry of Land and Resources farmland protection study illustrate the scope of this problem. Most of the land around Pinghu City, located halfway between Hangzhou and Shanghai in Zhejiang Province, is prime agricultural land that can be harvested two or three times a year. Cultivated land and orchards account for about two-thirds of the total land area, and little land is left unused. Land taken for construction increased eightfold between 1998 and 2001. The local government has used consolidation of plots to meet its “no net loss” requirements, but the scope for further gains from consolidation is quite limited. Recorded conversion of farmland to urban uses during this period of rapid growth amounted to almost 2 percent of Pinghu City’s 1998 farmland.

Jingzhou City, located in the Yangtze River basin west of Wuhan in Hubei Province, shows the limited impact of urbanization outside of the rapidly growing coastal provinces. Cultivated land and orchards together account for about half of the total land area. Between 1997 and 2003, cultivated land in Jingzhou also decreased by almost 2 percent, but only a tenth of that loss was due to transportation infrastructure and other urban uses. Over half of the loss was due to an increase in areas covered by water caused by flooding and new aquaculture facilities. The remainder was largely due to abandonment of marginal land brought under cultivation prior to 1978, which was either allowed to revert to forest or was simply left unused.

Institutional Impediments

The greatest impediments to China’s ability to maintain adequate levels of food production are not physical but institutional. Inefficient uses of existing farmland arise from policies that affect income generation from farming, including the lack of tenure security, water shortages and poor irrigation management institutions, and the lack of adequate marketing infrastructure.

Tenure Security: Economists have long argued that secure tenure is essential for efficient land use, including appropriate levels of investment in maintaining and enhancing land productivity as well as allocating land to the most efficient uses and/or users. Rural and suburban land in China belongs to village collectives and is administered by the village committee or economic organization, subject to oversight by township, provincial, and in some cases state entities. Rural collectives have the authority to allocate land to alternative uses.

Farmland is leased to households under contractual arrangements in which the household pays a fee to the collective in return for a residual claim on the products of the land. The contract may contain other stipulations as well (for example, requirements that the land be farmed and maintained in good condition). The size of each household’s allocation is based on the size and composition of the household, and may be altered as those factors change. Tenure insecurity has been documented as a deterrent to investing in agricultural improvements (Jacoby, Li, and Rozelle 2002; Deininger and Jin 2003).

Concerns over adverse effects of insecure tenure on long-term investment in land productivity have led the Chinese government to experiment with lengthening the duration of farmland contracts. In 1984 collectives were urged by the state to contract with member households for a period of 15 years, and in 1993 the state urged an extension of standard contracts to 30 years. Revisions to the Land Management Law in 1998 explicitly required that all farmland contracts be written and be effective for a term of 30 years with few or no adjustments allowed.

Farmers also have acquired some ability to alter land allocations by exchanges or subcontracting Exchanges of land among villagers to consolidate holdings were declared legal in 1986, and subcontracting of land to outsiders, subject to approval of two-thirds of the village membership, was declared legal in 1998. Fully implementing these enhanced tenure security and transferability measures remains difficult, however, because they run contrary to longstanding practices and principles of administration in China. For example, they limit the power of the village leadership, and may also result in less equitable land allocations by ruling out reallocations to accommodate demographic or other changes in circumstances.

Ensuring that farmland reforms take hold and preventing abandonment of productive farmland are likely to be increasingly important for maintaining agricultural productivity, especially in areas experiencing rapid urban growth. Urban employment opportunities for working-age men are widely available in fast-growing coastal areas, leaving the farm labor force to be composed primarily of women and the elderly. As many as 80 percent of the young men in the environs of Pinghu City (and 20 percent in Jingzhou) worked in industrial jobs in nearby cities. Lack of urban residency rights keeps farm-based families tied to the land, but since their main source of income is now nonagricultural, they have little incentive to invest in maintaining and enhancing land productivity. Moreover, limitations on labor time and capacity may induce them to leave some land uncultivated.

Such flows of labor out of farming can be accommodated by consolidating plots into larger operational units to exploit economies of scale, thereby lowering land productivity investment costs and increasing farming income sufficiently to make such investments worthwhile. But secure, transferable use rights are essential to accomplish these goals. In areas like Pinghu, for example, wages in urban employment are so much higher than income from farming that farmers have little incentive to invest in the maintenance and enhancement of land productivity by applying organic fertilizer or keeping irrigation and drainage systems in good repair.

Secure tenure rights can also serve as a check on the arbitrary exercise of authority by village leaders who have been known to expropriate land from farmers in order to lease it to rural enterprises or sell it to local governments, often without paying compensation and in many cases pocketing the returns themselves. Illegal land development of this kind has become a national scandal in China, and millions of farmers are known to have lost land as a result. According to the Ministry of Land and Resources (2003), farmers were owed at least $1.2 billion in compensation and relocation fees.

Water Management: The second type of institutional impediment to agriculture relates to water shortages, notably (1) lack of clearly delineated and enforced use-rights for water; (2) inadequate financing of water delivery infrastructure; and (3) failure to price water at its opportunity cost. The lack of clear use-right assignments results in upstream users taking too large a share of the water available, leaving inadequate supplies for downstream users—a phenomenon that applies at both the provincial level, where upstream provinces divert excessive quantities of stream flow, and the farm level, where farmers with land at the heads of delivery canals take excessive amounts, leaving little or nothing for those at the tails of those canals.

Funding for construction, maintenance, and operation of irrigation systems has been inadequate because these activities have no dedicated funding source, and maintenance varies with the overall status of government finances. According to local officials in Pinghu and Jingzhou, for instance, maintenance of irrigation and drainage systems virtually ceased around 1980. Recent attempts to remedy the neglect by investing in repair and upgrades of irrigation systems are hampered by lack of funds. In Jingzhou, for instance, officials estimate that at current funding levels it will take 50 years to repair all irrigation systems currently in need. Many systems that have been repaired recently are likely to require further maintenance before systems currently in need of repair have been upgraded.

Additional inefficiencies in water use arise in China because water prices are set below opportunity costs, leading to overuse. Many farmers are charged for water according to the amount of land farmed rather than the amount of water used. Charges may be set to raise revenue for the township or provincial treasury rather than to induce economically efficient water use. Experiments with water pricing indicate that farmers’ use of water conservation methods is quite price-responsive, so that water price reform has a significant potential to alleviate water shortages.

Marketing Institutions: Inadequate marketing infrastructure and institutions are the third major impediment to realizing potential gains from regional specialization as well as a deterrent to investment in agriculture in many localities. China has a long tradition of promoting self-sufficiency at the local and provincial levels, yet this self-reliance can become an impediment to economic growth by limiting the scope for gains from specialization. China has been moving away from this traditional stance. Grain trading, for example, has been partially liberalized and grain traders are creating more integrated national markets.

Greater market liberalization could contribute to farmland preservation and the maintenance of food production capacity generally. More closely integrated national markets should increase average prices and decrease price volatility, making farming more attractive relative to other forms of employment. Greater market integration should be especially beneficial in poorer inland areas where incentives to migrate toward fast-growing coastal cities have been especially strong.

This market liberalization will require significant investment in infrastructure, however. China’s transportation network has not expanded fast enough to keep pace with the growth of trade volume, and the country lacks sufficient warehouse and cold storage facilities. China has sufficient cold storage capacity to accommodate only 20 to 30 percent of demand, resulting in spoilage losses of perishable freight on the order of one-third (Gale 2002). Increases in such capacity could increase food availability substantially by reducing both spoilage losses and price volatility, giving farmers an incentive to increase their production of vegetables and other perishable products. Expanded provision of electricity could further increase the effective food supply by allowing consumers to reduce spoilage losses by refrigerating produce.

Urban Policies on Farmland Conversion

The current urban policy structure encourages municipal and regional governments to convert farmland, even in areas where the central government has made farmland preservation a top priority. Policies influencing government finance, residential construction, and urban land transactions combine to create a high demand for land. Policies governing payment for land also make farmland conversion the most attractive means of meeting that demand.

Urban land is allocated by a combination of administrative and market mechanisms that create substantial arbitrage opportunities for private enterprises and government entities. Private enterprises can lease land from municipal governments in return for payment of a conveyance fee. Local governments can acquire land by paying a compensation package set according to administrative formulas based on agricultural income, which is typically far lower than the conveyance fee. Revenue from land transactions is a major source of funding for local governments; according to some estimates, it can account for between a quarter and a half of all municipal revenue. As a result, local governments have strong incentives to expand into rural areas in order to finance their ongoing obligations in the areas of infrastructure and housing.

Current regulations also make it more attractive for local governments to provide housing for growing populations by expanding into rural areas rather than increasing density within existing urban boundaries. Redevelopment of existing municipal land requires governments to pay compensation to current tenants and to cover resettlement expenses. Compensation paid to current residents is much higher than that paid to rural inhabitants. In Beijing, for example, land costs (primarily compensation) make up as much as 60 percent of the redevelopment cost of existing urban areas compared to 30 to 40 percent of the cost of developing converted rural land. Tenants may also resist displacement tenaciously, which at the very least creates significant delays. In addition, it is more expensive to provide infrastructure to areas already densely developed.

Industrial development is widely seen as the key to economic growth and a rising standard of living for municipalities. Low land costs have encouraged local governments to acquire and set aside land for industrial development speculatively, in the hope of attracting industrial investment. Much of that land has remained idle as hoped-for investment failed to materialize. By 1996, there were roughly 116,000 hectares of idle, undeveloped land in economic development zones, over half of which was converted farmland that could no longer be converted back.

Low administratively set compensation levels for rural land also create incentives for illegal land transactions that allow rural collectives, rather than urban governments, to profit from conversion, thereby undermining the state’s control over land use. These low compensation levels also create incentives for other types of illegal land transactions, notably forcible takeovers by local officials of land whose owners are unwilling to sell.

Conclusion

The central government’s attempts to limit farmland conversion by administrative measures are likely to continue to be ineffectual as long as local governments and rural collectives continue to have such strong incentives to convert farmland. Institutional reform is thus critical for improving farmland preservation efforts and increasing land use efficiency in general. Reform efforts are also hampered by fragmentation of authority. The Ministry of Land and Resources has jurisdiction over land but not residential construction, industrial development, or local government finance; the latter are overseen by various ministries, each of which has its own distinct set of interests and concerns. Reform requires a cooperative effort that takes these diverse interests into account.

Erik Lichtenberg is a professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Chengri Ding is an associate professor of Urban Studies and Planning at the University of Maryland, College Park, and is director of the Chinese Land Policy and Urban Management Program cosponsored by the University of Maryland and Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

This article summarizes their 2004 Lincoln Institute working paper, Farmland Preservation in China: Status and Issues for Further Research, which is available here.

