Recent publications

The article written by Marcela Alonso Ferreira and titled The Bureaucratic Politics of Urban Land Rights: (Non)Programmatic Distribution in São Paulo’s Land Regularization Policy was published in December 2023 in the journal Latin American Politics & Society. Abstract: How do bureaucrats implement public policy when faced with political intermediation? This article examines this issue in the distribution of land rights to informal settlements in the municipality of São Paulo, Brazil. Land regularization is a policy established over three decades, where politicians’ requests for land titles to their constituencies play a relevant role. Based on interviews and documents, this study finds […]

The working paper titled «An Anatomy of Urbanization in Sub-Saharan Africa» par Pierre-Philippe Combes, Clément Gorin, Shohei Nakamura, Mark Roberts & Benjamin Stewart was published by the World Bank in November 2023. Abstract: This paper provides a detailed descriptive analysis of patterns of urbanization across Sub-Saharan Africa for the year circa 2015. Despite the rapidity and importance of Sub-Saharan Africa’s urbanization, little is known about the anatomy of patterns of urbanization across the region due to a lack of detailed and accurate official data on urban settlements and populations. To address this gap, the paper applies a modified version of […]

The article written by Fatoumata Diallo and titled “Challenging “best practice”: appropriation strategies for the Bus Rapid Transit in Lagos, was published in October 2023 in the journal Espaces et sociétés. Abstract A select number of public policies generate strong interest on the international stage because of the success attributed to them. They are labeled best practices, a description that endows them with legitimacy in the eyes of decision-makers in other countries. In this article, we examine Bus Rapid Transit (brt) policies initially implemented in several South American cities to remedy deficiencies in the provision of public transport, and subsequently […]

We would like to draw your attention to the publication of an article by Sukriti Issar titled “Historicizing Real Estate: The East India Company in Early Colonial Bombay” in the journal Enterprise & Society in October 2023. Abstract Property-as-real-estate emerged in Bombay at least by the turn of the nineteenth century. Real estate is historicized through previously unexplored archival sources (qualitative and quantitative) by analyzing how property was transacted in a colonial port, and how it became embedded in global circuits of commerce and the accumulation strategies of locals and the English East India Company. The paper demonstrates the existence […]

We would like to draw your attention to the publication of an article by Sukriti Issar titled “Historicizing Real Estate: The East India Company in Early Colonial Bombay” in the journal Enterprise & Society in October 2023. Abstract Property-as-real-estate emerged in Bombay at least by the turn of the nineteenth century. Real estate is historicized through previously unexplored archival sources (qualitative and quantitative) by analyzing how property was transacted in a colonial port, and how it became embedded in global circuits of commerce and the accumulation strategies of locals and the English East India Company. The paper demonstrates the existence […]