Does property undermine development, and specifically, the construction of infrastructure? Along with co-host Aurora Echaverria, we discuss  Prof. Alisha Holland's article "Roadblocks: How Property Rights Undermine Development in Colombia".  Looking at the case of Colombia, Prof. Holland argues that strong property rights encourage opportunistic behaviors that undermine infrastructure investments, even though political economy models define property rights as essential for economic development. This is especially important given the lengths that Colombia's president-elect, Gustavo Petro, went to great lengths to promise to never expropriate. Is it time to rethink property rights, from the left as well as the right? Check it out the article: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ajps.12706 Prof. Alisha Holland is an Associate Professor in the Government Department at Harvard University studying the comparative political economy of development with a focus on urban politics, social policy, and Latin America. Aurora Echavarria is a PhD student in Urban Planning at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she is a graduate fellow in the Latin American Cities Initiative. Her research centers on the relation between systems of local government finances, property taxation and the dynamics of urban inequality in public good provision. Aurora's dissertation research is supported by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy's C. Lowell Harriss Dissertation Fellowship.

Can land use regulations end up incentivizing informal settlements, or mitigate? In this episode, cohosted by Flavia Leite of UC Berkeley, we interview Prof. Cynthia Goytia of Torcuato Di Tella University in Buenos Aires. We talk to Prof. Goytia about an ambitious multi-year project which charts the relationship between land use regulation and informal settlements in over 300 municipalities across 10 different Latin American countries. We talk about the prevalence of low density residential zoning in Latin American cities, the impact this and other land use regulations have on promoting or mitigating informal settlements, and what local governments can do to leverage what is arguably their cities’ biggest asset – their land – to make more inclusive cities. Although the reports we discuss are not yet publicly available, we will post it when they are published.  Cynthia Goytia is Head of the MSc. in Urban Economics at Torcuato Di Tella University in Buenos Aires, Argentina where she also has founded and chairs since 2012, the Urban Policy and Housing Research Center (CIPUV), one of the most prestigious urban research centers in Latin America. She has developed a relevant and influential body of academic research on urban policies, housing and land markets. She is a senior urban consultant to Argentinas and Latin American governments, the World Bank, United Nations Inter-American Development Bank and CAF (Banca de Desarrollo de America Latina), and fellow of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. Flávia is a PhD student in City & Regional Planning at UC Berkeley. Her research interest revolves around the relationship between formal and informal housing markets, with a specific focus on housing financialization, access to credit, and housing policy in Latin America.

Our cohost today is Irene Farah and our second guest of the season is Prof. Calla Hummel. We are discussing Prof. Hummel’s recent published book, Why Informal Workers Organize: Contentious Politics, Enforcement, and the State. Given that over half of Latin America’s workers are estimated to be informal workers, a percentage that is estimated to have grown in the pandemic, the book’s exploration of why informal workers choose to organize – or not – is very timely and important. We talk to Calla about what factors contribute to informal workers organizing, xyr experience working as a vendor, about how governments should relate to informal workers. Dr. Calla Hummel is an assistant professor in the University of Miami’s Department of Political Science, with a PhD from the Department of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. Xe studies when and why informal workers organize and the impacts that the world’s two billion informal workers have on local and national politics, by using statistical, ethnographic, survey, computational, and formal methods. Irene is PhD Candidate in City & Regional Planning at UC Berkeley. Previously, she worked in the Center for Spatial Data Science at the University of Chicago. Her research revolves around themes of inequality, focusing on topics of urban informality, governance, health, and spatial analytics. In particular, she is interested in how recent shifts in governance structures in Mexico City impact how informal workers, street level bureaucrats, and local politicians negotiate over the use of public space, with a particular focus on street vendors.

Are judges the new planners? In our first episode of "Sur-Urbano", we discuss Sergio Montero, Luisa Sotomayor and Natalia Ángel Cabo's recent article “Mobilizing Legal Expertise In and Against Cities: Urban Planning Amidst Increased Legal Action in Bogotá”. The authors note that there has been a rise in legal action around urban policy and planning in Colombia, which means that legal experts and judges often end up dictating things that used to be within the realm of planners – social housing, transport corridors, and public space.  We talk to Sergio Montero, an Associate Professor of Urban and Regional Planning and Development at the Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia, associate editor of the journal Regional Studies and director of LabNa (Laboratorio de Narrativas Urbanas). Check out the article here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02723638.2022.2039433?journalCode=rurb20