References

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Gale, F., ed. 2002. China’s food and agriculture: Issues for the 21st century. Agriculture Information Bulletin No. 775, Economic Research Service, US Department of Agriculture, Washington, DC (April).

Ho, S.P.S., and G.C.S. Lin. 2004. Converting land to nonagricultural use in China’s coastal province. Modern China 30: 81–112.

Huang, J., S. Rozelle, and M.W. Rosegrant. 1999. China’s food economy to the twenty-first century: Supply, demand, and trade. Economic Development and Cultural Change, 737–766.

Jacoby, H. G., G. Li, and S. Rozelle. 2002. Hazards of expropriation: Tenure insecurity and investment in rural China. American Economic Review 92: 1420–1447.

Jin, S., J. Huang, R. Hu, and S. Rozelle. 2002. The creation and spread of technology and total factor productivity in China’s agriculture. American Journal of Agricultural Economics 84: 916–930.

Ministry of Land and Resources. 2003. Communique on Land and Resources of China, 2002. Beijing.

Smil, V. 1999. China’s agricultural land. The China Quarterly, 414–429.

As the capital city of China, Beijing is not only the nation’s political, cultural, scientific and educational center, but also one of the leading growth machines in the country. The city has experienced double-digit growth in its gross domestic product (GDP) for at least the last decade, and government revenues have increased at rates between 18 and 30 percent in recent years. Real estate has been one of the most important sectors of economic growth since the mid-1990s, with public and private investment leading to improved urban infrastructure, intense demands for housing and increased land consumption. This rapid growth has fundamentally changed the physical pattern of the city, both in the existing built-up central areas and throughout the municipal region.

At this time of transformation from a planned economy to a market economy, Chinese urban planners are reviewing the existing planning methodology and urban systems. This article reports on efforts by the Beijing municipal government and its planning commission to control and manage urban growth during this transition and to plan for the future.

The Current Urban Pattern

Beijing is one of four municipalities in the People’s Republic of China with provincial-level status directly under the central government. Covering an area of 16,400 square kilometers (km), Beijing has under its jurisdiction 16 districts and two counties. It is the second largest city in China with a population of more than 14 million, including about 11 million permanent residents and several million temporary residents.

Geographically Beijing is located on the North China Plain, but economically it has been considered part of the coastal zone. Since the national economic development strategy of the 1980s, three major economic zones along the coast have been in the forefront of reforms: the Pearl River Delta including Hong Kong, Guangzhou and Shengzhen; the Yangtze River Delta including Shanghai; and the Bohai Bay area including Beijing and Tianjin. Comparing their economic development patterns, Bohai Bay remains behind the others in regional development and cooperation. Unbalanced development and the gap between urban and rural development are the major issues needing attention.

Although regional development has been included in the national economic strategy, previous and current urban planning has not addressed spatial patterns on a regional scale. Beijing’s current comprehensive plan, which was approved by the State Council in 1993, still reflects the influence of the former Soviet Union in the 1950s. Comprehensive planning is a major tool used by municipal and local governments to control, monitor or guide urban development in China as elsewhere. But, because of inefficient implementation policies and slow procedures for updating the plans, they have not kept up with the rapid development of recent decades. There are six distinct sectors in Beijing’s current plan (see Figure 1).

Historic City Core: The heart of Beijing is the 62 square km historic core, which has served as the capital city for nearly 800 years. With a population of 1.3 million, this historic area is being significantly transformed as modern urban functions put pressure on preservation efforts.

Central Built-up Area: Surrounding the historic core is the 300 square km city center that has been developed gradually the since 1950s. After the market for land use rights was established in the 1980s, this area has been redeveloped rapidly and in the process has changed the physical image and socioeconomic life of Beijing. Most industrial land has been converted into a central business district of commercial and residential neighborhoods. Meanwhile, development on the outer edge of this area has been expanded more than 25 percent within the last 10 years, and the population has increased to 5 million.

Inner Greenbelt: A planned greenbelt area of 300 square km was established in the city’s 1982 comprehensive plan, but the 1993 plan showed the area reduced to about 240 square km. The objective of the greenbelt was to define the edge of the central area and provide adjacent open space. Without appropriate implementation policies and funding, however, this greenbelt (including important agriculture land) has been continually encroached upon by urban development. At the end of 2002 about half of the planned open space was made available for residential development and now only about 100 square km of open space remains.

Scattered Districts: Ten scattered districts were created in the comprehensive plan of 1982 as inner suburban development areas. Some of them have benefited from large investments in housing, but they remain primarily bedroom communities lacking mixed-used development, employment opportunities, public transportation and other services. The planned population for each of these districts was about 200,000, but several districts on the north and northeastern edge have already reached 500,000.

Satellite Towns: In the outer suburban area 14 satellite towns were planned to be self-sufficient centers combining employment and housing functions. Several factors contributed to the initial failure of this plan, however: the city center and its expansion area continued to attract most of the investment because of its existing infrastructure and lower development costs; the new market economy could not control strong linkages between employment and housing; the public transportation system could not support the development of these satellite towns; and people demonstrated a cultural preference for living in the dense urban center.

In other words, the original planned polycentric pattern neglected the impact of market forces and sociocultural preferences. Significant urban development did not reach the satellite towns until the late 1990s, when the municipal government built radial highways and created some university and industrial zones. Nevertheless, the physical pattern of urbanization around Beijing remains monocentric in character.

The Ring and Radial Highway System: To support the city’s planned spatial structure, the concept of a ring and radial road system was created in the 1950s and strengthened in the 1982 and 1993 comprehensive plans. The system was considered to be an ideal transportation model to support the planned urban pattern. The 4th ring road would be the edge of the city center; the 5th ring road would link the 10 scattered districts; and the 6th ring road was designed as the intercity highway to connect some of the 14 satellite towns. The radial highways were planned to provide rapid access between the ring roads and to create traffic corridors between Beijing and other cities.

Impacts on Urban Spatial Structure and Planning

China’s rapid economic growth has provided more income for both municipal government and citizens, fundamentally shifting consumption patterns in a very short time. The demands for housing and automobiles, in particular, have exceeded all expectations. Numerous large redevelopment projects in the city center have replaced old industrial buildings and many traditional houses with large-scale commercial complexes, modern apartment buildings, and the road and highway systems. Generally, the planned polycentric pattern of equally sized satellite towns has not been a workable structure to manage the city’s rapid urban growth, and the 1993 comprehensive plan has not been able to guide rampant urbanization. Nevertheless, some planning and policy-making efforts have attempted to control physical growth and solve serious transportation problems.

Spatial Expansion and Growth Control: Under the two types of land ownership in China—state-owned urban land and collectively owned rural land—land use rights are separated from ownership. After the 1980s, urban land use rights could be transferred in the land market, making land the major resource by which local government could raise revenues to finance urban infrastructure and redevelopment. But, dependence on revenues from the leasing of state-owned land is not sustainable over the long term because all leasehold fees are collected once at the beginning of the lease term (generally 40 years for commercial property, 50 years for industrial property and 70 years for residential property). Without a large source of annual revenue from a property tax or other fees, local governments need to find more land to develop in order to generate new revenues. As a result, many local governments are motivated to create an oversupply of land, thus accelerating the acquisition of rural agricultural land.

In Beijing, an average of 20 square km of land was acquired for urban development annually between 1990 and 2000, but this figure reached 50 square km after 2000 and is expected to more than double during this decade. At this rate, to reach the municipal economic goal of tripling the GDP growth rate by 2010, there will be hardly any agricultural land left in the municipal area. Facing these challenges to sustainable urban development, the central and the municipal governments are initiating some urban planning efforts to control land consumption and redefine greenbelt areas.

To preserve the nation’s limited agriculture land resources, the central government in the 1980s set up an urban planning regulation of 100–120 square meters of urban land per person in a large city. For example, if Beijing’s comprehensive plan has an urban population forecast of 10 million in 2010, the city’s total urbanized land area should be controlled within 1,200 square km.

The population forecast is a crucial factor in determining urban land scale and controlling land consumption. However, after the national population policy became more flexible in accepting temporary urban residents in the 1990s, this population planning norm became much more difficult to attain in practice. There is no workable analytical method to review and evaluate urban population forecasts. As a result, it is difficult to control the oversupply of land by local governments, which can use their forecasts to enlarge their planned land development territory.

The inner greenbelt was not fully realized in the 1993 comprehensive plan, but it is still considered a workable planning approach for designating the urban edge. When construction of the 5th and 6th ring roads started in 2000, however, development of land around the roads began immediately, spreading primarily from the central city. In 2001 the Beijing municipal planning commission submitted a new “outer” greenbelt plan to the municipal government, defining nine large corridors connecting outer-suburban open spaces with inner-suburban green areas. The purpose is to define the boundaries for urban growth and to link the central city with the natural environment. However, there are more challenges for implementation: urbanization and urban development pressure within these green corridors affects hundreds of villages and nearly a million peasants; and it has been difficult to define the types of open space that are both ecologically sensitive and economically sustainable.

Transportation Planning: The transportation system planned in the early 1980s and modified in the early 1990s has been implemented; however, the road hierarchy system, consisting of urban highways, main motorways, sub-motorways and streets, did not anticipate such a rapid increase in the number of automobiles. Beijing is the leading city in China for automobile use, with an annual increase in car ownership of 15 to 20 percent. The city had one million vehicles in 1997, but the second million was added in only five years, from 1998 to 2003. Most people agree that the constant traffic jams are caused by the inappropriate transportation system and inadequate regulatory policies.

When the market demand for automobiles began to increase in the mid-1990s, the municipal government decided to speed up construction of the planned highways and motorways. Most of the public budget for infrastructure went into this road construction, and within three years the 4th and 5th and most of the 6th ring roads were completed. Transportation engineers insisted on completing the road system as planned, in spite of two commonly accepted arguments: dependence on the inner-city highway network caused more traffic congestion and negative impacts on the central urban fabric; and transportation planning without considering land use planning causes conflicts in the urban spatial structure.

Realizing that public transportation is a key solution to reducing traffic jams and managing the city more efficiently, the municipal government started to focus on building its subway and urban light-rail systems in 2001, after Beijing won its bid for the 2008 Olympic Games. The plan is to build four or five subway lines in the city center and four urban light-rail lines connecting to the suburban areas. To obtain sufficient funding for these very costly projects, the municipal government adopted a public-private partnership model to raise investment from the private sector. Although it is too early to tell how much these efforts may affect other aspects of urban development, it is clear that they cannot yield sustainable development without broader regional collaboration.

Beijing Urban Spatial Development Strategy Study

Several factors have prompted the City of Beijing to review its spatial structure on a regional scale.

• The continued increase in the cost of development because of high land prices is reducing municipal economic competitiveness.
• Rapid urban growth is spreading out to the fringe of the city center, requiring reforms in the current planned spatial structure.
• The city center is considered to be too dense, causing extensive traffic congestion.
• The redevelopment pressure on the historic city core is continually threatening its preservation, increasing the urgency to find new spatial resources to move the growth pressure out of the core.

