Titling and Beyond : Evidence from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
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 t...
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| Language: | English |
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World Bank, Washington, DC
2021
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/493721615577813005/Titling-and-Beyond-Evidence-from-Dar-es-Salaam-Tanzania http://hdl.handle.net/10986/35288 |
| Summary: | 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. |
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