Improving Urban Quality Through Land Titling? Considerations from the Bamiyan Case

Abstract

The article discusses the Afghan land titling policies based on the case of Bamiyan Valley. It first presents the terms and conditions of the land titling policy in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan since 2017, and then it illustrates its impact on the informal settlement of Zargaran (Bamiyan) based on the results of two surveys conducted in 2017 and 2021. As is the case elsewhere around the world, the assignment of formal property titles is generally welcomed by the majority of the population. Moreover, doing so has proven to encourage investments in the improvement of private establishments, and even in facilities for community purposes, thanks to the remarkable social bond that exists between the settlers. However, the denial of the entitlement in the parcels of Zargaran located inside and next to the UNESCO buffer zone has prevented the titling policy from reaching its full potential in terms of improvement of the social fabric and urban quality. Moreover, the increase in real estate values observed in the area calls for social policy measures to accompany the titling policy, so as to avoid the eviction of poorer segments of the population.

1 Introduction

Land titling has long been a contested topic, both in policy and academic circles, and has occupied a vast part of the debate on the possibility—or even the opportunity¹—to manage the widespread processes of intense and spontaneous urban growth taking place in the Global South.

Tenure security at a household scale and liveable spaces along with social amenities at a neighbourhood scale are crucial ingredients for a decent standard of living in the modern urban world. However, land is a complex entity, which is ideologically governed (Ghertner 2020; Ward 2021), politically contested (Balakrishnan and Pani 2021; Wani 2021) and socially constructed (Anwar 2012; Opoko et al. 2020). Therefore, the literature on land titling (and allied topics around land) is largely heterogeneous.

The land titling debate initially began as a way of alleviating the poverty that plagued inhabitants of rapidly expanding settlements in urban areas of the Global South.

Transferring the informal capital represented by these settlements, which Hernando de Soto in 2001 calculated at 9,3 Trillion US Dollars worldwide (Soto 2001, pp. 29f) into the formal market, would alleviate, if not resolve, the struggles of the urban poor.² This assumption largely inspired land titling policies that have been carried out by the World Bank and by many international NGOs since the 1990s.³

However, strong criticisms arose against land titling policies. An overcritical view of (legal) formalization as an exogenous form of statal control and normalization unfolded into a somehow romanticized view of informal settlements as self-governed, constitutively disobedient to any legal regularization and inherently ‘democratic’.⁴ Criticisms were also directed at the supposed effectiveness of land titling in alleviating poverty.⁵ Finally, some authors observed that land titling policies do not necessarily engender urban upgrading projects and that the latter are much more helpful in alleviating poverty than the former (Mukhija 2001; Majale 2008; Das and Takahashi 2009; Mistro and Hensher 2012; Dovey 2012; Russ and Takahashi 2013; Devkar et al. 2019; Heikkila and Harten 2019). As we will see in the following pages, our results challenge this question, introducing an urban argument in individual property rights debates.

For the purposes of this paper, we conceptually subdivide the vast theoretical discussion on land titling into two thematic categories.⁶

First are those authors who investigate the topic from an economic perspective, debating whether land titling policies can be considered effective tools to reduce poverty.⁷

Land tenure/titling as a means to poverty alleviation and its critique (Soto 2001; Payne et al. 2009).

Impacts of land titling on human development (Abdulai et al. 2011; Ali et al. 2014; Janvry et al. 2015; Field 2007; Galiani and Schargrodsky 2010).

Nuances of the land titling process itself (Jonnalagadda et al. 2021; Meinzen-Dick and Mwangi 2009; Toulmin 2009).

Second are those authors who understand land titling along with urbanization, and investigate it within the larger urban context.

Understanding larger urban issues due to (and via) land titling processes (Cheng et al. 2019; Deininger et al. 2014; Goldstein and Udry 2008; Ho and Spoor 2006).

Understanding urbanization and land as entangled (along with its impact on socio-economic development (AlSayyad 2004; Benjamin 2008; Gilbert 2007; McFarlane 2020; Upadhya and Rao 2022).

In this paper, we will for the most part remain within the second field of study. Using primary data from Bamiyan (Afghanistan)⁸ we will move towards a nuanced understanding of impacts and future pathways for land titling processes. We are interested in analysing to what extent land titling can be conceptualized in order to produce multiple outcomes; as a potential tool for improving both private housing and urban quality. Focusing on the neighbourhood rather than on the single household, we will reflect on the extent to which tenure security could be mobilized to improve land use and to carry out participatory urban upgrading projects.