Reforming the city’s physical spatial structure based on a consideration of the larger Bohai Bay region is fundamental to solving these problems. Furthermore, the major public tool to manage urban development, the existing comprehensive planning methodology, is being challenged by the market economy, which makes it more difficult to estimate future urban development demand.

Some Western urban researchers have pointed out problems in the Chinese comprehensive planning process, suggesting that it is too static; is too focused on physical and land use planning; neglects the costs of development and infrastructure; and takes too long for implementation and approval. Recognizing the increasing strength of market forces, planners and government officials constantly search for solutions to better balance their respective roles. The Beijing municipal government thus has started an urban spatial development strategy study outside the existing urban planning system to explore fundamental urban forms derived from market principles.

A Vision for the Future: As China’s capital city, Beijing is the nation’s political and cultural center. To raise its competitiveness and become a world city, however, Beijing needs to improve its built environment so it can host more national and international events in the areas of international trade and finance, education and tourism. Beijing’s spatial structure and infrastructure capacity also should support more urban functions using its regional industrial base and international transportation and port facilities. Population is a key element in measuring urban scale, but the more flexible national population policies since the late 1990s have made it difficult to provide accurate estimates. One critical step is to analyze the “carrying capacity” of environmental resources such as land and water, which can limit the city’s future growth and urban scale.

Urban Density: Density is another important issue in this study. Beijing’s population density of 150 persons/hectare (ha) in built-up areas (roughly within the 4th ring road) compares unfavorably with most other large cities in China: Shanghai–280 persons/ha; Tianjin–230 persons/ha; Guangzhou–360 persons/ha. Further reduction of density in the historic core is considered to be an important mission, however, because of the traffic congestion and the need to preserve the old city. Thus, the new plan is trying to encourage more people to move out toward the 4th ring road and suburban areas. The goal of reducing density in the historic core and between the 2nd and 4th ring roads does not match the city’s public transportation strategy, however. The traffic congestion and environmental problems in the built-up areas are not directly caused by density, but rather by existing transportation policies and systems, the lack of urban green spaces and the proliferation of urban super-blocks.

A New Polycentric Pattern: The old planned polycentric pattern failed to control urban growth from spreading out of the existing built-up center. After reviewing the reasons for this failure, several major principles can help to define a new spatial pattern: consider regional development and reinforce the physical links with the port city of Tianjin; define the area on a large scale with more attention to environmental protection; bring the market factors that affect urban structure into the planning process; and discard the former goal of creating equally sized satellite towns. The general concepts of the new polycentric pattern are to

1. strengthen development along the existing north-south and east-west axes that run through the center of Beijing with strong cultural and social identity as the bones of the spatial structure;
2. restrict the amount of development in the environmentally sensitive upland areas west and north of the central city;
3. expand the scale of three existing satellite towns along the eastern edge of the city and provide public investment and finance to reinforce regional connections; and
4. emphasize development in the corridor to Tianjin by building multiple transportation options.

Future Planning Practices

Developing a long-term urban plan is an enormous challenge for a city like Beijing, which is undergoing rapid urban development, growth and transformation with a very uncertain future. Several crucial questions regarding urban scale, density, spatial expansion and growth policies need further study and analysis.

Forecasting and controlling urban scale through planning is difficult for all urban planners and policy makers. Existing and potential natural resources serve to constrain future growth, and population is more controlled now by the market economy than by centrally planned policies of the past. Politically and economically, Beijing will continue to attract more investment, which needs more professionals, technicians and skilled workers, while it also has to deal with the pressure of unskilled migrants from rural areas. The limited amount of natural resources thus becomes a major element in planning, but it cannot be the only factor to help forecast the future scale of the city. Analysis of the full range of alternatives and their relevant policies should be prepared to address the most rapid and largest growth scenario imaginable.

A polycentric spatial structure might be a good solution for Beijing, but it needs more attention to the interdependencies of the central city and the new town centers. The old satellite town pattern failed because it focused on the development balance between existing local jurisdictions but neglected economic forces, physical relationships and environmental constraints on a regional scale. Several important elements help to define the new spatial pattern: the boundaries of the central urbanized area; the scale and location of the new town centers; and the relationships among these centers, Beijing, Tianjin and other mega-centers in the region. The efficient, rapid public transportation corridors between the city center and the sub-centers also are a critical element in making the polycentric model workable.

The fundamental purpose for launching the spatial development strategy study and updating the comprehensive planning process is to develop better policies to manage urban growth and balance land development and conservation with a long-term perspective. To reach that goal and to implement the new strategy will require legal tools and strong, comprehensive policies—a challenge for most Chinese cities under the existing policy-making system.

Preserving historic areas, agricultural land and environmentally sensitive areas is not compatible with the current hot economy and planned development. Preservation has never received much public funding support, a major reason for failed efforts in the past. The public sector now has sufficient resources and enough authority to balance development and preservation, but it needs to broaden the use of technical tools and incorporate more regional policies. Planning cannot be implemented only through planning regulations; it requires various authorities and professionals to work together on policies and programs that address planning, taxation, land use, environmental concerns and historic preservation.

The next five to 10 years will be a key period for the City of Beijing to create its new urban form. Local planners and decision makers should make a serious review of the last century of urban development history in U.S. cities. They have lessons to offer on both policy making and implementation regarding highways, suburbanization, shopping malls, the city beautiful movement and other urban issues. Current initiatives also are instructive: smart growth, regional growth control and management, mixed-use planning, density and design review. Globalization will bring more political and economic competition to the world’s largest cities, and Beijing must learn from past experiences and adapt to the new economic realities.

Yan Huang is deputy director of the Beijing Municipal Planning Commission. She was a visiting fellow at the Lincoln Institute and a Loeb Fellow at Harvard University Graduate School of Design in 2003–2004.

Una versión más actualizada de este artículo está disponible como parte del capítulo 5 del libro Perspectivas urbanas: Temas críticos en políticas de suelo de América Latina.

La segregación espacial es una característica de las metrópolis, de San Diego a Boston, de Santiago a Ciudad del Cabo, de Belfast a Bangalore. En algunos lugares está asociada principalmente con los grupos raciales; en otros, con las minorías étnicas o religiosas; mientras que todavía en otros, con el nivel de ingresos. En nuestra experiencia en el continente americano, encontramos que con la investigación internacional comparativa los investigadores y analistas de políticas encuentran rasgos únicos y comunes en franco contraste. Por ejemplo, en América Latina el debate público sobre la segregación espacial urbana suele centrarse en los problemas socioeconómicos, mientras que en los Estados Unidos y muchos otros países desarrollados se enfoca más en las disparidades raciales o étnicas.

La segregación residencial también tiene significados y consecuencias diferentes según la forma y estructura específicas de la metrópoli, y también según el contexto cultural e histórico. En Norteamérica, las minorías sociales y étnicas tienden a ser segregadas hacia sitios poco deseables del casco urbano mientras que la mayoría de clase media y alta se dispersan en pequeños barrios urbanos o zonas residenciales socialmente homogéneas en toda la ciudad. En oposición, en las ciudades latinoamericanas es la élite minoritaria la que tiende a concentrarse en una sola área de la ciudad.

Las fuerzas

Son numerosas y variadas las fuerzas que contribuyen a la segregación espacial. Las leyes del apartheid en Sudáfrica fueron un caso extremo de segregación espacial a gran escala aprobada por el gobierno. Otros casos han despertado menos interés internacional, como por ejemplo la destrucción de chabolas emprendida por el gobierno brasileño en los años 1960, que hizo que los habitantes pobres se refugiaran en otras zonas segregadas. En una escala menor, en Santiago de Chile, entre 1979 y 1985 durante el régimen de Pinochet más de dos mil familias de pocos ingresos fueron desalojadas de áreas residenciales de altos y medianos ingresos con el objetivo trazado de crear vecindarios uniformes según el nivel socioeconómico.

Aunque los desalojos de los gobiernos y los esquemas legislativos son mecanismos explícitos para generar segregación espacial urbana, igualmente se han usado modalidades más sutiles para crearla o imponerla. En Colombia, se impuso la contribución de valorización (una suerte de gravamen por mejoramiento) a los habitantes de asentamientos informales en Bogotá ubicados a orillas de una nueva autopista periférica. Los funcionarios públicos sabían que el gravamen era más de lo que los habitantes podrían pagar y probablemente éstos “optarían” por la reubicación. Al imponer normas sobre el uso del suelo que los sectores pobres no pueden cumplir, el gobierno prácticamente los empujó hacia áreas periféricas informales. Los Estados Unidos también recurren a tales mecanismos para crear mercados de la vivienda segregados. Por ejemplo, algunos agentes de bienes raíces excluyen a las minorías raciales y étnicas o a las personas de clases sociales más bajas que no encajan en los mercados previstos; asimismo, muchos propietarios utilizan redes informales para encontrar el tipo de arrendatarios de su preferencia.

La segregación voluntaria se ha convertido en una nueva fuerza, con la proliferación de urbanizaciones enrejadas tanto en el hemisferio norte como en el sur. Esta tendencia parece tener varios motivos, entre ellos los factores de la oferta y la demanda. En cuanto a la demanda, los residentes tal vez se sientan atraídos por la percepción de seguridad o por un nuevo estilo de vida. En lo que respecta a la oferta, los constructores y promotores inmobiliarios obtienen una tremenda rentabilidad con la absorción a gran escala de elementos exógenos en estos proyectos de desarrollo altamente controlados.

La complejidad que produce la combinación de la segregación coercitiva y voluntaria conduce a una interrogante más profunda: ¿Cuál es la relación entre las diferencias sociales y la segregación espacial? Es común suponer que lo primero “se refleja” en lo segundo. En ocasiones los grupos sociales recurren a la segregación para fortalecer una identidad débil o confusa, como en el caso de los grupos de clase media emergentes o comunidades de inmigrantes en busca de aceptación social. En gran medida, el proceso de suburbanización de la posguerra en las ciudades de los EE.UU. puede interpretarse como una manera de clasificación homogénea que buscaba reafirmar la identidad social.

Las consecuencias

En los EE.UU., la segregación espacial plantea un serio problema para la formulación de políticas debido a las complejas interacciones entre el suelo y los mercados de la vivienda, por un lado, y su conexión con los ingresos locales y la distribución y calidad de los servicios, por el otro. Las disparidades en la calidad de las escuelas quizás sea uno de los ejemplos más dramáticos de la variación en los servicios públicos de un lugar a otro.

