Urban land acquisition and involuntary resettlement: linking innovation and local benefits

With rapid urbanization and an increasing number of publicly funded urban projects, there is a growing demand to address complex land acquisition and involuntary resettlement issues in urban settings. Major urban projects in such areas as urban development, renewal or upgrading, urban transport, urban watershed management, water supply and sanitation, and urban solid waste management require substantial land acquisition and resettlement efforts that raise significantrisks to people and investments. Governments and international financing institutions must identify these risks early and manage them adequately. These issues are amplified by global trends, such as the degradation of the natural resource base and climate change. The selection of case studies in this report came about as a result of discussions within the community of World Bank involuntary resettlement practitioners, who agreed that urban resettlement issues remain relatively unexplored and that the greatest need for examples of innovative practices in resettlement was in urban settings.