Keynote presentation by Roberto Rocco at the LANDAC Conference (Land Governance for Equitable and Sustainable Development), Muntgebouw, Utrecht, June 30 2016. The 2016 LANDac Annual International Land Conference ‘Land governance in the context of urbanisation and climate change: Linking the rural and the urban’ will take place on Thursday 30 June and Friday 1 July in Utrecht, the Netherlands (Muntgebouw). The conference builds on the success of the 2015 International Conference in which LANDac brought together stakeholders from around the world, from a variety of backgrounds. The 2016 conference focuses on topics related to rural-urban land governance and climate change. For more information, visit http://www.landgovernance.org

1. SpatialPlanning
&StrategyU
URBANISM
Delft University of
Technology
Land Governance for Equitable and Sustainable Development Conference
A New Urban Agenda
in times of financial
capitalism

2. Cities are cultural artefacts and they
embody livelihoods and economies

3. Cities are cultural artefacts and they
embody livelihoods and economies

4. The association of the production
of urban space and capitalism

5. The association of the production
of urban space and capitalism

6. The association of the production
of urban space and capitalism

7. The association of the production
of urban space and capitalism

8. Lefebvre and then Harvey:
The Urbanisation of Capital

9. Las Vegas

10. The Dutch version of suburbanisation:
home ownership as a mechanism
to promote growth and prosperity (don’t
forget the Netherlands is a very
particular type of entrepreneurial welfare
state!)

11. VINEX: the updated suburban
dream (compact, connected to
public transportation)

12. But there are more spectacular
embodiments of the
financialisation of urban space
Dubai

13. Hong Kong

14. Pudong

15. Sao Paulo: global city in
the semi-periphery of capitalism

16. Houses and offices need to
be furnished

17. Infrastructure needs to be built to connect
suburbs and new corporate centralities

18. and cars need to be bought
but there are limits to real
estate speculation

19. Thai 1997 Crisis:
‘Monuments to Speculators’

20. Spanish 2008 Real Estate Bubble:
‘The Cities That Never Were’

21. United States Subprime Mortgage Crisis
‘House of Cards’

22. The Big Short

23. Chinese Ghost Cities
the next chapter

24. Chinese Ghost Cities

25. Meanwhile

26. Favela Paraisopolis, Sao Paulo, Brazil
Brazil:
100 million new urban dwellers in the
post-war alone!

27. Favela da Rocinha, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Complementarity of formal and informal
INSIDE THE SAME LOGIC OF PRODUCTION OF
URBAN SPACE:
RIGHTS DEFICIT

28. Torre David, Caracas , Venezuela

29. Petare Slum, Caracas Venezuela

30. Slum in Jakarta, Indonesia (c. 2000)

31. Slum in Haiti after 2010 earthquake

32. globalisation

33. globalisation of production means that
countries all over the word are
inserted in production chains that
promote some sort of ‘subordinate’,
incomplete or defective modernisation
in the periphery of capitalism

34. Subordinate
modernisation has
triggered unchecked
rural to urban migration

35. This happens (mostly) in
weak institutional contexts ,
where the rule of law is
defective and there is a
deficit in civil rights

36. Exclusive
urbanisation

37. Urban exclusion is not the result of poverty
(only).
It is the result of complex ecosystems of
world production in which some countries or
regions have a subordinate role, with some
groups of people taking the blunt of the
prevailing unequal distributions of gains

39. SaoPaulo
Poor official responses

40. ‘Minha casa minha vida’
federal programme
Poor official responses

41. Mexico Poor official responses

42. Mumbai Poor official responses

43. SaoPaulo Poor official responses

44. socially
environmentally
economically
unsustainable

45. Sustainable urbanisation is key to
successful development
(…) “ If well managed, cities offer important opportunities for economic
development and for expanding access to basic services, including health care
and education, for large numbers of people. Providing public transportation, as
well as housing, electricity, water and sanitation for a densely settled urban
population is typically cheaper and less environmentally damaging than
providing a similar level of services to a dispersed rural population”.
Source: http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/news/population/world-urbanization-prospects-2014.html

46. Planning Urgencies
in Latin American
Cities

47. 1. How to bridge the social=spatial divide that characterises
the capitalist city?
Source: Instituto Pereira Passos, http://portalgeo.rio.rj.gov.br

48. 2.How to integrate millions (billions?) of new city dwellers
while respecting citizens’ ‘right to the city’?

49. 3.How to harmonise urgent environmental issues (climate
change) with social needs?

50. 4.Howtopreservethesocialfunctionofpropertyinfaceof
savageunregulatedrealestatemarket?

51. 51
5. How to harmonise housing, liveability and sustainability in
explosively growing cities in weak governance environments
24

52. 52
6. How to improve the quality of city management and
promote good and fair governance
27

53. 53
7. How to promote fair access, use, regulation, and taxation of urban land
25
Urban
Reform?

54. 54
25
How to promote urban reform
without fundamentally changing
the way we deal with urban land
and urban property in the city
produced by financial
capitalism ?

58. Any
questions?