La combinación de segregación residencial por clase y por grupos raciales o étnicos y la distribución espacial sistemáticamente desigual de escuelas de calidad trae como consecuencia enclaves pobres en los cascos urbanos donde los niños asisten a escuelas deficientes, lo que a su vez limita las oportunidades para la vida futura. Otros servicios, como son el acceso al transporte y la atención médica, también varían según el espacio, al igual que muchos factores cuantificables como la calidad del aire y la infraestructura de los vecindarios.

En otros países, la segregación espacial de la población pobre ocurre dentro de asentamientos informales. En el pasado se consideraban estas áreas como aberraciones, pero los estudiosos entienden cada vez más la informalidad como un resultado del funcionamiento normal de los mercados del suelo y la vivienda, no como parte de una dualidad de las economías formal e informal. En este sentido, las actividades ilegales, irregulares, informales o clandestinas que permiten el acceso y ocupación del suelo son la forma en que el mercado brinda vivienda a la gente pobre. Sin embargo, estos arreglos no siempre “se escogen” por su precio bajo o comodidades relativas, sino porque son una de las poquísimas opciones que tienen los sectores desfavorecidos.

Los patrones tradicionales de segregación en las ciudades de América Latina están cambiando debido a la proliferación de nuevas comunidades cerradas destinadas a grupos crecientes con ingresos altos y medianos y la aparición de centros comerciales y complejos de oficinas en áreas más “modernas” fuera de los primeros enclaves urbanos. En São Paulo, Santiago, Buenos Aires y Ciudad de México, por nombrar sólo algunas de las ciudades más grandes y dinámicas, estas construcciones incluso están surgiendo al lado de áreas de bajos ingresos. La segregación de los usos y el acceso se está intensificando, lo que está haciendo más aparentes las desigualdades sociales de las últimas décadas. Sin embargo, al mismo tiempo, estos cambios en los patrones de segregación reducen las distancias físicas entre los grupos socioeconómicos, y están poniendo al alcance de los pobres las instalaciones comerciales “modernas” y los espacios públicos mejorados.

Probablemente las consecuencias de la segregación están cambiando debido a esta reducción en su escala geográfica. Algunos de los efectos negativos de la segregación a gran escala de la población pobre (es decir, la aglomeración en la periferia de las ciudades) podrían estar disipándose en este paisaje urbano nuevo y más diverso. Los estudios empíricos recientes realizados en Santiago confirman este punto de vista.

Respuestas normativas

La segregación espacial es el reflejo tanto de la estructura social existente como de un mecanismo que impone esa estructura, lo que plantea la pregunta sobre cómo y cuándo debe abordarse la problemática de la segregación. ¿Acaso el problema en el contexto estadounidense es que los niños de las minorías pobres viven junto con otros que tienen el mismo nivel de ingresos o con grupos raciales semejantes, o se trata de que al vivir en áreas pobres y segregadas los niños tienen limitadas sus oportunidades de vida futura debido a que no tienen acceso a buenas escuelas? ¿Está la respuesta en mejorar las escuelas, integrar los vecindarios o iniciar una combinación de ambas y otras soluciones? En el caso de los países en desarrollo, ¿el problema radica en que los asentamientos informales a menudo son peligrosos (debido a las riesgosas condiciones ambientales o la violencia callejera) o que los residentes están aislados de buenos empleos, tránsito y otros servicios? ¿Está la solución en reducir o eliminar el peligro, mejorar el tránsito, crear empleos en el vecindario o tratar de aplicar todos estos programas?

Necesitamos mejorar nuestra comprensión de los problemas sociales en estas áreas segregadas para poder diseñar e implementar políticas adecuadas que sean necesariamente multidimensionales. ¿Debiera el cambio tomar la forma de programas correctivos (como son los de regularización o mejora de los asentamientos informales) o materializarse en políticas más fundamentales que implicarían la dotación masiva de suelo urbanizado a precios asequibles? Una opción “correctiva” hace contrastar la informalización de los acuerdos formales (es decir, la desregulación) con la formalización de los acuerdos informales (es decir, la redefinición de los códigos de zonificación o la regularización de los sistemas alternativos de tenencia de la tierra).

Una solución todavía más fundamental sería la implementación en tramos o la designación obligatoria de proyectos de vivienda de interés social en áreas de altos ingresos. Un tipo diferente de herramienta consiste en abrir a la participación popular la toma de decisiones sobre la asignación de inversiones públicas, como es el proceso “orçamento participativo” utilizado con éxito en el municipio brasileño de Porto Alegre, en el que se distribuye el presupuesto con amplia participación pública. Otras respuestas podrían centrarse en la mejora drástica de los asentamientos periféricos de bajos ingresos ya existentes, el uso más extendido de gravámenes por vinculación o la eliminación definitiva de los mercados del suelo, como sucedió en Cuba. No obstante, precisamos más información acerca de la eficacia de estos variados programas e instrumentos y llevar a cabo un análisis más minucioso de las condiciones necesarias para aumentar las probabilidades de éxito.

La globalización ha estimulado el movimiento de la fuerza laboral y el capital, lo que ha dado lugar al acercamiento de las experiencias, tanto positivas como negativas, de los países desarrollados y en desarrollo. Los inmigrantes que llegan a los Estados Unidos, particularmente los indocumentados, tienden a asentarse en enclaves urbanos, pero su condición legal irregular trasciende más allá de tales asentamientos. Tienen acceso limitado al mercado laboral y al crédito, lo que a su vez les restringe la movilidad y afianza la segregación espacial existente.

Por otra parte, a medida que los consorcios financieros y de bienes raíces estadounidenses amplían sus operaciones en el extranjero, implantan los protocolos, convenciones, expectativas y modalidades operativas de su país de origen. La exportación de tales normas a los países en desarrollo puede conducir a nuevos patrones de discriminación geográfica (es decir, exclusión) según la raza o grupo étnico, en lugares donde anteriormente estas prácticas eran menos explícitas.

Sabemos por investigaciones realizadas y experiencias anteriores que la segregación puede aumentar los ingresos territoriales de los promotores inmobiliarios y terratenientes. Asimismo sabemos que la rentabilidad de las obras de construcción de viviendas depende de las inversiones públicas que se hagan en carreteras, instalaciones y servicios. Al mismo tiempo, reconocemos que la segregación tiene efectos positivos y negativos sobre la vida citadina, que van desde la exclusión social que dificulta la vida de la población pobre hasta el fortalecimiento de identidades sociales y culturales que contribuyen a la diversidad y vitalidad de la ciudad.

El rostro de la segregación varía dentro de cada metrópoli y de una a otra. Sin embargo, los estudios internacionales comparativos han demostrado que existen tendencias importantes de convergencia entre las ciudades de los EE.UU. y las de América Latina. Nos queda mucho por entender con respecto al efecto de la interacción del suelo y los mercados de la vivienda y la estructura normativa de la segregación espacial y las oportunidades de vida de los residentes urbanos.

Rosalind Greenstein es miembro principal y directora del Programa de Mercados del Suelo del Instituto Lincoln. Francisco Sabatini es profesor asistente en el Instituto de Estudios Urbanos de la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, en Santiago. Martim Smolka es miembro principal y director del Programa para América Latina y el Caribe del Instituto Lincoln.

Una versión más actualizada de este artículo está disponible como parte del capítulo 5 del libro Perspectivas urbanas: Temas críticos en políticas de suelo de América Latina.

Como parte de las actividades educativas del Programa para América Latina del Instituto Lincoln, en junio pasado se dictó el curso Large-Scale Urban Redevelopment Projects [Grandes Proyectos Urbanos], el cual se centraba en los aspectos más importantes y desafiantes de este tema de planificación territorial. Académicos, funcionarios públicos y representantes de empresas privadas de 17 países participaron en las presentaciones y las discusiones. Este artículo presenta una síntesis de los principales temas, preguntas y retos planteados durante la ejecución de estos complejos proyectos.

Los macroproyectos de renovación urbana han pasado a ser materia importante en muchas naciones de América Latina en los últimos tiempos, debido en parte a los cambios propiciados por los procesos de globalización, la desregulación y la introducción de nuevos enfoques en la planificación urbana. Estos proyectos comprenden numerosos tipos de intervenciones, pero se caracterizan primordialmente por su gran magnitud en tamaño y escala, lo que plantea un reto para los instrumentos tradicionales de gestión y financiamiento urbanos.

Los proyectos urbanos de gran escala no se consideran una novedad en América Latina. Entre los diversos elementos de los proyectos de desarrollo encontramos la renovación de cascos históricos; la conversión de parques industriales abandonados, áreas militares, aeropuertos o estaciones ferroviarias; grandes proyectos de rehabilitación de viviendas marginales; y construcción de modelos novedosos de transporte público. No obstante, por lo menos cuatro rasgos fundamentales caracterizan este nuevo tipo de intervención:

• Una estructura de gestión urbana que implica la asociación de varios actores públicos y privados, nacionales e internacionales;
• Necesidades considerables de financiamiento que requieren formas complejas de interrelaciones entre estos actores;
• La concepción e introducción de nuevos procesos urbanos que tienen por finalidad transformar la ciudad;
• El cuestionamiento de las perspectivas tradicionales de planificación urbana, puesto que estos proyectos tienden a sobrepasar el alcance de las normas y políticas prevalecientes.

La última característica se reafirma con la influencia de diferentes estrategias de planificación y los efectos de grandes proyectos urbanos en varias ciudades de todo el mundo (Powell 2000). Un proyecto que ha ejercido influencia en muchos planificadores y funcionarios públicos de ciudades latinoamericanas fue la transformación de Barcelona en preparación para los Juegos Olímpicos de 1992 (Borja 1995). Varios proyectos en América Latina se han inspirado en este enfoque, y en algunos casos lo han emulado directamente (Carmona y Burgess 2001), pero también ha enfrentado duras críticas (Arantes, Vainer y Maricato 2000). Se ha visto cómo un proceso de conveniencia a través del cual un grupo con poder de decisión o actores con intereses privados logran eludir la planificación oficial y las normativas existentes que se consideran como muy dependientes del debate (democrático) público. Como resultado, en su mayoría estos proyectos tienden a ser elitistas, porque desplazan los vecindarios de bajos ingresos mediante un uso regenerado y segregado del suelo para la clase media, o provocan exclusión social, porque los proyectos apuntan hacia una sola clase social, ya sea asentamientos de bajos ingresos o enclaves de altos ingresos, en zonas periféricas.

Los proyectos a gran escala plantean nuevas inquietudes, hacen más manifiestas las contradicciones inherentes y emplazan a los responsables del análisis del suelo urbano y la formulación de políticas. Son de particular importancia las nuevas formas de gestión, regulación, financiamiento y tributación que se requieren para la ejecución de estos proyectos, o que son resultado de éstos, y en general las consecuencias para el funcionamiento de los mercados del suelo.

