Category: Property Rights

Real estate’s Prometheus unbound: Part 2, fast revival?

22 February, 2012 (09:30) | Communism, Cuba, Development, Entrepreneur, Global news, Havana, Homeownership, Markets, Property Rights, Redevelopment, Rent control |

[Continued from yesterday's Part 1.]   By:David A. Smith   In yesterday’s post, via a New York Times article oblivious to the implications of the phenomena it was reported, we swiftly recapitulated Cuba’s half-century of economic failure, as visibly seen every day in Havana’s decaying properties.  Now that decay has finally reached its ending point, [...]

Real estate’s Prometheus unbound: Part 1, slow decline

21 February, 2012 (09:11) | Communism, Cuba, Development, Entrepreneur, Global news, Havana, Homeownership, Markets, Property Rights, Redevelopment, Rent control |

By:David A. Smith   What killed Havana, and what will revive it?  That question lies answered even if unasked in a New York Times article that reports a remarkable and remarkably hopeful mini-revival in Cuba:   Havana — As fixer-uppers go, Carmen Martinez’s derelict shotgun house is no cakewalk. The living-room roof collapsed 15 years [...]

Rebuilding needs a solid foundation of governance: Part 4, the Tralfamadorian optimist

5 August, 2010 (10:20) | Disasters, Earthquake, Global news, Governance, Haiti, Law, Legislation and policy, Philanthropy, Property Rights, Theory | 2 comments

By: David A. Smith   [Continued from yesterday's Part 3 and the preceding Part 1 and Part 2.]   Ever since Haiti’s earthquake, I have tried to avert my gaze from it.  Like Kurt Vonnegut’s Tralfamadorians, I avoid thinking about tragedies past and focus on triumphs present and potentially future.  From the moment the first [...]

Rebuilding needs a solid foundation of governance: Part 3, anti-corruption infrastructure

4 August, 2010 (10:09) | Disasters, Earthquake, Global news, Governance, Haiti, Law, Legislation and policy, Philanthropy, Property Rights, Theory | 2 comments

By: David A. Smith   [Continued from yesterday's Part 2 and the preceding Part 1.]   While reconstruction aid money for Haiti huddles in New York, and after $3.1 billion has already been spent just on humanitarian relief, as revealed in an MSNBC story highlighting Haiti’s lack of any preconditions for successful reconstruction, new communities [...]

Rebuilding needs a solid foundation of governance: Part 2, rational land plan and land cadastre

3 August, 2010 (10:00) | Disasters, Earthquake, Global news, Governance, Haiti, Law, Legislation and policy, Philanthropy, Property Rights, Theory | 1 comment

By: David A. Smith   [Continued from yesterday's Part 1.]   Yesterday’s post, the first of a depressing and anger-inducing series on Haiti’s wasting reconstruction using an MSNBC story highlighting absence of improvement, laid out a seven-component recovery environment, with the seventh (financing) arising only when the governmental and financial ecosystem has the six Preconditions. [...]