signaled that a previous condition to apply the majority of instruments of capital gain collection is to count upon registers that
are actualized at market values, especially if it is considered that this value reflects in a specific manner the increments in the
property value. In the majority of countries and municipalities the high cost of generation and maintenance of the registers
makes them desist of the investment, in spite of existing a consensus in reference to improving the real estate information in
order to improve finances associated to resources from taxes and other charges on property. Where these improvements
have been realized, these cities have counted with a strong political support that has motivated the responsible public workers
to take the decision; and, as result, the collection of the different territorial taxes has increased.
II. Latin American Particularities:
1. The Latin American cities, in an growth process, present an acute level of socio-spatial segregation. On one hand
is the poor population, living in precarious conditions, with a group of needs in regards to its access to services and urban
facilities; and on the other, the more resourceful population that has its necessities satisfied and that concentrates the
wealth. The tradition of providing infrastructure and services with public resources for the social sectors of high income is
strong, and the capture of the valorizations generated by these actions tends to concentrate itself in the very same sectors,
especially in the hands of the land owners. The lack of investment resources makes it difficult to revert the situation
signaled above to make the access to facilities and urban services more equitable. Facing this lack of investment it is
necessary to apply instruments that contribute to improve the local revenues, amongst these the collection of capital gains
by the public sector, in order to improve the equity in its redistribution. All of this, within urban spaces facing a strong
growth and transformation process, due to rural migrations.
Almost 45% of the Latin American population lives in conditions of informality and the weak existing land market
regulations explain, in great measure, the impossibility of the popular sectors to have access to formal urbanized land. The
following circle: free land market – informality – increase in poverty is essential to explain the reality.
2. In Latin America it is more frequent to start from local proposals towards legislations of larger, including national
coverage. In the cases they give results, they generate creative and flexible processes, including those of fast
implementation. However, these processes also run the risk of being subjected to the constant political changes that can
derive in frustrated legal attempts. And when depending mainly on the local economy, they have to function in a precarious
and specific way supporting themselves in negotiations that can generate practices of corruption.
There are not many examples of capital gains generated towards public investments that are collected by the government
(specially the local) by means of taxes, managements or negotiations.
However, the majority of the instruments have emphasized the public work that provokes improvements or increases in
valorization, more than in increments generated by changes in the urban normative capable of influencing the process of
urbanization. One factor that has weakened the application of instruments is that the necessity of recuperating capital
gains is not legitimated and is culturally rejected. The recuperation of increments in the value of the property, due to
invested public resources, is seen as an “intervention in private property and the open market" and not as valorizations
that belong to all the community.
3. It can be also said that there are other experiences, not major, but rather interesting ones, and always of local
basis, in which the urban rights or values are transferred. From the practice of the Presupuestos Participativos, as a
method of democratic redistribution, until the new participation formulas in the local government. Or experiences of very
creative policies at local level. As for example the experience of the “Esculturas Urbanas”, of the Argentine city of
Resistencia, that expands the right to art to all citizens, and that is managed with a social institution, the Urunday
Foundation and in harmony with the municipality.
4. In all countries it is observed the incidence –although in a different way– of the policies dictated by multilateral
cooperation organs and international agencies, implemented since the end of the 80s: they tend towards the reduction
of the state, privatization the elimination of subsidies, fiscal reform, etc. In general, those policies imposed or conducted
with very external traces, have had a tough impact on public administration and particularly on taxes, especially in what
concerns to the redistribution with equitable purpose.
However they also have strengthened a modernization of the state and the local governments that have resulted in a better
administration, and in the creativity of ways of local financing. In terms of urban policies, the tendency to grant the market
a growing role of protagonist in the regulation of the urbanization processes has profoundly modified the characteristics of
those processes.
III. European Particularities:
1. Europe has a more hierarchical or vertical legal normative scheme, relating the state and regional laws and the
local action; what on one hand represents greater stability, on the other stops, limits or makes difficult the appearance of
new schemes or alternative instruments, from the local basis.
It can be said that, in all norms, the “cargas” (charges), capital gains and costs of the urbanization process are distributed,
both in the zones of urban extension and of urban internal transformation, by means of procedures ruled by the law. And
in almost all cases defined by the urbanistic plan. That allows processes of urban management in which all or part of the
revenue and/or the capital gain reverts to the citizens. The common rule is that the private property of the land, and of the
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