Land Use and Urban Politics: A Critical Analysis - Essay Sample

Introduction

It is essential to note that land is a key factor of production from an economic perspective. As far as politics is concerned, the land is always at the center because of its economic influence that politics entirely depends on. Quite a number of authors have critically analyzed land use and urban politics, and all in all, there is an agreement that there is interdependence between land use and urban politics. Some of the variables under consideration are such as; regions with new housing purchasers, those in a weak financial position, those who are controlled by politics, and finally regions with low electrical turn out (Vinge Heidi, 22).

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The most recent and reliable theory explaining land use in urban politics is an economic theory. The theory takes into account that for all other factors of production to be effective and fruitful, land as a factor of production must be utilized to the fullest. The use of any given parcel of land affects the use and value of surrounding parcels (Don Boeck, 12). The property of land calls for governmental intervention. How the government will exercise authority on land depends on the political influence of people inhabiting the land in question. The Ricardian land model tries to explain the availability of land rents and their differences in fertility and land quality (Ward Kevin et al.,18).

Due to the fact that there is no unifying theory explaining urban land use, Sprawl also tries to explain and represent critical land use issues in many regions. Vinge Heidi views Sprawl as a type of advancement with limitless outward extension into underdeveloped areas (Vince Heidi, 26). He suggests that rural areas are lost when urbanized areas spread out over time. Suppose that land is utilized at a faster rate than population growth, then it is also considered as sprawling. From the political perspective, sprawling, to some extent, is a threat because it interferes with politically defined territories, which makes management and allocation of natural resources became challenging (Harvey et al., 365).

Based on voter turnout, politicians and governmental administrators would tend to promote such an activity to be able to meet their vote target to remain the ruling class. Pendal further discovered that land-use control shifts development cost onto builders. In the same study, he realized that localities, where government depends on natural property taxes to fund services and infrastructure, tend towards higher rates of Sprawl. Also, cities are more likely to undertake more taxation when state laws are made rigid in the hands of local governments (Judd, Dennis, and Annika, 5).

Urban centers are densely populated, and so many economic activities are taking place, some of which are environmentally hazardous and require big parcels of land to be established. Consequently, it is important for the government to put in place land use regulations to minimize illegal business enterprises as well as the infrastructure. The major challenge is how well such change can be done without causing political disequilibrium in urban centers. It is common in urban centers for prominent political leaders and even those. They aspire to rise higher to the top of the political ladder to always find a way in which they can employ land use as the turning point to acquire and exercise political influence over people under their leadership (Vince Heidi, 21).

Politicians have also been creative enough to develop value capture techniques to influence windfall gains related to land. These are majorly aimed at raising funds to upscale equity in public planning. The government is a product of a well-structured political unit that will always struggle to better its interaction with urban inhabitants who are believed to play a critical role in all electoral processes. It is achieved through an effective tax system and provision of incentives on land use to promote business individuals. The government is a time compelled waive land rates in favor of landlords among other business individuals to create a conducive business environment (Judd, Dennis, and Annika, 7).

For the purpose of generating funds to run and sustain government activities, it has always been essential for most governments to create different costs and revenues through proper land use. Revenue generation entirely depends on how effective business activities are. Therefore, most governments are on the lookout to ensure that all that it takes to sustain a business are availed to record steady growth in revenue.

With regard to De Boeck and Vinge Heidi, the major obstacles that urban planners have always encountered are entitled to solve is market failure. It results from the fact that decision-makers are not always brought to books to account for the consequences of their uninformed planning. Another contributing factor when it comes to urban land use is the racial segregation that does not create an enabling environment for qualified planners to do their work professionally without compromise from others (De Boeck 29 and Vinge Heidi 24). In addition, developers and families have been forced to make informal payments to government officers of land and urban planning agencies for personal gain. Some have become permanently part of the informal prohibited business kind of causing retardation development within towns.

The value of an urban real estate is harbored on the importance and availability of services and goods provided by the state. Consequently, whether the aim is developmental or just for the pleasure of what is in their possession, pressure has mounted in the recent past for public land use on a larger scale, taking into account the meaning and scope of the term urban one may find himself reflecting upon.

According to Harvey and Ward, in tracking urban politics in contemporary geography, he considers it as a socio-spatial struggle, which is merely a struggle over physical space or particularly socio-spatial processes. Elections are the major concern of urban politics. In most countries,' candidates' quest for votes has manifest much about urban politics as one that is more of social identity, not informing the public much about the nature of governance (Harvey et al. 375 and Ward et al. 15).

At some point, governments are forced to privatize almost everything, for example, in providing basic urban services, such as water and sanitation. The state role sometimes changes from availing to management that is the provision of essential needs indirectly but facilitated through planners as a bridge. These are done mainly to empower political leaders that are in direct link with the urban dwellers to sustain the political influence of the ruling government.

According to Harvey, major problems facing urban centers are the informal authorization of development activities and complicated procedures in an attempt to obtain formal title deeds, which in most cases are influenced by prominent political leaders (Harvey et al. 370).

Kevin Ward views urban politics as the politics of comparison. Across the social sciences, it has proved to be commonplace to study how the world is in the urban and how urban is in the world. He further elaborates that politics has recently been understood or perceived as more than being government but is all about the struggle over the governance of territory. It has escalated to the advancement of political territory to gain fame and exercise governance (Ward Kevin et al., 15).

It has been found that the arena of land use is full of private ownership and private development initiatives, as well as the traditional favors that are seeing land as a commodity in the market. Since most human activities are occurring on land, the land use byproducts affect majorly every part of the human environment. Thus, every individual has a very powerful stake in some regulations of land use, the behavior and society rule in the society, and the preservation of some common land spaces (Ward Kevin et al., 18).

Political science has failed to address urban politics in the best way possible and curb ill-mannered practices. There is a need, therefore, for post-disciplinary to address social challenges emanating from urbanization fully. The contributing factor to the failure of such kinds is the intellectual failure of the discipline of political science. Another setback of mainstream political science is its unstructured methodological domination, which is considered to be a bad approach by many scholars whose interests are so much in politics and its social influence (Harvey et al., 376).

Works Cited

De Boeck, Filip. "Urban expansion, the politics of land, and occupation as infrastructure in Kinshasa." Land Use Policy (2019): 103880. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2019.02.039

Harvey, Nick, Romana EC Dew, and Sarah Hender. "Rapid land-use change by coastal wind farm development: Australian policies, politics, and planning." Land Use Policy 61 (2017): 368-378. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2016.11.031

Judd, Dennis R., and Annika M. Hinze. City politics: The political economy of urban America. Routledge, 2018.

Vinge, Heidi. "Farmland conversion to fight climate change? Resource hierarchies, discursive power, and ulterior motives in land-use politics." Journal of rural studies 64 (2018): 20-27. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2018.10.002

Ward, Kevin, et al., eds. The Routledge handbook on spaces of urban politics. Routledge, 2018. https://experts.illinois.edu/en/publications/the-routledge-handbook-on-spaces-of-urban-politics