Why are house prices in many advanced economies rising faster than incomes? Why isn’t land and location taught or seen as important in modern economics? What is the relationship between the financial system and land? In this accessible but provocative guide to the economics of land and housing, the authors reveal how many of the key challenges facing modern economies - including housing crises, financial instability and growing inequalities - are intimately tied to the land economy. Looking at the ways in which discussions of land have been routinely excluded from both housing policy and economic theory, the authors show that in order to tackle these increasingly pressing issues a major rethink by both politicians and economists is required.

As formerly community-owned land and natural resources are privatized and titling schemes proliferate, Property Rights from Below questions the trend towards treating land as a commodity and explores alternatives to the Western model.

Housing, land and property (HLP) rights, as rights, are widely recognized throughout international human rights and humanitarian law and provide a clear and consistent legal normative framework for developing better approaches to the HLP challenges faced by the UN and others seeking to build long-term peace. This book analyses the ubiquitous HLP challenges present in all conflict and post-conflict settings. It will bridge the worlds of the practitioner and the theorist by combining an overview of the international legal and policy frameworks on HLP rights with dozens of detailed case studies demonstrating country experiences from around the world. The book will be of particular interest to professors and students of international relations, law, human rights, and peace and conflict studies but will have a wider readership among practitioners working for international institutions such as the United Nations and the World Bank, non-governmental organizations, and national agencies in the developing world.

This book explores various contemporary aspects of the growing field of housing, land and property (HLP) rights. HLP rights have undergone a major transformation in recent decades, but much remains to be done to bring their promise to the billions of people who have yet to access them. This work presents several innovative ways by which the entire field of HLP rights can be strengthened in support of those to whom they are promised by human rights laws. It outlines the author’s suggestions for creating a new World Restitution Agency, expanding our understanding of the term ‘internationally wrongful act’ to HLP crimes, the links between mine action and HLP rights in post-conflict societies and the need to include HLP issues in peace agreements. The book concludes with several chapters that outline suggestions for better addressing climate displacement, including the need for national climate land banks, the role of the courts and how to redistribute global wealth towards rehousing the millions set to be displaced from their homes and lands due to the effects of climate change. The volume will be essential reading for academics, researchers and policymakers working in the areas of international human rights law, housing, land and property issues, humanitarian issues and climate change.

This book is about the UN's role in housing, land, and property rights in countries after violent conflict.

A new understanding of the causes and consequences of incomplete property rights in countries across the world.

This volume from the International Bureau of the PCA presents a collection of studies on innovative responses to the unique challenges of resolving large numbers of claims arising from common, often tragic, circumstances-mass claims. The mass claims processes discussed in this volume were created in the aftermath of war or other atrocities, and redress is often an important component of settlement for the victims. The authors consider mass claims processes both from a conceptual and a practical perspective through lessons learned over twenty-five years. This book covers innovations to speed mass claims processes by means of new standards of proof and the use of information technology, as well as specific mass claims processes: the United Nations Compensation Commission; the Austrian General Settlement Fund; the French Commission for the Compensation of Victims of Spoliation; the German Forced Labour Compensation Programme; and the reparations provisions of the Statute of the International Criminal Court. From a North American perspective, authors address the litigation of mass claims involving slavery under United States law, the United States Indian Claims Commission, and the successful completion of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. In addition, Volume 1 of the Final Report of the Special Master of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund is reprinted in its entirety. The responses of the international community to current issues of compensation and reparations, the role of civil society actors in reparations legislation, and recent instruments adopted by the Council of Europe and the United Nations Commission on Human Rights are also reviewed.

This history of the idea of “neighborhood” in a major American city examines the transition of Atlanta, Georgia, from a place little concerned with residential segregation, tasteful surroundings, and property control to one marked by extreme concentrations of poverty and racial and class exclusion. Using Atlanta as a lens to view the wider nation, LeeAnn Lands shows how assumptions about race and class have coalesced with attitudes toward residential landscape aesthetics and home ownership to shape public policies that promote and protect white privilege. Lands studies the diffusion of property ideologies on two separate but related levels: within academic, professional, and bureaucratic circles and within circles comprising civic elites and rank-and-file residents. By the 1920s, following the establishment of park neighborhoods such as Druid Hills and Ansley Park, white home owners approached housing and neighborhoods with a particular collection of desires and sensibilities: architectural and landscape continuity, a narrow range of housing values, orderliness, and separation from undesirable land uses—and undesirable people. By the 1950s, these desires and sensibilities had been codified in federal, state, and local standards, practices, and laws. Today, Lands argues, far more is at stake than issues of access to particular neighborhoods, because housing location is tied to the allocation of a broad range of resources, including school funding, infrastructure, and law enforcement. Long after racial segregation has been outlawed, white privilege remains embedded in our culture of home ownership.