Global Report on Human Settlements 2007 - PoA-ISS

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Towards safer and more secure cities
Box 11.8 Brazil’s City Statute
Very few local
governments have
adopted policies that
explicitly draw on
human rights and
none, at present, use
international human
rights to inform
their planning and
programming
Despite … decentralization
policies
… land management
still tends to depend
upon central or
federal governments
The City Statute, or the Brazilian Federal Law on Urban
Development, was adopted in 2001. It defines the framework, principles
and instruments to regulate the use of land for social purposes,
the recognition of informal settlements as part of the city and the
subject of rights, the democratic participation in urban management,
and the empowerment of the municipalities as the main local agents
entitled to regulate land usage and occupation.
One of the major components of the City Statute is that it
includes provisions to simplify the regularization of informal land
occupations. Before the adoption of this law, the regularization
process in São Paulo included 80 steps, making approval of informal
settlements virtually impossible, thus ensuring that the expansion of
settlements could only occur in irregular ways. The City Statute
thus allows for the decentralization of urban planning, thereby facilitating
the work of municipal governments in developing local plans.
The City Statute is particularly innovative by introducing
clear regulations governing democratic participation of civil society
in urban planning and management. The municipalities must arrange
their decision-making procedures in such a way that all the
concerned parties can participate directly in the process of designing
public policy, as well as in the subsequent management of
programmes on housing, land and urban planning, which result from
such policies. In essence, the statute empowers local government,
through laws, urban planning and management tools, to determine
how best to balance individual and collective interests in urban land.
The statute seeks to deter speculation and non-use of
urban land (through taxation) so that land can be freed to provide
housing space for the urban poor. Among many unique elements of
the statute is the envisaged use of adverse possession rights (see
Articles 8 and 9 below) to establish secure tenure and to enforce
Source: Estatuto das Cidades-Lei Federal no 10.257, 10 July 2001 (City Statute); Polis, 2002; Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor, 2006b, pp5–6
SUPPORTING THE VITAL
ROLE OF LOCAL
GOVERNMENT
The role of local government in diagnosing security of tenure
conditions and then acting to provide security of tenure to
all, within the shortest possible timeframe, is a vitally important
component of any successful security of tenure policy.
However, security of tenure is not the only concern of public
bodies at the municipal level; local government responsibilities
the world over are expanding, with many local
governments effectively inundated with new powers and
responsibilities, including the provision of services related to
health, education, housing, water supply, policing, taxation
and other matters. Its relevance to political empowerment,
citizen involvement and delivery of public services has
meant that local government has become a major arena of
policy formulation. It is estimated that such processes are
under way in some 80 per cent of all developing and transition
countries. 37
However, while the localization of governance has
many positive features, weak and under-resourced local
the social function of urban property.Yet, it should be noted that
despite the City Statute, the poor remain excluded from official
entitlements such as identity cards and social services.
Several articles of the City Statute provide the basis for
perhaps the first legislative recognition in any country of the essential
‘right to the city’ as a basic element of citizenship and human
rights:
• Article 2 states that the purpose of the urban policy is to
support development of the social functions of the city and of
urban property through a number of guidelines, including
guaranteeing the right to sustainable cities. This is understood
as the right to urban land, housing, environmental sanitation,
urban infrastructure, transportation and public services, and to
work and leisure for current and future generations.
• Article 8 entitles local governments to expropriate unused
urban land after a period of five years if the obligation of the
owner of the land to subdivide, build or use the property is not
met.
• Article 9 entitles anyone who has possession of an urban area
or building of less than 250 square metres for five years or
more the right to title of dominion. The main provisions are
that the land or building has been in the possession uninterruptedly
and without contestation; that they use it for their
own or their family’s residence; and that the claimant is not the
owner of any other real estate. The article also states that title
will be conferred to men or women alike irrespective of their
marital status; that the same possessor can only make use of
this adverse possession entitlement once in their lives; and that
the title can be transferred through inheritance.
governments are far more common than those with the political
will and financial basis for remedying tenure insecurity.
One of the major problems, from the perspective of urban
security and safety, is that very few local governments have
adopted policies that explicitly draw on human rights and
none, at present, use international human rights to inform
their planning and programming. There are, however, signs
of positive developments in this regard as some local governments
have joined up in the Cities for Human Rights
movement, which is working towards the development of a
Charter of Human Rights in the City. Other local governments
are developing their own city charters. 38
Yet, despite the fact that decentralization policies in
many countries have led to the transfer of responsibilities for
urban management to local governments, land management
still tends to depend upon central or federal governments. In
general, national governments are still responsible for the
regulation of land tenure, taxation systems and the registration
of property rights and transactions. Furthermore, the
administration of these tends to fall under the responsibility
of regional delegations of central government agencies,
rather than that of local governments. The main problem
with this central government control over land management,