The paper is divided into four parts. The first section frames Afghan land titling policies in the context of the intense urbanization process that the country has experienced in the last two decades, in particular the Bamiyan area. The second part re-approaches key points in the land titling debate in light of the primary data related to Bamiyan. The third part addresses land titling as a potential tool for improving housing and urban quality. The fourth part discusses problems connected to the implementation of land titling policies in the cultural heritage protection context. The article closes with a series of concluding remarks.

2 Urban Growth in Afghanistan and in Bamiyan

In Afghanistan, land titling policies took concrete shape with the passing of the 2017 law ‘RRUIP—Regulation on Registration of Urban Informal Properties’.⁹ This law was an attempt to tackle the massive urban migration taking place throughout the country, one of the fastest urbanization rates in the world.

UN-Habitat stated in 2017, the year of the implementation of the land titling campaign: ‘Afghanistan is still a predominately rural society with an estimated 76% of the population living in rural areas. However, this situation is rapidly changing. Afghan cities are growing at an estimated rate of around 4% per year, one of the highest in the world; and the urban population is expected to continue to grow at an average of 3.14% up to 2050. In 1950, only one out of every 20 Afghans lived in cities. In 2015, 8.5 million or one out of every four (27%) Afghans lived in cities; and by 2060 one in two—50% of the population—will live in cities’ (UN-Habitat 2017, p. 6). This pace of urbanization led to an unrestrained expansion of new ‘informal settlements’¹⁰ which currently provide housing for around 85% of the population, and often fall dramatically below basic urban planning standards.¹¹

Within the framework of this urban growth, Bamiyan is one of the cities in Afghanistan undergoing the most expansion.

The total population living in the Bamiyan urban area was estimated in 2017 at about 51,852 inhabitants¹²—an incredible increase compared to the 7,355 inhabitants recorded in the previous census of 1979. The demographic growth began after the fall of the first Taliban regime (2001) fostered both by the return of refugees and internally displaced people (IDP) as well as by the urban drift of the rural population from other districts in the province. But this growth has gathered momentum in recent years. Compared to the UN-Habitat SoAC data from 2014 (Amiri and Lukumwena 2018), the LaGeS survey of 2017 highlights a demographic increase of no less than 33.0% in three years; a population increase that continued growing at the same rate until 2021, according to data collected in April of that year in the neighbourhood of Zargaran.¹³

Given the great variability in the orographic subdivisions of the valley, the population growth and expansion of the urban fabric have mainly been concentrated in two areas located on the south-facing mountain slopes alongside the valley, where the population density is much higher than the Bamiyan average.

One of these areas is Zargaran, the neighbourhood which we will concentrate on in the following paragraphs, in order to analyse the impacts of the Afghan land titling policy (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1

(Source LaGes (2018))

Population density in Bamiyan 2017

3 Key Issues with Land Titling

Among the several issues relating to informal settlement expansion on a global scale, two occupy a prominent place in the context discussed here: 1. The understanding of settlement processes as the result of competitive dynamics; 2. The contextual nature of land security forms. In this section we address these issues in light of the primary data collected in Zargaran in the spring of 2021.

3.1 Occupancy Urbanism

Until 2003, Zargaran consisted of just a few farmhouses built on the hill above the highest irrigation channel, to preserve the fertile soil on the valley floor. But the neighbourhood has expanded very quickly since 2003 when the municipality started distributing plots of land to migrants (returnees and IDPs). Between 2003 and 2010, the municipality distributed a total of 224 plots in the south-eastern corner of Zargaran. At the same time, however, many people started to settle in other parts of the neighbourhood (UN-Habitat 2015b).

Zargaran’s population, estimated at 6,604 inhabitants in May 2017 (first LaGeS household survey (LaGes 2018), grew to 8,866 inh. in 2021 (second LaGeS household survey). In only 4 years, there was a 34% increase in the population, with 22% of the households settling between 2019 and 2021. The built-up area also continued to expand at a rapid pace. There were 633 buildings captured by satellite in 2015 (UN-Habitat (Ahmadi 2018)), 1,050 in June 2017 (LaGes 2018) and 1,437 in June 2021 according to the UN-Habitat survey conducted for the implementation of the land titling campaign. Of these buildings, according to the UN-Habitat classification, 1,310 were residential and the rest were businesses or mixed-purpose (residential and business).