Magnitud, escala y cronograma de ejecución

La primera cuestión que surge de la discusión de proyectos a gran escala tiene que ver con la ambigüedad del término y la necesidad de definir su validez. La magnitud es una dimensión cuantitativa, pero la escala sugiere interrelaciones complejas que conllevan efectos socioeconómicos y políticos. La vasta variedad de sentimientos evocados por los macroproyectos indica las limitaciones que existen para lograr reestablecer una visión del conjunto urbano y al mismo tiempo su carácter global (Ingallina 2001). Esta cuestión apenas comienza a discutirse en América Latina, y se enmarca en la transición hacia un nuevo enfoque en la planificación urbana, que está vinculado a la posibilidad e incluso la necesidad de construir una tipología e indicadores para su análisis. Forman parte de las discusiones cuestiones como el carácter emblemático de estos proyectos, su papel en la estimulación de otros procesos urbanos, la participación de muchos actores y la importancia de los efectos sobre la vida y el desarrollo de la ciudad. No obstante, el núcleo central de este tema es la escala, entendida como un concepto que abarca más que simples dimensiones físicas.

Puesto que la escala de estos proyectos se asocia con procesos urbanos complejos que conjugan continuidad y cambios a mediano y largo plazo, debe elaborarse el cronograma de ejecución de manera apropiada. Muchas de las fallas en la implementación de dichos proyectos se deben a la falta de una autoridad gestora que esté desligada o protegida de la volatilidad política de los administradores locales con el transcurso del tiempo.

Los casos de Puerto Madero en Buenos Aires y Fénix en Montevideo –el primero ya finalizado y el segundo todavía en marcha– sirven de ejemplos de las dificultades para controlar la escala y el momento de ejecución del proyecto de desarrollo en el contexto de situaciones y políticas económicas que pueden cambiar drásticamente. Doce años después de su construcción, Puerto Madero todavía no logra estimular otros macroproyectos, como la renovación de la cercana Avenida de Mayo, ni transformaciones tangibles en las normas urbanas.

La escala y el cronograma tienen importancia especial para el proyecto de Montevideo, puesto que surgen dudas acerca de la factibilidad de ejecución de un proyecto de esta escala en relación con el carácter de la ciudad, su economía y demás prioridades y políticas del país. Su objetivo era generar una “obra de impacto urbano”, en este caso la promoción de inversiones públicas, privadas y mixtas en un vecindario que perdió el 18,4% de su población entre 1985 y 1996, enfocándose en un edificio emblemático como la estación de trenes General Artigas. La obra ha sido terminada en su mayor parte, con un préstamo de $28 millones otorgado por el Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo; sin embargo, el porcentaje de inversiones públicas y privadas es mínimo y actualmente el proyecto Fénix tiene que competir con otro macroproyecto empresarial-comercial ubicado al este de la ciudad, el cual ya está despertando el interés de firmas y compañías importantes.

Aspectos de las políticas del suelo

La cuestión de la escala se relaciona intrínsecamente con la función del suelo urbano, por lo que cabe preguntarse si la tierra (incluido su valor, usos, tenencia y demás factores) debiera considerarse como una variable clave en el diseño y gestión de las operaciones urbanas a gran escala, dado que suele vincularse la factibilidad y éxito de estos proyectos con la absorción de elementos exógenos formidables a menudo reflejados en el costo y administración del suelo.

Los proyectos concebidos para restaurar cascos históricos ofrecen lecciones valiosas que debemos considerar. Podemos comparar los casos de La Habana Vieja, donde la propiedad de la tierra recae por completo en el Estado, el cual ha permitido ciertas actividades de expansión, y Lima, donde la tenencia de la tierra se divide entre muchos propietarios privados y entidades del sector público, lo que acentúa las dificultades para culminar el proyecto de restauración en marcha. Si bien La Habana Vieja ha recibido una importante cooperación financiera de Europa y Lima tiene un préstamo de $37 millones del Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo, el reto fundamental es promover la inversión privada y al mismo tiempo seguir ofreciendo a los residentes locales programas de asistencia social y económica. Ambas ciudades han creado unidades especiales para la gestión de estos proyectos, lo que constituye una perspectiva interesante sobre la modernización de las instituciones.

El papel del Estado

La escala, la dimensión temporal y el papel del suelo en proyectos urbanos grandes nos hacen considerar el papel del Estado y la inversión pública. Si bien las operaciones urbanas a gran escala no son un concepto nuevo en las ciudades latinoamericanas, sus condiciones actuales se han visto sumamente afectadas por los cambios económicos, las crisis políticas y las modificaciones sustanciales en el papel del Estado en general. Estas condiciones convierten la ejecución de los proyectos urbanos, como parte del proceso de desarrollo urbano a largo plazo, en un cúmulo de contradicciones con la permanencia usualmente corta de los gobiernos municipales y los límites de sus reclamos territoriales. Asimismo debemos considerar las diferencias en materia de competencias reguladoras entre los gobiernos centrales y las municipalidades locales y las diferencias entre entidades públicas e instituciones privadas u organizaciones comunitarias locales, lo que suele reflejar conflictos de interés debido a los procesos de descentralización y privatización que se están promoviendo simultáneamente en muchos países.

Dos proyectos grandes en el área de la infraestructura de transporte sirven de ejemplo para ilustrar situaciones locales que condujeron a resultados muy distintos. Uno de ellos fue la transformación del antiguo aeropuerto abandonado de Cerillos en Santiago de Chile y el otro era el proyecto de un nuevo aeropuerto para la Ciudad de México en Texcoco, un ejido ocupado por campesinos y sus descendientes. En el primer caso, la participación activa de grupos interesados está ampliando el proceso de recuperación de una zona de la ciudad que no cuenta con instalaciones urbanas de calidad. Una inversión total de $36 millones provenientes del sector público y $975 millones del sector privado sirve para financiar la construcción de centros comerciales, planteles educativos, centros de salud, instalaciones recreativas y viviendas para el vecindario. En el caso de México se han dado conflictos graves entre los intereses del Estado y los derechos de la comunidad sobre el suelo que han causado perturbación social y hasta el secuestro de funcionarios públicos. Como resultado, recientemente el gobierno federal ha decidido retirarse del proyecto Texcoco, decisión que le ha ocasionado un enorme costo político y económico.

Segregación y exclusión

Muchos planificadores y profesionales tienen dudas acerca de la factibilidad de los macroproyectos en países y ciudades pobres a causa de las distorsiones que pudiera causar su ejecución en el desarrollo futuro, en particular por el reforzamiento de las tendencias de segregación y exclusividad social. A las dudas que existen sobre su éxito se suma la disminución de la capacidad que tiene el Estado para hallar nuevas alternativas de financiamiento para proyectos de beneficios sociales a través de capitales privados, sobre todo los de origen internacional. Muchos macroproyectos son vistos como la única alternativa o el costo inevitable que tiene que pagar la ciudad o la sociedad para generar un ambiente atractivo en un contexto en el que las ciudades compiten cada vez más por un número reducido de inversionistas externos.

Un asunto clave con respecto al uso del espacio público generado por estos proyectos es evitar la segregación espacial y humana. Es indispensable prestar mucha atención para proteger a los habitantes de las zonas donde se desarrollan macroproyectos urbanos contra las consecuencias negativas de la regeneración urbana. Sin duda alguna éste es uno de los aspectos más difíciles de los proyectos urbanos grandes. La tabla 1 muestra los aspectos más importantes y los principales desafíos que surgen del análisis de este tipo de proyecto. De hecho, la integración de proyectos de este alcance requiere una visión de la ciudad que impida la creación de islas de modernidad apartadas en medio de áreas pobres, las cuales contribuirían al proceso llamado dualidad de la ciudad, o el surgimiento de nuevos centros urbanos exclusivos.

Tabla 1. Aspectos y retos de los macroproyectos urbanos

• Aspectos
  • Cuadrícula urbana
  • Proceso de planificación
  • Normas y regulaciones urbanísticas
  • Actores
  • Financiamiento
  • Impactos sociales, económicos y urbanos
• Retos
  • Integrar el proyecto al tejido existente de la ciudad
  • Diseñar el proyecto para que sea compatible con el enfoque establecido para las estrategias de planificación de la ciudad
  • Evitar la creación de normas que le otorguen privilegios de exclusividad al proyecto
  • Incorporar a todos los participantes involucrados directamente, en especial a los grupos no tan fáciles de identificar que están indirectamente afectados por estos proyectos
  • Establecer alianzas innovadoras de los sectores público y privado
  • Concebir formas efectivas de medir y evaluar los tipos distintos de impactos y formas de atenuar los efectos negativos

Para facilitarnos la reflexión sobre este asunto, mencionemos dos casos en contextos político-económicos diferentes. Uno es el proyecto Ciudadela El Recreo en Bogotá, planificado por MetroVivienda. Aunque presenta propuestas novedosas para el uso y gestión del suelo en un proyecto grande de viviendas populares, el proyecto no ha podido garantizar la integración de grupos sociales con diferentes niveles de ingresos. En el Corredor Sur de la ciudad de Panamá se está haciendo la planificación urbana de grandes zonas para la construcción de residencias, pero una vez más el resultado beneficia principalmente a los sectores de medianos y altos ingresos. De este modo, tanto en un país descentralizado como en uno centralizado, las normas generales que provocan la segregación residencial no parecen evitar las consecuencias negativas que afectan a los sectores más pobres de la sociedad.

En vista de todo esto, los grandes proyectos urbanos no deben verse como un enfoque alternativo para planes obsoletos o normas rígidas como la zonificación. Más bien, pueden presentarse como un tipo de planificación a escala intermedia, como un enfoque integrado que aborda las necesidades de la ciudad entera e impide las separaciones físicas y sociales y la creación de normas que permiten privilegios exclusivos. Sólo de esta manera podrán los proyectos a gran escala consagrarse como nuevos instrumentos de la planificación urbana. Los efectos positivos de elementos específicos, como la calidad de la arquitectura y del diseño urbano, tienen gran valor en estos proyectos si fungen como punto de referencia y se distribuyen con equidad en toda la ciudad.

Beneficios públicos

Los proyectos a gran escala son obras públicas por la naturaleza de su importancia y su impacto, pero esto no significa que sean de propiedad total del Estado. No obstante, la complejidad de las redes de participantes involucrados directa o indirectamente, la variedad de intereses y el sinnúmero de contradicciones inherentes a los macroproyectos hacen necesario que el sector público asuma el liderazgo de la gestión. La escala territorial de estas operaciones depende especialmente del respaldo de los gobiernos municipales, los que en América Latina suelen carecer de recursos técnicos para manejar proyectos de esta envergadura. El apoyo local puede garantizar una reducción de los elementos exógenos negativos y la incorporación de participantes más débiles –por lo general actores locales– a través de una distribución más justa de los beneficios, cuando la regulación del uso y la tributación del suelo es un elemento crítico. Esta es la intención que imprimió la Municipalidad de Santo André en São Paulo en el diseño del proyecto Eixo Tamanduatehy, de extraordinaria complejidad. Se trata de reutilizar una extensión enorme de terreno previamente ocupado por instalaciones ferroviarias y plantas industriales vecinas, las cuales abandonaron esta área –que alguna vez fuera un dinámico parque industrial de São Paulo– para reubicarse en el interior del país. El proyecto propone la creación de un lugar viable para nuevas actividades, en su mayoría servicios e industrias de alta tecnología, con capacidad para sustituir la base económica de esa región.

