Land means the basic part of the natural environment, the basic instrument of human life, activity and immovable property, which is being disposed of in the process of land relation. Land should be used when coordinating private and public interests as well as environment protection requirements.

Paralleling the increasing disparities
in income and wealth worldwide since the 1980s, cities in
developing countries have witnessed the emergence of a
growing divergence of lifestyles, particularly within the
middle classes, reinforced by the widening gap between the
quality of public and private educational and health care
institutions, spatial segregation, gated communities, and
exclusive semiprivate amenities. This erosion of social

Afghanistan is one of the poorest and
longest suffering countries among members of the World Bank,
and has been ravaged by chronic conflict and political
instability. Afghanistan's infrastructure has been
destroyed or degraded; its human resource base severely
depleted; and its social capital eroded. Despite existing
public administration structures, the majority of state
institutions are only beginning to function effectively, and

Risk-sensitive land use planning is
vital for sustainable economic development and effective
Disaster Risk Management (DRM). Urban development programs
should adopt risk-sensitive land use planning to encourage
resilient development guiding the growth of people, assets
and services within and away from hazardous zones. Many East
Asia and the Pacific (EAP) countries have national land use
policy and local plans which incorporate risk assessments;

This paper pilots an approach to
identifying, categorizing, and mapping public land owned by
the central, state, and local government in urban developed
areas of Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India. The methodology uses
information on plot sizes, location, and ownership that is
publicly available for all areas covered by town planning
schemes. The study examines the extent of unutilized and
underutilized public land, which excludes all cemeteries,

The 2007-2008 upsurge in agricultural
commodity prices gave rise to widespread concern about
investors causing a "global land rush". Large land
deals can provide opportunities for better access to
capital, transfer of technology, and advances in
productivity and employment generation. But they carry risks
of dispossession and loss of livelihoods, corruption,
deterioration in local food security, environmental damage,

South Sudan is a new country of 10.5
million people that has just emerged from conflict and still
facing challenges with recovery and development. Although
economic disparities, political exclusion and deprivation in
the distribution of political and economic power between the
northern and southern parts of then united Sudan were often
tendered as the proximal causes of the conflict, at the
center of the prolonged civil war was the struggle for

The purpose of this report is to review
and assess Afghanistan's legal framework regulating
social safeguards (national and local laws, regulations,
procedures and policies) with special reference to the law
and practice of compulsory land acquisition, or
expropriation. The overall objective of the report is to
consider how Afghanistan's legal framework would
address social safeguard issues in upcoming World Bank

Cities in developing countries are experiencing unprecedented urban growth. Unfortunately, this is often accompanied by the negative impacts of sprawl as a result of rapid motorization such as congestion, air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, inefficient use of energy and time, and unequal accessibility. As these cities are often under severe fiscal constraints, they face great challenges in financing capital-intensive mass transit systems to reverse the course of these negative trends.

The Wenchuan earthquake affected 20
cities, 158 counties, and 3,655 towns and villages.
Geographic and demographic conditions varied significantly
from small, rural villages to county-level cities, as did
the magnitude of the physical damages. The reconstruction
strategy and plan, inclusive of land management, depended on
the conditions specific to each locale, from in situ
reconstruction for the cities and towns with limited damage

This paper quantifies the misallocation of manufacturing output and factors of production between establishments across Indian districts during 1989-2010. It first distills a number of stylized facts about misallocation in India, and demonstrates the validity of misallocation metrics by connecting them to regulatory changes in India that affected real property. With this background, the study next quantifies the implications and determinants of factor and output misallocation.

Land markets that allow access to
land-and to buildings-through secure property rights, at
transparent prices, and with efficient permitting processes
and land tax systems are essential to a good business
environment. Creating such markets, however, can be a long,
complex, politically charged process, especially where most
land is untitled and where there are conflicting claims. But
experience points to practical interim or step solutions