Land scarcity may lead to troubles, city planner says

JAKARTA (JP): Disputes might increase if the government did not redistribute land to meet housing needs as land became scarcer, an urban planner said last week.

C. Michael Douglass, a consultant to the National Development Planning Board, said government action was urgent because land for housing and infrastructure like drains and garbage dumps was becoming expensive.

"Tension will increase" if land status remains vague, particularly in greater Jakarta, Douglass said during a break on the last day of a three-day conference on Asia's cities.

"The government has the choice of either including or excluding" most of its residents by giving land titles to those whose land status was unclear, he said.

At a local level authorities should make an inventory of residents' land status before carrying out further development, he said.

Frequently, land ownership was "manipulated" and most poor people lost their claims, he said.

Clearing up vague land status was urgent given the "unprecedented growth" of Jakarta, Bogor, Tangerang and Bekasi, Douglass said.

Douglas heads the University of Hawaii's Department of Urban and Regional Planning.

Greater Jakarta is expected to house 28 million people in 2005, while Jakarta is expected to expand rapidly pushing up land prices, Douglass said.

The question was how to facilitate this as land for housing and infrastructure became scarcer, he said.

The National Land Agency began a trial project to register public land in Depok in June last year.

However Douglass said lack of enforcement was a big problem.

The main constraint in urban land reform was the government's reluctance to meddle because land was a main source of income and political power, he said.

Kampong solidarity would tighten as land conflicts arose, Douglass said.

The urban middle class living on the outskirts demanded waste disposal sites be far from them, he said, referring to the increasingly common "Not In My Back Yard" approach.

In many land disputes residents have insisted they have land rights because they have occupied the land for generations and paid tax on it. They have said their land was unusable and they made it livable by filling in swamps.

Councilors have said they have rights only as land tillers.

Douglass said if the government decided not to give ownership rights residents should be given tenure. The government had several land redistribution methods available, he said.

Security of land tenure had proved residents would build and invest to improve their homes, drainage and other facilities, he said.

Douglass said land politics "had many truths". So-called government land or developer-owned land had often changed ownership many times.

"If the people have no rights over it the same question should be asked of the government and developers," he said.

Regardless of the land's history the government could choose to create something different for the better, he said.

Douglass said Jakarta and other Asian cities were likely to still have many poor people because of soaring land prices followed by higher living costs.

Market mechanisms in all Asian cities had not worked to reduce poverty, he said.

Therefore poverty did not depend on economic measures alone, he said.

"The attitude of government toward civil society will determine how much people are allowed to organize."

This was because the poor needed advocates to bridge them to the authorities, he said. (anr)