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Land titling has been a policy priority for developing country cities for decades. In Sub-Saharan Africa and across the world, tenure formalization has been promoted as a tool to improve the quality and value of urban housing. The track record of these projects, however, has generally been disappointing. Why is this? This paper argues that project design has paid too little attention to contextual features of land markets in estimating the benefits of formalization to individual households. The paper draws on evidence from a case study city — Dar es Salaam, Tanzania — to show that in cities where broader property rights institutions are incomplete and informal sources of tenure security are strong, formal property rights may not be valued by households. This raises questions about the households' willingness to pay for regularization and suggests that complementary strategies to build trust in government and consolidate public benefits of titling will be needed to ensure that projects have a beneficial impact.

AbstractHedonic house price models are increasingly applied in the process of mass appraisal, in which econometric specifications are used to obtain automated valuation of properties for taxation purposes. The predictive quality of such models is important, since it directly affects the revenue stream of local authorities. In this paper, we assess the relative predictive performance of different model specifications used in automated valuation. Specifically, we focus on the issue of spatial heterogeneity by comparing models that utilize different definitions of housing submarkets. In addition, we consider the inclusion of 'spatial' explanatory variables in the form of distance to various amenities as computed from a GIS. We apply this to data from the city of Bogotá, Colombia, a pioneer in the application of mass appraisal techniques in a developing country context. We find that specifications that include the submarkets improve predictive performance and that the inclusion of the spatial variables is superior to the traditional models of homogenous zones. However, even the best models are still characterized by relatively poor performance in the form of a high degree of overprediction of the house value. In addition, the predictive performance of the models varied by socio‐economic stratum in the city, which suggests that the dynamics of the housing markets in these strata would require closer and separate attention. These results may provide further guidance to enhance mass appraisal practice in the city of Bogotá as well as potentially other Latin American cities.Resumen. Los modelos hedónicos de precios de la vivienda se están aplicando cada vez más en procesos de tasación en masa, en los que las especificaciones econométricas se utilizan para obtener una valoración automatizada de propiedades con fines fiscales. La calidad predictiva de dichos modelos es importante ya que afecta directamente a los ingresos de las autoridades locales. En este artículo evaluamos el comportamiento predictivo relativo de diferentes especificaciones del modelo utilizadas en la tasación automatizada. Específicamente, nos fijamos en el problema de la heterogeneidad espacial mediante la comparación de modelos que utilizan definiciones diferentes para los submercados de la vivienda. Consideramos además la incorporación de variables explicativas 'espaciales' representadas por la distancia a diferentes servicios y calculadas mediante SIG. Aplicamos todo ello a datos de la ciudad de Bogotá, Colombia, pionera en la aplicación de técnicas de tasación en masa bajo un contexto de países en desarrollo. Descubrimos que las especificaciones que incluyen los submercados mejoran el comportamiento predictivo y que la incorporación de variables espaciales es superior a los modelos tradicionales de zonas homogéneas. Sin embargo, incluso los mejores modelos aun están caracterizados por un pobre comportamiento relativo en cuanto a un alto grado de sobrepredicción del valor de la vivienda. Asimismo, hubo variación en el comportamiento predictivo de los modelos de acuerdo con el estrato socio‐económico de la ciudad, lo que sugiere que las dinámicas de los mercados de la vivienda en estos estratos podrían requerir una atención más detallada por separado. Estos resultados podrían proporcionar pautas adicionales para mejorar las prácticas de tasación en masa en la ciudad de Bogotá, así como posiblemente en otras ciudades latinoamericanas.graphic

The efficiency and productivity of Colombia's urban system will be a key determinant in the ability of the country to transition from a middle to a higher income economy. Economic growth is strongly driven by commodities in Colombia and other Latin American countries. However, the contribution of urban activities to urban growth is non-negligible when all urban activities are added. Strengthening the roles of cities may contribute to mitigating the risks inherent to commodity intensive economies and can support a stronger resource-based manufacturing economic structure and more knowledge intensive industries. In addition, a well functioning urban system is important for quality of life in a country with a highly urban population: almost 80 percent of Colombians live in urban areas, and urbanization is correlated with poverty reduction and improved access to basic services. The Colombia Urbanization Review: Amplifying the Gains from the Urban Transition aims to provide diagnostic tools to inform policy dialogue and investment priorities on urbanization by operationalizing the framework for urban policy developed in the 2009 World Development Report, Reshaping Economic Geography and the Bank's new Urban and Local Government Strategy, System of Cities: Harnessing Urbanization for Growth and Poverty Reduction. The review was implemented in two stages. A first stage looked at the system of cities in Colombia and identified a series of bottlenecks that limit the efficiency of the system. Three key topics were identified from the first phase diagnostics for further analysis in the second phase, in close discussion with the Department of National Planning. The three cross-cutting topics identified for a policy 'deep dive' in phase two were:deepening economic connectivity, enhancing coordination at a regional and metropolitan scale, and fostering

This paper examines the linkages between urban form and city productivity using seven alternative metrics for urban form and applying them to a comprehensive sample of Latin-American cities. While most of the literature has concentrated on the effects of population density (compact vs. sprawling urban development), this paper seeks to assess whether different dimensions of a city's urban form, such as shape, structure, and land use, affect its economic performance. We found that both the shape of the urban extent and the inner-city connectedness have a statistically significant association with the productivity level of a city.