Governance of Geoinformation and Land Development

The Governance of Geoinformation and Land Development programme undertakes research in the administrative, legal and organizational aspects of geoinformation, real estate law, and the instruments that are (or may be) used in the spatial development of both urban and rural areas.

Themes

The programme studies three themes in depth:

• Land development, which is about the interaction between planning and property markets, and the possible conflict between the private interests of landowners on the one hand and common societal goals and the interests of larger regions on the other.
• Land tenure and property rights (LTPR), which will focus on the content of the legal relations between people and land, especially in the field of the multiple use of space, the transparency of the way these legal relations are implemented by land administration authorities, and the balance of public and private interests (i.e. the human rights aspect of land development).
• Geoinformation studies, which deal with the institutional arrangements whereby geographical or spatial information (which supports a wide range of societal activities) is provided for in the public sector by private companies and by private persons. With proper coordination, these activities lead to the creation of a coherent spatial data infrastructure (SDI).