Más allá de crear y promocionar la imagen del proyecto, es importante lograr legitimidad social mediante la combinación de socios públicos y privados aliados en empresas mixtas, la venta o arrendamiento de suelo urbano, la compensación por inversión privada directa, la regulación y hasta la recuperación (o recaptura) pública de los costos y los incrementos inmerecidos del valor del suelo. También es necesaria una gestión pública activa, ya que el desarrollo de la ciudad supone propiedades y beneficios comunes, no sólo intereses económicos. Igualmente es fundamental el análisis de los costos económicos y financieros, así como los costos de oportunidad, para evitar el fracaso de estos proyectos.

Conclusiones

Los componentes básicos en la etapa preoperativa de la ejecución de macroproyectos urbanos pueden resumirse de la siguiente manera:

• Establecer una compañía de desarrollo/administración independiente del gobierno estatal y municipal
• Formular el plan integral del proyecto
• Refinar el plan de comercialización
• Diseñar el programa de los edificios y la infraestructura
• Definir instrumentos fiscales y reguladores adecuados
• Formular el plan de financiamiento (flujo de caja)
• Diseñar un sistema de supervisión

Es indispensable hacer un análisis adecuado de las compensaciones recíprocas (económicas, políticas, sociales, ambientales y demás), incluso si está claro que los problemas complejos de la ciudad contemporánea no pueden resolverse con grandes intervenciones solamente. Es elemental recalcar que debe atribuírsele mayor importancia a la institucionalización y legitimidad de los planes y acuerdos finales que a la simple aplicación de normas jurídicas.

Las presentaciones y discusiones del curso Large Urban Projects demuestran que la cuestión del suelo urbano sin duda subyace en todos los aspectos y retos descritos anteriormente. El suelo en este tipo de proyectos presenta gran complejidad y ofrece una oportunidad magnífica; el reto está en la manera de navegar entre los intereses y conflictos cuando el suelo tiene muchos propietarios y partes interesadas. Es necesario vencer la tentación de creer que la planificación urbana moderna es la suma de grandes proyectos. Sin embargo, estos proyectos pueden contribuir a crear una imagen compartida de la ciudad entre sus habitantes y sus usuarios. Este tema indudablemente posee facetas que no se han terminado de explorar y que necesitan un análisis continuo de colaboración por parte de académicos, autoridades gobernantes y ciudadanos.

Mario Lungo es director ejecutivo de la Oficina de Planificación del Área Metropolitana de San Salvador (OPAMSS) en El Salvador. Además es profesor e investigador de la Universidad Centroamericana José Simeón Cañas.

Referencias

Borja, Jordi. 1995. Un modelo de transformación urbana. Quito, Peru: Programa de Gestion Urbana.

Carmona, Marisa y Rod Burgess. 2001. Strategic Planning and Urban Projects. Delft: Delft University Press.

Ingallina, Patrizia. 2001. Le Projet Urbain. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Powell, Kenneth. 2000. La transformación de la ciudad. Barcelona: Ediciones Blume.

Arantes, Otilia, Carlos Vainer y Erminia Maricato. 2000. A cidade do pensamento unico. Petrópolis: Editora Vozes.

The fast pace of farmland conversion in the People’s Republic of China is causing alarm among top leaders concerned with food security and China’s ability to remain self-reliant in crop production. This loss of farmland is a direct result of China’s remarkable success in economic development over the past two decades, which has resulted in rapid urbanization and the conversion of enormous amounts of farmland into residential, industrial, commercial, infrastructure and institutional uses. Nearly a decade ago, Lester Brown asked, “Who Will Feed China?” in a book that drew attention to the importance of farmland preservation.

At first glance, visitors to China may not realize there is any problem with food supply or farmland protection because food seems to be abundant. Moreover, concern over China’s acute housing shortage has prompted many economists to prefer a policy that makes more farmland available for housing. Their arguments may be sound in theory. When one looks deeply at China’s land resources and projected growth, however, it becomes easier to understand the rationale for the country’s rigorous efforts to preserve its declining supply of farmland and recognize the farm-related issues and policy challenges that can be expected in the foreseeable future.

Tensions between Land and People

A map of China gives the false impression that land is abundant. Even though the total land mass of China is similar to that of the United States (9.6 and 9.4 million square kilometers, respectively), land suitable for human habitation in China is limited. About one-fifth of China’s territory is covered by deserts, glaciers and snow. Areas that average more than 2,000 meters above sea level and mountainous regions each account for one-third of China’s land, indicating a high level of land fragmentation. Thus, less than one-third of China’s land area is composed of the plains and basins where more than 60 percent of the population of 1.3 billion lives. There are fewer farms in China per capita than in almost any other country. China’s rate of per capita farmland occupation is 0.26–0.30 acre (depending on which official data are used), less than 43 percent of the world average. It is a staggering accomplishment that China is able to feed 20 percent of the world’s population with only 7 percent of the world’s farmland.

The relationship between the Chinese people and their land is further complicated by the uneven distribution of the population. The eastern part of China represents 48 percent of the nation’s territory, but includes 86 percent of China’s total farmland and nearly 94 percent of its population. By contrast, the western provinces feature vast and mostly unusable land. Henan Province, located near the center of China, has the nation’s highest population density. Henan is only one-sixtieth the size of the U.S., but its population is more than one-third of the U.S. population.

This east-west division also reflects striking differences in farmland productivity. In the east, farms generally reach their maximum potential yield, whereas farm productivity in the west is low, and it is difficult and expensive to improve productivity there. More than 60 percent of China’s farms have no irrigation systems, and most of those farms are located in the west. Regions with more than 80 percent of the nation’s water resources have less than 38 percent of the farmland. Around 30 percent of all farmland suffers from soil erosion, and more than 40 percent of farmland in arid and semi-arid regions is in danger of turning into desert.

It seems inevitable that the tensions between the Chinese people and the use of their land will only escalate in the next decade or two, driven in large part by the ambitious socioeconomic development goals set up by the Sixteenth Communist Party Congress in 2003. Those goals call for China’s GDP to be quadrupled and the rate of urbanization to reach 55 percent by 2020. Given the projected population growth from 1.3 billion to 1.6 billion, Chinese cities will become home to 200 to 350 million new urban residents. This remarkable increase in development will require land for all kinds of human needs: economic development, housing, urban services and so forth.

Farmland Preservation Laws

Two principal laws govern farmland preservation efforts in China. The Basic Farmland Protection Regulation, passed in 1994, requires the designation of basic farmland protection districts at the township level and prohibits any conversion of land in those districts to other uses. It also requires that a quota of farmland preservation should be determined first and then allocated into lower-level governments in the five-level administrative chains (the state, province, city, county and township). This important act represents the first time China has imposed a so-called zero net loss of farmland policy. This policy affects only basic farmland, so the total amount of basic farmland will not decline due to urbanization.

Components of Basic Farmland

• Agricultural production areas (such as crops, cotton, edible oils and other high-quality agricultural products) approved by governments
• Farmland with high productivity and good irrigation that have been exploited
• Vegetation production areas for large and mid-sized cities
• Experimental fields for science and educational purposes

There are two kinds of basic farmland protection districts. The first level consists of high-quality farmland with high productivity that cannot be converted to nonagricultural uses. The second level is good-quality farmland with moderate productivity that can be converted to nonagricultural uses, usually after a planned period of five to 10 years. The regulation further stipulates (1) if the conversion of land within farmland districts is unavoidable in order to build national projects, such as highways, energy production or transportation, the state must approve the conversion of land parcels of more than 82.4 acres and the provincial governments must approve those of less than 82.4 acres; and (2) the same amount of farmland lost to conversion must be replaced by new farmland somewhere else.

The second law, the 1999 New Land Administration Law, is intended to protect environmentally sensitive and agricultural lands, promote market development, encourage citizen involvement in the legislative process, and coordinate the planning and development of urban land. The law has two important clauses. Article 33 extends the application of the zero net loss farmland policy in the Basic Farmland Protection Regulation to all farmland. It stipulates that “People’s governments . . . should strictly implement the overall plans and annual plans for land utilization and take measures to ensure that the total amount of cultivated land within their administrative areas remains unreduced.” Article 34 requires that basic farmland shall not be less than 80 percent of the total cultivated land in provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government.

The law reinforces farmland preservation efforts by requiring approval from the State Council for any conversion of basic farmland; conversion of other farmland larger than 86.5 acres; and conversion of other land larger than 173 acres. It further encourages land development in areas that are considered wasteland or that feature low soil productivity. Although the law requires the zero net loss of farmland policy to be implemented at provincial levels, it is actually carried out at the city, county and sometimes township levels.

Assessment of the Farmland Policy

The goals of the farmland preservation laws are to limit development on farmland and to preserve as much existing farmland as possible. Land development patterns and urban encroachment into farmland continue unabated, however. Approximately 470,000, 428,000 and 510,000 acres were converted to urban uses in 1997, 1998 and 1999 respectively, and in 2001–2002 some 1.32 percent of remaining farmland was lost. The actual rate of farmland loss was probably far greater than those officially released numbers. For example, seven administrative units at the provincial level (Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong, Hunan, Congqing, Jiangxi and Yunnan) reported net farmland losses in 1999.

On closer inspection, the negative impacts of China’s farmland preservation laws may outweigh the gains. These laws have been questioned because they affect other actions that create urban sprawl and the merging of villages and cities; destroy contiguity of urban areas; raise transportation costs; and impose high social costs resulting from clustering of incompatible land uses. More important, they push economic activities into locations that may not provide any locational advantage and adversely affect urban agglomeration, which ultimately affects the competitiveness of the local economy.

The designation of basic farmland is based primarily on the quality of soil productivity; location is not a factor. Because existing development has occurred near historically high-productivity areas, that land is likely to be designated as basic farmland whereas land farther away is not. New development thus results in leapfrogging development and urban sprawl and raises transportation costs, but also creates mixed land use patterns in which villages are absorbed within cities and cities are imposed on villages. These patterns are common in regions with high population density and fast growth rates, such as the Pearl Delta of Guangdong Province. The mixed village and city pattern aggravates an already underfunctioning urban agglomeration that results from a relatively high level of immobility in the population because of the hukou system, which gives residents access to certain heavily subsidized local amenities, such as schools.

