Allowing a more equitable and market driven urban expansion through the Chengdu land tenure experiment : implementation modalities and initial impacts

Deininger, Klaus et al.

The strict segregation of land markets between collective ownership in rural areas and state ownership in urban areas, with the only way of trading between them through expropriation of collectively owned rural land has given rise to enormous inequities and inefficiencies in a number of ways. First low cost and potentially large fiscal gains from expropriating collective land at the urban fringe led to land acquisition well beyond what was needed to maintain a given population density, in sometimes highly inequitable and non-transparent ways, and with a dangerous reliance of local government finances on rents from such transactions. Second, as they could not trade their construction land to outsiders, farmers were unable to share in the benefits of rapid industrialization, leading to a rapid growth in rural-urban inequality that threatened the very fabric of Chinese society.

Event: Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty 2013

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Document type:Allowing a more equitable and market driven urban expansion through the Chengdu land tenure experiment : implementation modalities and initial impacts (64 kB - pdf)