Rapid urbanization, land pooling policies & the concentration of wealth

The research discusses how land pooling policies can become part of predisposed institutional frameworks that support processes of land ownership concentration when embedded in the complex, multilayered context of governmental coordination. Land pooling policies are being promoted by international organizations, the New Urban Agenda (NUA) and other best-practice literature for their potential to supply urban land and utilize part of the land value increment from urbanization to cover the costs for infrastructure, public facilities and construction. In this literature land pooling policies are characterized as equitable land policies because they proportionally distribute the development gain back to the original landowners. However, land pooling policies are no ‘silver bullet’ for an equitable urbanization. Depending on the institutionalization in the larger framework of national policies, land pooling policies might become included into processes of ground rent dispossession when embedded in the context of overlaying policies with contradictory objectives on diverse governance levels. This can support land transactions that in sum lead to a concentration of land ownership. The research analyses the case of the Republic of Korea, where land pooling policies have been the dominating land policies during the period of rapid urbanization in order to reveal new knowledge on the distributional characteristics of those policies in practice. The study makes clear how government coordination in the narrow perspective (land pooling policies) and in the wide perspective (national planning policies) affects the key transaction dimensions (land values, information impactedness and financing) which causes the diffusion of the equitable character of land pooling policies. The findings are valuable for the academic discourse as well as the best practice literature. Based on the findings the study closes with a set of recommendations for a more equitable implementation of land pooling policies that might be valuable for policy makers, planners, and academics especially in countries that are confronted with the challenges of rapid urbanization.