By using soil productivity as the criterion for designating basic farmland, site selection for economic development projects becomes constrained, making business less competitive. This policy is also responsible for the ad hoc land development process and the creation of a chaotic and uncoordinated land development pattern. As a result, existing infrastructure use becomes less efficient and it costs more for local government to provide urban services. Overall, the urban economy is hurt.

Furthermore, developers have to pay high land prices, which they eventually pass on to consumers through higher housing prices or commercial rents. Land becomes more expensive because the law requires developers who wish to build on basic farmland to either identify or develop the same amount of farmland elsewhere, or pay someone to do so. The cost of this process will rise exponentially as the amount of land available for farmland is depleted, making housing even less affordable. In Beijing, for instance, land costs alone account for 30–40 percent of total development costs if a project is developed on farmland, but 60–70 percent if the project is developed in existing urban areas.

Perhaps one of the worst aspects of the farmland preservation laws is that they treat farmers unfairly. Land development is far more lucrative than farming, so farmers rigorously pursue real estate projects. In the early 1990s, for example, selling land use rights to developers could generate incomes that were 200–300 times higher than the annual yields from farm production. Farmers and village communes, eager to benefit from booming urban land markets, are lured to develop their farmland. The problem is that farmers whose land is considered basic farmland are penalized by this institutional designation that denies them access to urban land markets, even if their farms may enjoy a location advantage. Farmers from areas not designated as basic farmland are not similarly constrained. This inequitable treatment makes it difficult for local governments to implement effective land management tools and creates social tensions that complicate the land acquisition process, lead to chaotic and uncoordinated development, and encourage the development of hidden or informal land markets.

There are four reasons for the general failure of China’s farmland preservation policy. First, farmland preservation laws fail to give sufficient consideration to regional differences. Even at a provincial level some governments have difficulty maintaining a constant amount of farmland in the face of rapid urbanization. Land resources are extremely scarce in some provincial units, such as Beijing, Shanghai and Zhejiang, where development pressures are strong.

The second reason is the requirement that each of the five administrative levels of government (the state, provinces, municipalities, countries and townships) must maintain an arbitrarily determined percentage (80 percent) of basic farmland without the ability to adjust to pressures of demand and market prices. In some regions, demand is so high that officials look for various alternative ways to convert farmland into urban uses. The most common approach is through establishment of industrial parks, economic development zones or high-tech districts, usually on quality farmland areas at the urban fringe. This occurs for two reasons: to attract businesses and to raise land revenues by leasing acquired farmland to developers. There is a striking difference between the prices paid to farmers for their land and the prices for that same land when sold to developers.

Third, local officials almost always give economic development projects top priority and are easily tempted to sacrifice farmland or rural development to achieve a rapid rate of economic growth. As a result, farmland preservation efforts are doomed to fail wherever development pressure is present. This is not surprising since the farmland preservation laws fail to employ any price mechanisms or provide any financial incentives for either local governments or individual farmers to protect farmland.

The fourth problem is the absence of land markets or land rights in rural areas where Chinese governments tend to rely solely on their administrative power to preserve farmland but ignore emerging market forces in determining uses of resources.

Policy Challenges

In recognition of the importance of food security to China and the pressure of urban development on land supply, the Lincoln Institute is collaborating with the Ministry of Land and Resources on a project called Farmland Preservation in the Era of Rapid Urbanization. The objective of the project is to engage Chinese officials in evaluating this complicated issue and to design and implement farmland preservation plans that recognize regional differences and development pressures, and that introduce price mechanisms and respect for farmers’ rights.

First, three fundamental questions need to be addressed:

• Would a policy to have zero net loss of farmland on a regional basis be better than separate policies in each of the five administrative levels of government, as is currently the case? If so, how are regions to be defined and how can Chinese officials make a regionwide policy work?
• Is it better to have a policy of zero net loss of farmland productivity or a policy of zero net loss of land used for farming? If the former, how can such a policy on productivity be implemented?
• How can farmland be preserved within the context of emerging land markets in rural areas and within a new institutional framework in which the rights of farmers are recognized?

For those interested in land use policies, few countries in the world offer as many dynamic and challenging issues as China. Engagement and dialogue between Chinese and American scholars, practitioners and public officials on these topics will be crucial to the final outcome.

Chengri Ding is associate professor in the Urban Studies and Planning Department at the University of Maryland and director of the Joint China Land Policy and Urban Management Program of the University of Maryland and the Lincoln Institute.

Reference

Brown, Lester R. 1995. Who will feed China?: Wake-up call for a small planet. Washington, DC: Worldwatch Institute.

Photograph Caption: H. James Brown, president of the Lincoln Institute, with Lu Xinshe, vice-minister of China’s Ministry of Land and Resources, signed an agreement in September 2002 at Lincoln House. Observing the occasion are (left to right) Yang Yixin, deputy director general of the Ministry, Chengri Ding, and Wang Guanghua, director general of the Ministry’s Information Center.

Driving around a bustling Chinese city, one can almost feel the pace of change. Just a few decades ago, China was a sleeping giant whose prominence in world affairs seemed forever relegated to its ancient past. Today China boasts one of the world’s fastest growing economies and some of the most vibrant cities, and it is among the most active and interesting real estate markets.

From 1978 to 1997, gross domestic product in China grew at a remarkable 17 percent annual rate. Over the last several years, while most Western nations languished in recession, the economy of China grew at a steady 7 to 8 percent. China’s population continues to grow as well. In November 2000, China’s population was approximately 1.3 billion; by the year 2050 it is expected to reach 1.6 billion. Following familiar international patterns, the combination of population growth and economic expansion is manifest most prominently in Chinese cities. From 1957 to 1995, China’s urban population grew from 106 to 347 million. In 1982 there were 182 Chinese cities; by 1996 there were 666.

While urbanization has led to significant improvements in the welfare of the Chinese people, it has also placed enormous pressure on China’s land resources. China is the world’s third largest country in land area (after Russia and Canada). But, with more than 21 percent of the world’s population living on about 7 percent of the world’s cultivated land, China’s farmland resources are relatively scarce. Between 1978 and 1995 China’s cultivated land fell from 99.4 million to 94.9 million hectares while its population rose from 962 million to 1.2 billion. Simply because of its scale, the widening gap between China’s growing population and a shrinking supply of farmland has implications not only for China’s ability to feed itself, but also for global food security.

To manage its land base and rapid urban expansion, the Chinese government in the early 1980s launched sweeping reforms of the structure of institutions that govern land and housing allocation. While maintaining the fundamental features of a socialist society (state or collective ownership of land), China has moved toward a system in which market forces shape the process of urbanization and individuals have greater choice over where to work and live. Among the most influential of these changes are the establishment of land use rights, the commercialization of housing, and a restructuring of the urban development process.

Land Use Rights

Before the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was founded in 1949, land could be privately owned and legally transferred through mutual agreement, and property taxes were a key source of local public finance. Soon after the Communist Revolution, however, property use rights were radically transformed. In rural areas the Communist Party confiscated all privately held land and turned it over to the poor. Later, peasants joined communes (“production co-operations”) by donating their assets, including their land. Today, nearly all land in rural areas remains owned by farmer collectives. In urban areas, the Communist Party took a more gradual approach. While confiscating property owned by foreign capitalists and anti-revolutionaries, it allowed private ownership and land transactions to continue. Over the next two decades, however, through land confiscation, strict controls on rent and major investments in public housing, state dominance in urban land and housing markets grew. By the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, nearly all land was owned by collectives or by the state. Private property rights virtually disappeared and land transactions were banned.

Modern land reforms began in the mid-1980s. Following a successful experiment in Shenzhen (a Special Economic Development Zone on the border with Hong Kong), in which state-owned land was leased to foreign corporations, the Constitution was amended in 1988 so that “land use can be transacted according to the law.” In 1990, China officially adopted land leasing as the basis for assigning land use rights to urban land users.

In the current property rights regime, use rights for specified periods (e.g., 40 to 70 years) can be obtained from the state through the up-front payment of land use fees. The fees are determined by the location, type and density of the proposed development. This separation of land ownership and use rights allows the trading of land use rights while maintaining state ownership of land. For the Chinese government, this separation offered three advantages: first, market mechanisms could help guide the allocation of land resources; second, land use fees would provide local government with a new source of revenues; and third, by retaining state ownership, social and political conflict would be minimized.

In the short period following its adoption, the new system of land use rights has had profound symbolic and measurable impacts. By embracing the concept of property rights, the system provided Chinese residents and firms with greater economic freedom and signaled to the world that China welcomes foreign investment on Chinese soil. By establishing legal rights of use, China has promoted the development of land markets, enhanced the fiscal capacity of local governments, and accelerated the advancement of market socialism. The system also created a fast-growing real estate market that is now transforming China’s urban landscape.

Despite its advantages, the system created many new challenges. First, state-owned enterprises can still acquire land through administrative channels, causing price distortions and large losses of local government revenues. Second, government officials are tempted to lease as much land as possible for their own short-term gain. Since revenues from the sale of land use rights account for 25 to 75 percent of some local government budgets, future losses of revenue are inevitable as land becomes increasingly scarce. Third, there is great uncertainty about what happens when existing leases expire. Most leases stipulate, for example, that without payments for renewal, rights of use return to the state. However, it will be extremely difficult to collect such payments when hundreds or thousands of tenants share rights previously purchased by a single developer. Finally, the government lacks the ability to capture its share of rents as they increase over time. As capital investments and location premiums rise, these losses could be substantial.

Whether land use rights and the markets they create will soon dominate the process of urban development or alter the structure of Chinese cities also remains uncertain. There is evidence that land use fees vary spatially in Chinese cities, much like prices and rents in Western cities. But it may be several decades before skylines and capital-land ratios in Chinese cities mirror those in the West. Further, fees remain set by administrative rather than competitive processes. Thus, the extent to which they will improve the allocation of land resources remains to be seen.

The Commercialization of Housing

The socialization of housing was an important element of the communist transformation. But because the communist party took a more gradual approach in urban areas, private ownership remained the dominant form of housing tenure in Chinese cities through the mid-1950s. Over the next two decades little private housing was constructed because the state owned all the land, imposed strict ceilings on rents, and generally discouraged speculative building. By the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, privately owned housing had virtually disappeared.

In the absence of private housing markets, shelter became part of the social wage provided by the state. Housing was not provided directly by the government but through the work unit or danwei, a state-owned enterprise that serves as a vehicle for structuring economic activity and social organization. The main defining feature of a danwei is its multi-functionality as a place of employment, residence, education and commerce. A danwei worker acquires housing “according to his work,” a fundamental socialist allocation principle. In this system the allocation of housing is determined by social status and length of employment, not prices and incomes.