The settlement has continued to expand in line with a settlement model, which traditionally preserves the fertile soil of the valley floor; the new buildings, however, were being built up mountain slopes with gradients of up to 29%, which poses serious problems for the provision of services (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2

(Photo M. Loda 2019)

Buildings on steep slopes

It is unclear to what extent the expansion of Zargaran (as well as other ‘informal settlements’ that sprang up in the valley during the same period) may have been influenced by illegally acting brokers.¹⁴

However, it does not seem inconsequential that this process took place in a context characterized by a high degree of ‘ethnic’ acceptance regarding the new Hazara population by the local government,¹⁵ and a support policy for the Hazara constituent, pursued by that government in the years prior.¹⁶ Such agreement is reminiscent of ‘vote bank’ politics, albeit in a radically different social, political and economic context from that of Bangalore, where the phenomenon was initially analysed (Benjamin 2008). In Zargaran the political exchange would aim to achieve not so much infrastructural neighbourhood improvements, but rather substantial governmental support for changes in land use, in the context of an ethnically based negotiation between the new Hazara population seeking residential space, and the inhabitants of the neighbouring Tajik village of Dawoodi, for whom Zargaran land had previously signified space for their agro-pastoral practices.¹⁷

In fact, the adjudication of legal property titles can, per definition, only recognize individual property rights, which implies the tacit expropriation of all forms of customary, ‘traditional’, communal property claims.¹⁸

Zargaran’s excessive expansion thus confirms the negotiating/conflictual nature of the urbanization process echoed by the concept of ‘occupancy urbanism’: ‘Land (rather than Economy) as a conceptual entry, helps reveal subtle, often stealth-like and quiet, but extensive forms of political consciousness. This perspective avoids a conceptual ‘prison house’ built around assumptions of a predestined development trajectory, or the constraint of uneven terrains viewed as fractures, and relationships ordered within a taxonomy. ‘Occupancy urbanism’ instead views cities as consisting of multiple, contested territories inscribed by complex local histories’ (Benjamin 2008, p. 720).

But above all, the case of Zargaran shows how competitive dynamics acquire meaning and become intelligible only in the context of territorial transformation processes and their socioeconomic base. In the case of Bamiyan, the competitive dynamics can in fact be read as conflicting interests for land use amidst the valley’s transition from a traditional agro-pastoral system to a spatial system with an ever-growing number of typical urban functions, resulting in a pressing demand for space for residential and commercial destinations, as well as for transport infrastructure.

3.2 Tenure Security

Having a secure place to live considerably adds to one’s quality of life and development as a human being. On one hand, the residents do not need to actively protect their claim over the land/house, which on the other hand, allows them to spend their time on other productive pursuits. However, what secure/tenure-security means is a complex affair.¹⁹ In this regard, van Gelder (Gelder 2010) provides a useful tripartite view on tenure, which would account for:

• 3. Perceived: Tenure security as perceived by dwellers

• 4. De jure: Tenure security as a legal construct

• 5. De facto: Tenure security as (f)actually existing on ground.

These three aspects of tenure security are interdependent and there are several studies which push us to understand these differences as social constructs rather than a legal conflict (Ghertner 2008; Day 2008).

However, in the context of the modernization/bureaucratization of state organizations, guidelines linking land tenure to legal titles have also been established in Afghanistan, both on the side of the authorities, who enact it through the process of land titling, and on the side of the inhabitants of the new settlements, who manifest it through adhering to this policy.

In all the Afghan cities where it has been implemented, the land titling policy has been preceded by a systematic UN-Habitat survey aimed at mapping land use, surveying plots and buildings and checking occupancy conditions, as a precondition for the Ministry of Urban Development and Land (MUDL) to issue an Occupancy Certificate (OC). This information is used to judge whether or not to grant the certificate based on a long list of conditions.²⁰

Among the criteria adopted for the granting of OC, the most relevant to this study are the lack of ownership conflicts with regard to plots on governmental land, and the possession of some form of documentation proving ownership for plots on private land. Both the criteria and the manner of application, highlight the government’s intention to practice a policy of legalizing titles and forms of tenure security in accordance with the previous traditional arrangement of the local community. The documentation we accessed in Bamiyan confirms the authorities’ effort to include, as far as is possible in the new legal system, documents of land ownership, which would otherwise be difficult to ascribe to that sphere. As seen in the example in Fig. 3,²¹ one of the most comprehensive among those accessed, information such as the date and the seller’s ownership title to the property is included.

