Ian Williamson
Stig Enemark
Jude Wallace
Abbas Rajabifard
512 pages ISBN: 9781589480414
2009
Review by Jeff Thurston
Few would deny that land holds a special place in the hearts and minds of people around the world. It can be beautiful to look at, valuable to own and provides important economic benefits to individuals, communities and nations. Accordingly, the health and wealth of nations is often linked to the land administration structures in place. It is also near impossible to realise sustainability without land administration practices present, they form the basis for beginning to understand the relationship of people to land use.
Authors Ian Williamson, Stig Enemark, Jude Wallace and Abbas Rajabifard suggest from the beginning that land administration includes everything related to land. This includes the land, cadastral information, buildings, administrative policies and even marine environments. This viewpoint is holistic in scope, multi-disciplinary in practice and links to the social interactions of people to the land. As such the book is oriented toward land management as a process. The authors point out that land administration processes are common around the world, but may be implemented in a variety of ways.
Ten land administration principles are outlined. These are oriented toward legal processes and frameworks, people, rights, cadastre, dynamic change, processes, technology, spatial data infrastructure and determination of successes. There is a strong focus on the social nature of land administration within the book. The Millenium Development Goals as adopted by the United Nations are linked to land administration. The authors also discuss how basic services to citizens evolve through land use and management.
An interesting discussion surrounds the reform of land administration systems for those east European countries as the Berlin Wall fell and how those reforms would be re-engaged under a market economy. Indeed, living in east Berlin I know of many properties that are still attempting to resolve land ownership and use issues twenty years since the wall fell – many of which remain completely empty until claims become settled.
The history of land and how people experience their relationship to it is a fascinating topic that is also presented. As stated, “land has both physical and cognitive aspects.” Indeed, a study of land through cultural perspectives is currently a highly popular topic across Europe. When we consider the Inuit and native populations in Australia and North America, for example, a unique perspective relating to these peoples identification to the land is present. History of land administration is presented for Australia, Germany, English, European and North America and readers will find this material interesting as it leads to a greater understanding of why and how these places administer and manage land today.
The discussion surround ‘cubes of airspace’ is interesting as it considers change over time for givens spaces and the rights and regulations that accompany those spaces. Those working in land reclamation will immediately recognise the nature of this topic due to experiences with environmental changes across different owners for particular impacted lands. The global nature of land administration originates from the 1987 Brundtland Commission better known for its ‘Our Common Future’ report wherein economy, people and environment were linked together interactively. Later Agenda 21 and UN-HABITAT-II contributed toward a more solidified direction that was later supported by the International Federation of Surveyors (FIG).
As we begin to think about land and its administration the processes underlying the connection rise to the surface as Williamson previously indicated. We are (and should be) interested in much more than cadastre alone. This aspect raises particularly interesting questions today as we begin to think of regional and global influences of resources, land use and the joint participation of communities of people across districts and properties. Just this past week at COP15 in Copenhagen we saw a debate between China and the U.S., both of whom are impacting everyones world with carbon emissions, yet, ownership of the processes seems to lie at their own disposal. How do we deal with such factors when the value and interests of non-owners and non-regulators are impacted so greatly? The processes of that grand Copenhagen debate clearly mean a lot to the sinking Maldive Islands and other low lying regions around the world.
Designing land administration to manage land and resources is a highly popular topic today. It is unfortunate that this book has not included the tools of geographic information systems (GIS) and computer-aided design (CAD) directly at the design / planning level, particularly since more professionals using these tools implement them for the creation of design and the communication of strategic guidance and strategic decision making. The more recent of emergence of digital cities whose underlying infrastructure will likely be managed using different techniques is a good example of the principle for a need to understand processes as spatial information is gathered across broad ownership rights and legislation.
The topic of ‘design’ is about to become a hot topic as viewed through geospatial tools, concepts and sustainability. This book contains a strong understanding of the processes leading to the engagement of land cadastre against land registry, and these arrangements are not the same for all countries. In one diagram the authors describe a ‘butterfly’ approach to understanding these connections, and place SDI squarely in the mapping agencies domain.
The authors ask, “why do land administration systems need SDI?” They explore the evolution of technology and indicate that GIS has made little difference to land administration design historically. This is ironic after leading the reader to the need for greater understanding of the social, environmental and economic triad underpinning sustainability, particularly since GIS is perhaps the only system that can effectively integrate measurement, cognitive information and physical data through time and space. Essentially then, land administration has been operating without proper tools to fully enable its purpose and vision as described within the book – something quite a few GIS professionals realised and who have been attempting to enter the surveyors domain with difficulty. The recent trends toward model based design are also likely to play a larger role.
Luckily the authors pinpoint the reality of the need to change and both GIS professionals and surveyors should pay attention. The book supports the idea of spatial data infrastructure to drive land administration forward. Land cadastre services are integral to the establishment of healthy SDI and administrative systems that meet the needs of people.
Intriguing and informative charts describe the numbers of land parcels within different countries and their status within cities. Readers might be interested to know that only Belgium, Brunei, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, South Korea, The Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland have 100 percent of their land base legally registered and surveyed. Land administration tools are presented and education needs as well.
One of the most difficult subjects to discuss today is land administration. Many people don’t have an understanding of land administration in the truest sense as this book describes. And that is a shame and ought to change. It is almost the case today that we find people and organisations working on the pieces of the wider LAS puzzle, but having fewer opportunities to understand how they might fit together in support of sustainable systems. Part of the difficulty (naturally) has been that people live in specific places, and thus, under different land administration systems with different history.
This book opens the door to understanding the differences among people, regions and countries through the evolution of their land administration systems. It explains how the dots can be connected between places and how basic elements of land administration transcend places and are common among all people. Land Administration for Sustainable Development is a must read in my view. It is rich in land administration – sustainability information and knowledge. This book contains valuable information for establishing the land administrations leading toward a sustainable tomorrow.
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Jeff Thurston is co-founder and co-editor of V1 Magazine for Vector1 Media. He is based in Berlin.
