Contemporary land administration: the importance of being infrastructure

Abstract

Failure to recognize land administration systems as infrastructure potentially creates funding and maintenance problems. Wider economic, social, and environmental benefits of effective land administration are put at risk. Land administration must be recognized as critical, public good infrastructure. Arguments for land administration as infrastructure reside within the land administration discipline: mainstream views regularly fail to recognize the argument. An evaluation approach for testing land administration as an infrastructure is developed and applied. The method utilizes tools for defining and classifying infrastructure, public goods, and critical infrastructures. The analysis tends to support the position of land administration as a critical, public good infrastructure. As a consequence, infrastructure funding and maintenance regimes need to be depoliticized; land administrators must continue to promote land administration outwardly; and the evaluation approach must be extended and enhanced for use in other land administration projects and studies. This paper summarizes a more extended work currently under review with the Journal of Land Use Policy.