Fig. 3

Example of document proving purchase and sale of land

At the same time, the data we collected in Zargaran undoubtedly shows that it is the inhabitants of the new settlements themselves who are seeking legalization of their ownership title, both as a guarantee of a greater independence and control of the traditional local sociocultural and political context, and as a consolidation of their own status.

According to the data from the UN-Habitat systematic survey, up to the fall of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, in Zargaran an OC had been issued for 314 out of 1,347 plots, namely 23% of the total (90 plots have not been registered), against a percentage of 12% for the whole of Bamiyan.

No matter how complex tenure security might be in terms of perceived, factual or legal construct, the possibility—theoretical as it may be—of accessing a formal/legal land ownership title, introduced by the 2017 law, led to a 100% rise in the average real estate value in Zargaran (Amiri 2022). Naturally, the values differ depending on accessibility. Real estate values are particularly high for less steep, car-friendly areas in the neighbourhood, average for less steep areas inaccessible by car and lower for very steep areas.

In this way, the land titling policy led to the emergence of a real-estate market in Bamiyan/Zargaran, which has largely dealt with the more recent demand created by settlers from other provinces in Afghanistan and by students attending Bamiyan University.

The comparison of the data on families residing in Zargaran collected directly by LaGeS in 2017 and 2021 highlights a significant increase (from 15 to 34%) in families living in rented properties. The 2021 survey also shows that over half of these families (56%) have settled since 2019.

This confirms assumptions which support the assertion that ‘with ongoing commodification, informal property markets seem to obey the same laws and principles of any other market’ (Boanada-Fuchs and Boanada-Fuchs 2018, p. 239).

Therefore, there is a real danger that increased tenure security for owners could result in less security for tenants, particularly in a context of economic fragility such as the one in question. As can be seen by the distribution of the Zargaran population by employment status, the percentage of those not in work (school pupils, housewives, students, etc.) is very high and the economic burden of the family falls on a small number of family members, while unemployment and casual work are considerably high (Fig. 4).

Fig. 4

(Source authors’ processing of LaGeS Household survey data 2021; N = 2,660)

Employment condition of Zargaran’s population

This tells us that tenure security policies cannot automatically generate economic stability for the population. Indeed, they should be accompanied by measures which support the weaker segments of the population.²²

4 Improvement of Housing and Urban Quality

As for the potential of the titling policy to improve housing and urban conditions, the first consideration is that, in psychological terms, tenure security is considered an important safety factor by the population. As such, this policy boasts widespread approval among the inhabitants (Fig. 5).²³

Fig. 5

(Source authors’ processing of LaGeS Household survey data 2021, N = 388)

Percentage of households’ agreement with titling policy

Moreover, in terms of the connection between titling policies and urban development, an increase in tenure security strengthens the possibility of using the occupancy certificate question to launch urban regeneration strategies. This is first of all true at the individual level: access to an OC is correlated to higher rates of upgrading work on single properties (Table 1).

Table 1 Percentage of households by house improvement

At least to some extent, the tendency of families who currently do not have the certificate to carry out upgrading work in the future can be interpreted as an expectation that one might be obtained later on. We do not have data on whether this has triggered a credit market (as hoped for by De Soto, for example De Soto (2001), but it is likely that the upgrading work was carried out personally, with the main expense being the building materials.

What is even more significant is that there is a positive correlation between OCs and people’s willingness to contribute to neighbourhood regeneration projects, even by offering up portions of their own land (Table 2).

Table 2 Percentage of households by willingness to contribute with land for benefit of neighbourhood

This fact provides a blueprint for urban upgrading policies, especially considering that, despite the rapid and extensive growth of new settlements, in the ethnically homogeneous neighbourhood there is a high degree of social capital: there are no conflicts, half the families declare that they have relations with other residents, while one quarter of families can also count on considerable social support in the local area (Fig. 6).