Danwei housing was an integral element of a centrally planned economy in which financial resources were planned by entire sectors (industrial, educational, health care, and others). Housing was merely one element of these larger development projects and was constructed only if the project needed workers and those workers needed housing. Investments in housing and other services such as schools (if the project was large), canteens and daily-use grocery stores were made in conjunction with the overall project; entire communities were thus built all at once enabling workers to live close to their work. The distinctive role of the danwei has had a profound impact on the morphology of Chinese cities and has complicated housing policy reforms ever since.

While serving to promote socialist ideology and minimizing popular unrest, the danwei system had serious limitations. The combination of negligible rents and excessive housing demand placed heavy financial and production burdens on the state. Housing allocations were based on criteria such as occupation, administrative rank, job performance, loyalty and political connections. Gross inequities were common. Finally, inadequate revenue generation from rents diminished the quality of housing management and maintenance and discouraged the construction of private rental housing or owner-occupied housing by private developers.

When Deng XiaoPing came into power in 1978, he attacked the state-controlled public housing system and introduced market forces into the housing policy arena. Subsequently, the government initiated a reform program with privatization as a major component. The privatization of the state-controlled housing sector included several elements: (1) increases in rents to market levels; (2) sales of public housing to private individuals; (3) encouragement of private and foreign investments in housing; (4) less construction of new public housing; (5) encouragement and protection of private home ownership; (6) construction of commercial housing by profit-making developers; and (7) promotion of self-build housing in cities.

The dismantling of the danwei housing system and the commodification of housing, though far from complete, has produced rapid growth in the housing industry and a substantial expansion of the housing stock. By 1992, the government share of investments in housing had fallen to 10 percent—less than the share of investment from foreign sources. In the wake of an extended housing boom, per capita living space rose from 4.2 square meters in 1978 to 7.9 in 1995.

Growing pains persist, however. Many Chinese still live in housing deemed inadequate by Western standards, and critical financial institutions remain underdeveloped. Housing for the wealthy is overabundant while housing for the poor remains scarce. Further, as space per Chinese resident rises, maintaining jobs-housing balance becomes increasingly difficult. The replacement of danwei housing with a Western-style housing market gives Chinese residents greater freedom of location, but it may lead to the deconstruction of communities in which work, leisure and commerce are closely integrated. Rising automobile ownership also may create Western-style gridlock. Furthermore, the rapid rise of commercial housing undermines the longstanding tradition in which access to affordable housing is an integral part of the social contract. As a result, the commercialization of housing, far more than a mere change in ownership structure, represents a fundamental change in the core institutions of Chinese society.

Restructuring Urban Development

Unlike many other rapidly developing nations, China is still relatively nonurbanized. In 2000, approximately 36 percent of China’s population lived in urban areas, and no single metropolitan area dominated the urban hierarchy. Among the many reasons for this pattern is the government’s regulation of rural-urban migration through a household registration system, or hukou. Every Chinese resident has a hukou designation as an urban or rural resident. Hukou is an important indicator of social status, and urban (chengshi) status is necessary for access to urban welfare benefits, such as schools, health care or subsidized agricultural goods. Without urban hukou status it is very difficult to live in cities. By limiting access to the benefits of urbanization, the hukou system ostensibly served as the world’s most influential urban growth management instrument.

As land and housing markets have emerged, the hukou system has weakened. Rural peasants now account for a significant portion of the urban population. As a result, China has been forced to manage urban growth, like other nations, through the conversion of land from rural to urban uses. Today, this can occur in one of two ways: (1) work units and municipalities develop land acquired from rural collectives through an administrative process; and (2) municipalities acquire land from rural collectives and lease it to developers. While providing local governments with new sources of revenues and introducing market rationality, this dual land market has introduced other complexities in the urban development process. Black markets have been created, for example, by the difference in price between land obtained virtually free through an administrative process and land leased to the private sector upon payment of fees. Work units have undertaken developments incompatible with municipal plans. And, urban sprawl has arisen in the special development zones that have proliferated in the rush to attract foreign investment.

To address these problems, the 1999 New Land Administration Law (which amended the 1988 Land Administration Law) was adopted to protect farmland, manage urban growth, promote market development, and encourage citizen involvement in the legislative process. Besides strengthening property rights, the law mandates no net loss of cultivated land. It stipulates that “overall plans and annual plans for land utilization take measures to ensure that the total amount of cultivated land within their administrative areas remains unreduced.” This means that land development cannot take place on farmland unless the same amount of agricultural land is reclaimed elsewhere. As reclaimable land is depleted, urban land supplies will diminish, the cost of land reclamation will rise and ultimately that cost will be passed on to consumers. Since its implementation, the law has drawn widespread criticism for stressing farmland protection over urban development. Due to rising incomes and larger populations, the demand for urban land will continue to increase. Given the fixed amount of land, development costs will certainly rise and gradually slow the pace of urban development.

Challenges and Opportunities

For those interested in land and housing policy, China is difficult to ignore. Through perhaps the most sweeping and nonviolent land and housing reforms the world has ever seen, China is moving from a system tightly controlled by the state to one strongly influenced by market forces. The pace at which this transformation is taking place offers rare challenges and opportunities. For land policy researchers, China offers opportunities to explore questions central to international urban policy debates: (1) how do market forces shape the internal structure of cities? (2) can markets provide safe and affordable housing for all segments of the population? and (3) are markets the primary cause of urban sprawl? For academics and practitioners involved in education and training, China offers the challenge of sharing the lessons of Western experience without encouraging the Chinese to make the same mistakes. In the process, both researchers and trainers have the opportunity to improve the process of development in the world’s most rapidly urbanizing nation.

Chengri Ding is assistant professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. He also serves as special assistant to the president of the Lincoln Institute for the China Program.

Gerrit Knaap is professor and director of the National Center for Smart Growth at the University of Maryland. The authors are editing a Lincoln Institute book on land and housing markets in China, including papers presented at the First World Planning Schools Congress held in Shanghai in July 2001.

The New Urbanism has captured the imagination of the American public like no urban planning movement in decades. Amid great fanfare, New Urbanists are seeking to redefine the nature of the American metropolis by reintroducing traditional notions of neighborhood design and fitting those ideas into a variety of urban and suburban settings.

The New Urbanism began as a reaction to conventional suburban planning as it has been practiced in the United States since the 1940s. New Urbanists view the decentralized, auto-oriented suburb as a recipe for disaster. They blame these suburbs for ever-increasing congestion on arterial roads, a lack of meaningful civic life, the loss of open space, limited opportunities for children and others without cars, and a general discontent among suburbanites.

As the latest in a long line of reform movements that have sought to establish new planning and design principles that may be applied to metropolitan areas and, especially, to new suburban neighborhoods, the New Urbanism owes much to the City Beautiful and Garden City movements of the early twentieth century. The “neotraditional” view of urban planning that began in the early 1980s with the widely publicized new town of Seaside, Florida, has since matured into the New Urbanism movement of the 1990s.

Many different sets of planning and design principles are circulating around the New Urbanism banner, but most definitions include the following ideas:

• walkable neighborhoods oriented around the five-minute walk;
• primary orientation around public transit systems;
• greater integration of different types of land uses at the neighborhood level.

In addition, most New Urbanists claim to be committed to the concepts of strong citizen participation, affordable housing, and social and economic diversity, though these ideas do not fit so neatly onto a list of neighborhood design characteristics. In its rhetoric, the New Urbanism strives for a kind of utopian social ideal, although most New Urbanists focus on a community’s physical infrastructure in the belief that community design can create or influence particular social patterns.

Promises and Problems

The New Urbanism is still in its infancy, and there remains a great deal of skepticism about what its proponents seek to achieve. Although millions of Americans live in “old urban” neighborhoods, fewer than 2,000 live in new neighborhoods built strictly according to New Urbanist principles. Many critics believe that, while the New Urbanism contains many attractive ideas, it may have difficulty dealing with a wide range of contemporary issues that generally fall into five broad categories: scale, transportation, planning and codes, regionalism, and marketing.

Scale: The traditional neighborhoods that the New Urbanists hope to replicate are characterized by compactness, small scale and diversity of building types. But, increasingly, the economic and lifestyle demands of urban and even suburban life seem to require facilities on a massive scale, such as big-box retailers and their industrial equivalents. Many New Urbanists concede that large-scale operations will inevitably be auto-oriented, but they still claim their ideas can work for smaller-scale retailers.

Transportation: Transportation is perhaps the most contentious single aspect of the New Urbanism, which is often “sold” to public officials based on its supposed transportation benefits. Assertions such as reduced dependence on the automobile, increased transit use, shorter trips, and a more flexible hierarchy of streets make common sense, but they are not yet backed up by much empirical evidence. Perhaps the best that can be said is that New Urbanist ideas may be a necessary but not sufficient pre-condition to change the way people travel.

Planning and Codes: New Urbanists often criticize American development codes as perpetuating suburbia’s auto-oriented nature. Codes regarding segregated land uses, street widths, setbacks and other requirements are often the province of local officials, such as fire chiefs and traffic engineers, who are loathe to change them. Some New Urbanists have worked successfully with code enforcers to find common ground in order to permit unconventional projects to proceed, yet, many aspects of planning and codes remain incompatible and contentious.

Regionalism: New Urbanists have struggled to move the public perception of their movement beyond the simple idea of designing suburban neighborhoods toward focusing on metropolitan areas. Proponents and critics alike fear that widespread application of the movement’s design principles apart from a regional context may simply cause suburban sprawl to be replaced by “New Urban” sprawl. Many New Urbanists advocate urban and suburban redevelopment and infill projects, and some have expressed support for such regulatory tools as urban growth boundaries.

Marketing: Many previous reform movements in urban planning have failed because their ideas did not enjoy widespread acceptance in the marketplace, and New Urbanism is facing a similar challenge. Real estate marketing experts say that many New Urbanist projects proceeded with little market research because the developers (who were New Urbanist devotees themselves) simply believed the idea would sell itself. Now they see that selling New Urbanism requires at least as much marketing effort as selling a conventional subdivision. New Urbanists have also learned the hard way that the promise of a diversified community, with many types and prices of homes, retail stores within walking distance, and other community amenities, requires a highly sophisticated effort to bring all the components “on line” in the right sequence.

A Powerful Idea

Although it is often advertised as a panacea, the New Urbanism is only one alternative to suburban sprawl. It will probably function most successfully in a broader planning context that may include significant investments in transit, incentives to reinvest in the inner city, and disincentives to build at the metropolitan fringe.

At the same time, it is important to appreciate the power of the New Urbanism as an idea. Perhaps the most refreshing aspect of this movement is that it promotes a positive image of “town life” that includes the public as well as the private realm. In a world where a “lack of community” is often blamed for many social ills, this is no small achievement.

William Fulton is editor of California Planning and Development Report, contributing editor of Planning magazine, and a member of the Lincoln Institute Editorial Advisory Committee. This article is excerpted in part from the Lincoln Institute Policy Focus Report, The New Urbanism.