Issue homepage Message from the Programme Director Urban LandMark and DFID London debate improved access to urban land and property rights Urban LandMark participates in China-Africa workshop on pro-poor urban development Urban LandMark participates in conference on urbanisation and rural-urban migration in sub-Saharan Africa Our research in practice: Isandla Institute workshops Urban LandMark's Guide on Managing Urban Land with four local municipalities Don't miss Urban LandMark's 2013 Conference: Moving from Knowledge to Change: Agreeing the Next Steps for Better Access to Urban Land Urban LandMark and the Association of African Planning Schools host a workshop to discuss knowledge production and research collaboration in the global South Update on our Tenure Security Facility Southern Africa project Handbook for First-Time Home Owners - in all 11 languages! Developing a booklet on the Land Governance Assessment Framework South Africa (LGAF)

The workshop aims to develop a lexicon of case studies from the global South on urban land market issues, outline key messages in the design of urban land curricula, and reflect on empirical evidence and develop curricula that are appropriate to contemporary urban land markets.

Using case studies and empirical evidence, the two-day workshop will interrogate three key assumptions that underpin current land debates in Africa and assume that:

• with the 'right' interventions, informal markets will eventually be integrated into formal ones
• socially dominated markets are disorganised, unregulated and risky for urban dwellers to invest in
• the privatisation of land rights through state-issued title inevitably leads to access to financial markets and the unlocking of entrepreneurial initiative and greater productivity.

The idea that households invest in land in the absence of title implies that other registers of security and trust in local institutions come into play in the absence of formal title. The core questions which will inform the workshop discussions are therefore:

• what are these alternative registers of security, and how are they circulated, developed and embedded in local land practices?
• how do scholars and policy makers collect, analyse and make sense of this data?
• how do we develop teaching tools that help us to problematise the frames we use to understand land in Africa?
• importantly, how do we develop alternative ways of seeing, analysing and theorising urban land on the continent?