Regularizing Without Urbanizing: Limitations of the State Model of Land Formalization in Peru

Abstract

The land regularization policy implemented in Peru has historically been dominated by a technical-administrative paradigm centered on individual property titling as the primary mechanism for addressing urban informality. This model, promoted by the Peruvian public administration, prioritizes legal security through registration processes, while disregarding integrated urban planning and territorial development. Consequently, thousands of families obtain legal titles to their plots but remain in conditions of socio-urban precariousness–without adequate access to basic services, infrastructure, or integration into the formal urban fabric.
This disjunction between titling and urbanization reveals a narrow understanding of the right to the city, reducing regularization to a legal-financial act that fails to resolve structural problems such as spatial segregation, social exclusion, and unequal access to urban opportunities. Moreover, the implementation of largescale titling programs, in the absence of a coherent policy of social urbanism, has fostered perverse incentives–most notably, the proliferation of land trafficking networks that promote illegal occupations of rural land under the expectation of eventual regularization by the State.
In this context, there is an urgent need to reconceptualize land regularization as a component of a broader process of inclusive urbanization. This entails integrating participatory planning mechanisms, infrastructure investment, and municipal strengthening with housing and land governance policies. Furthermore, combating corruption and dismantling land trafficking structures requires the implementation of territorial monitoring, preventive regulation, and effective sanctioning mechanisms. Only through such comprehensive and rights-based approaches can formalization become a meaningful instrument for advancing urban justice, rather than a mere administrative exercise.