Fig. 6

(Source authors’ processing of LaGeS Household survey data 2021, N = 388)

Quality of social relations in Zargaran

According to Harris’ categories, Zargaran could thus be classified as an ‘embedded’ informal settlement defined by popular legitimacy, physical concentration and internal cooperation.²⁴

Therefore, the social context is favourable towards the development of participatory urban regeneration projects, which could mobilize the regional resources of around half of the families with an OC; furthermore, 58% of families declare that they would participate with their own financial resources (a less binding solution than making their land available, but interesting all the same).²⁵ At least up to now, the land titling campaign in Zargaran does not confirm concerns about the inhabitants’ tendency to isolation and increasing selfishness observed in other contexts.²⁶

On the contrary, we have recently observed interesting examples of cooperation among the households, beyond assistance with material improvements. This can be seen in the financial cooperation of the households in building a new school, so as to improve the accessibility of educational facilities for pupils living in the northern part of Zargaran (Fig. 7).

Fig. 7

(Photo M. Loda 2023)

One of the new schools in Zargaran run by the community

5 Titling Policies in the Presence of Prestigious Cultural Heritage

As for the implementation of titling policies in the presence of prestigious cultural heritage, there is no doubt that Bamiyan is a paradigmatic case. The presence of exceptionally valuable cultural heritage in the area, and the valley’s inclusion on the UNESCO list of World Heritage in danger, poses a particular problem concerning the implementation of land titling policies.

As can be seen from the map in Fig. 8, until the fall of the Afghan Republic, OCs in Zargaran were only issued to the north of an imaginary line dividing the neighbourhood from east to west. Below this line, the plots fall partly into the so-called ‘planned area’.²⁷ These are the plots of land provided by the municipality between 2003 and 2010 in the south-eastern corner of Zargaran, for which the owners had already paid sums of money on various counts. In order to regulate these plots, an agreement is being drawn up between the MUDL, central authorities and the municipality.

Fig. 8

(Source authors’ processing of UN-Habitat data, unpublished)

Issued OC

Below the e on the protection of historic and east–west line where OCs are not issued, there are also plots that did not receive the OCs because they fall into the historical zone established by the ‘Afghan Law on the Protection of Historic and Cultural Properties’ (2004). The historical (or archaeological) zone includes the buffer zone that was drawn around the World Heritage property of the Buddha niches the year before, as well as a wide area north of it. In this extended area, the lack of OCs is justified by respect for the ‘Not inside or overlapping with historical zone’ criterion (see note 19).

By this way, the very vast and densely populated area corresponding to the buffer zone was therefore excluded from land titling policy. The very vast and densely populated area corresponding to the buffer zone was therefore excluded from land titling policy. However, a buffer zone aims at safeguarding the view/visibility of a property and at protecting the heritage from potentially unchecked initiatives. Considering that the regulations placed by the Bamiyan Strategic Master Plan approved in 2018 (LaGes 2018)—particularly the severe building work restrictions on this buffer zone—serve exactly this goal, it needs to be evaluated whether excluding such a large built-up area from land titling policy leads to the failure of a large number of tendentially privileged owners (residents in gently sloping areas that can be reached by car) to participate in urban upgrading projects.

6 Final Observations

The data examined in the case of Bamiyan/Zargaran leads to the conclusion that, on the whole, land titling policies definitely meet the approval of the population and provide a tool that can facilitate participatory urban upgrading processes.

This is true both at the individual level of building upgrading work by single households and above all at the collective level, as it encourages an openness to active participation—by making portions of land and/or financial resources available—in neighbourhood upgrading projects. As for the possibility of implementing urban regeneration projects through land titling policies, the quality of the social capital is definitely an encouraging factor: the lack of specific conflicts and the networks of interactive relationships and mutual support among families help to boost a sense of trust in collective initiatives.

Land titling policies have also shown that they act on land values by contributing to the development of a real estate market. However positive this may be in the future in terms of local economic enterprise, this mechanism could have an impact on economically fragile contexts such as Zargaran, making housing inaccessible and effectively expelling the poorest segments of the population (eviction). Therefore, this calls for the land titling policy to be accompanied by measures to support the more fragile sectors of the population.

Lastly, the case of Bamiyan/Zargaran leads to some reflections on the implementation of land titling policies in contexts of prestigious cultural heritage. Despite agreeing with the precautionary concern resulting in the failure to issue OCs to plots of land included in or alongside historical areas, the exclusion of all plots in the Zargaran buffer zone from OCs undermines a large reserve of resources that could be used to upgrade buildings and urban areas. In the case of such extensive and densely populated areas as the Zargaran buffer zone, it must be assessed whether the ban on issuing OCs can be replaced by specific agreements to issue OCs to single individuals and the local community.