Urban land markets have a profound effect on how well poor households are able to access the jobs, amenities and services offered in the city. But often the way in which this market works frustrate attempts to open up better located living and business opportunities for poorer urban households and communities, despite government policies and programmes intended to address these challenges. The challenge in South Africa is even larger because of worsening poverty and inequality, and the continuing growth of cities through urbanisation.

By Anthony Piaskowy, Communication and Urban Specialist for USAID's Land Tenure and Property Rights Division.

Assesses the process of land registration in peri-urban areas of Mozambique and its outcomes for poor and marginalised groups. The research finds that there is little awareness of land registration processes on the part of low-income groups. The ‘individual’ registration process is slow and bureaucratic with high transaction costs and corrupt practices on the part of state institutions. Unlike the case of rural land, specific regulations governing the use of urban land are not yet in place.

Remotely-sensed images and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) data were integrated into the SLEUTH cellular automata (CA) model to analyze land-use/land-cover dynamics in Chiang Mai city and its surrounds. The land-use and land-cover statistics, obtained from GIS data base and satellite images from 1952, 1977, 1989 and 2000 revealed rapid increased in urbanization during these periods. To understand the underlying causes of land-use and land-cover dynamics, remote sensing, GIS and modeling techniques were applied.

The report by the Urban Agriculture Magazine draws on numerous case studies from around the world in discussing issues of availability, access and usability of land for urban agriculture.Rapid urbanisation has lead to an increasing demand for urban agricultural land. The adequate and efficient use of the land by urban farmers is of increasing concern to planners and municipal policymakers especially.Urban agriculture takes place on-plot and off-plot, and in periurban and is limited by the amount of non-built-up space.

The Land Administration Project aims to a) ensure equitable access to land and improve land tenure security by providing land administration services in selected rural, peri-urban, and urban areas; and b) enhance natural resources conservation through the consolidation of the National System of Projected Areas and indigenous peoples territories.

There is enough land in the Amazon region to satisfy Brazilian society's demands for economic development, environmental management of a resource base of global importance and the challenges of agrarian reform. Yet Brazil has been unable to create a fully coherent and manageable land policy and administration system for the region which permits sustainable development goals to be achieved while reconciling special interests and uses. Instead, resource waste, private appropriation of the public domain and social conflict characterize land relations in the region.

This project paper concern to introduces the following changes in the Ukraine, Rural Land Titling and Cadastre System Development Project, which into account difficulties experienced with completing the legal framework for parts of the project due to institutional rivalries that have not been resolved. The project included a part that was supposed to establish a unified registration system covering both urban and rural areas and it included funding for the transformation of the State Land Cadastre Center (SLCC) to implement this activity.

Almost two decades have passed since China first enacted legislation to protect farmland from conversion to nonagricultural use. Yet hundreds of thousands of hectares of agricultural land are still developed to urban area each year, raising the question of whether the legislation is effective in preserving farmland from development. This paper examines the effectiveness of the Basic Farmland Protection Regulation in protecting high-quality farmland from urban development in China in the first decade after it came into effect (1995‒2005).

The trend is inescapable: more and more people in the developing world are living in the cities. By 2020, the number of people living in developing countries will grow from 4.9 billion to 6.8 billion. Ninety percent of this increase will be in rapidly expanding cities and towns. More than half the population of Africa and Asia will live in urban areas by 2020. More than three-quarters of Latin Americans already do.

"Contrary to conventional economic theories, the relationship between income growth and the share of the population within the rural or agricultural sector is extremely diverse, even among regions starting from similar levels of development, such as Asia and Africa. The pattern in developing Asia is characterized by fast growth and slow urbanization, primarily as the result of labor-intensive agricultural growth and strong farm�nonfarm linkages. But for all its success to date, Asia appears to be increasingly vulnerable to rising inequality and jobless growth patterns.

In comparison to other African countries, Ethiopia has a low urbanization rate. According to the World Bank World Development Report (WDR) 2009, Sub-Sahara Africa is 30% urbanized, whereas Ethiopia is only 10.9% urbanized. Urbanization rates differ according to methodologies and data base utilized: the United Nations classifies Ethiopia as 14.9% urban, while the Central Statistical Agency of Ethiopia reports a 16% urbanization rate.