Illegal, Irregular, informal ...?: Contributions to a debate on access to land

Abstract

The Latin American debate about the settings of land markets for popular habitat (Clichevsky, 1975, Smolka, 1981, Jaramillo, 1982) or the need of urban reform (Hardoy and Moreno, 1972) goes back to the 1970s and 1980s, as part of the emerging reflections on the urbanization process. However, the crux of the discussions related to access to land in a legal dispute with the state began to be promoted since – and specially - the 1990s both in academic and national and international policy intervention in slums. In this framework, the controversies over the apparent antinomies legality-illegality, formality-informality and/or regularity-irregularity in access to urban space constitute a debate in itself. Here we propose to trace, raising various axes of reading and calling into question some of the central theses. This discussion highlights the complexity of the conflict and refers to the necessary dialogue between the multiple perspectives - legal, economic and political-that it addressed, either jointly and separately. In this regard, the review of these categories and therefore, the possibility of building proactive ways to overcome the approaches fragmented and viable the access to fundamental rights, is the challenge we have.