Urban landownership, ethnicity and class in southeast Asian cities

Urban landownership, ethnicity and class in southeast Asian cities? by Hans-Dieter Evers

A precondition for subsisting in an urban environment is access to the use of urban land to build a house, to put up a hut, or at least to find a temporary space for sleeping, eating and defecating. Property rights regulate this access to urban land and thereby the chance to subsist, or at least to be physically present. From this point of view access to urban land becomes the most basic human need in an urban area, and we could without hesitation use a dictum of Karl Marx, originally to apply to a rural context, namely, that ‘the property in the soil, this original source of all wealth, has become the great problem upon the solution of which depends the future of the working class’ (Marx, 1955,315ff.). The control over urban land, the exertion of property rights also means control over the reproduction of labour power. Ownership of urban land is, therefore, also ownership of the means of production. In the same way as rural land is the base for the production of food, urban land is the base for the production of living space.

Despite the importance of the topic, data on urban landownership are extremely rare. This contrasts sharply with research on land tenure in rural areas. Theories and studies on landlords and peasants abound and very sophisticated schemes have been developed to deal with land tenure systems and with conflicts arising out of land concentration. Whereas writings, especially by French marxist structuralists on the ‘question urbuine’ (Castells, 1972) have somewhat neglected ownership of land, studies on ‘peasants’ have used land tenure, absentee landlordism, landlessness among peasants, to explain rural class conflict and peasant revolution. But in the cities of the third world, landlordism and landlessness are equally common and even more pronounced than in rural areas. Absentee landlords after all tend to live in cities and invest in city property as well. Conflict between landlords and squatters is frequent but also rural urban migrants compete among themselves for urban land to be able to take part in the higher income opportunities that, in their perception, exist in third world cities. Internal migration tends to be high or, to put it in other words, the poor in cities are pushed around and relocated through the dynamics of urban property development. Urban conflict, urban unrest, race conflicts, strikes and riots are expressions of the tensions among the city population,

?This is a revised version of a paper originally read at the Fourth Bielefeld Colloquium on southeast Asia, organized by the Sociology of Development Research Centre, University of Bielefeld, 7-8 January 1983.

482

and the struggle for control over the means of reproduction - that is urban land. There is certainly no lack of studies on urbanization and urban life in developing

countries. Many aspects have been discussed, but one is curiously missing: urban landownership. A perusal of readers and summary works quickly shows that urban land tenure is not among the often discussed topics. Terry McGee’s standard text on the southeast Asian city, so far the only comprehensive study on southeast Asian urbanism, excludes urban land tenure despite some occasional references to land speculation. Recent French and German studies concerned with the housing question and urban property in European cities have not been extended to the third world. But even these European studies usually contain no primary data on landownership, so that Lipietz (1974, 94) can claim with some justification that no detailed survey on landownership exists: ‘La propridtd foncidre s’entrouve d’un voile de secret’.

Perhaps the extreme difficulty in collecting data on thousands of parcels of iand in the city explains the lack of hard data, but notwithstanding the methodological difficulties, there is certainly no lack of political and social problems all connected with urban land tenure. Urban unrest has often been a landlord-tenant conflict as in the late 1970s and early 1980s in Europe, but all along in southeast Asian cities. Attempts at urban planning have been obstructed by powerful landowners. Ramp- ant corruption has been widespread in this connection. Land-use patterns have been changed by accumulation of land in the hands of a few and through land speculation. As Cornelius (1976) points out

a formidablc array of political, economic and demogaphic forces have combined in recent decades to restrict housing opportunities for the poor while creating unprecedented opportunities for profit-making and capital accumulation among a limited sector of the city’s population.

Without bemoaning the lack of studies any further, I will now turn to urban southeast Asia. First, a general picture of urban land concentration and speculation will be drawn followed by results of detailed surveys on urban landownership in Malaysia and Indonesia.

Urban landownership, ethnicity and class in southeast Asian cities

I

The existence of rampant land speculation in the cities of the ASEAN countries is well known although it has not been analysed in any consistent fashion. Studies on the urban land market carried out by economists provide interesting overall data, but the buyers and sellers themselves are left in the dark. The stress tends to be on the ‘blind’ market forces. The genesis of land speculation or its social con- sequences are hardly discussed at all.

Land speculation appears to be connected with high growth rates of the GNP, an unequal distribution of income, particularly in the urban areas, and the accumulation of wealth in an urban upper class. As the slowly emerging industrial sector is dominated by foreign capital, investment in land becomes one of the major avenues of economic success. Land has always been one of the safest forms of

Land speculation and the urban social structure

Hans-Dieter Even 483

investment in politically unstable situations, Furthermore, profits can be made with a minimum of management and business skills,

It appears that land speculation started in the mid-1 960s in Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand though the number of speculators was apparently limited at the beginning. But already in 1968 a United Nations report could claim: 'speculation in land prices in the very largest Asian metropolitan centres has, indeed, risen to such an extent that urban land prices are higher in the developing countries in Asia than even in the most developed countries' (UN, 1968, 52). At that time land speculation might have been largely institutional rather than terminal, i.e. speculators bought land waiting for appreciation rather than selling it to housing developers as happened later in the 1970s. A general housing shortage and the formation of slums in city centres seem to have been connected with this type of land speculation. When with rising incomes through increased employment opportunities the middle class in southeast Asian cities tried to improve their housing conditions, they found that land in the immediate outskirts of the cities had been bought up by speculators and land prices were rising fast. In Bangkok, chain speculation

has provoked a considerable increase in the price of urban and suburban land. On the one hand, this has speeded up the decomposition of peri-urban rural communities, and on the other hand, has prohibited the major part of the urban population from owning urban land, in a context where no public housing aid was available (Durand-Lasserve, 1980,lO).

Price in baht/rn' 3000, .

0 5 to - Limit of the Limited of the urbanised urbanised zone zone in 1971 in 1952 I I

Zone of subdivided estates in 1971

Figure 1 Land prices in Bangkok 1 958 and 197 1

484 Urban landownership, ethnicity and class in southeast Asian cities

In 1969/70, the Singapore middle class was affected by a wave of speculation. ‘Middle income earners woke up with a jolt to find that they had been priced out of the housing market’, whereas advertisements lured millionaires with the promise ‘to pamper them with a palatial home’ (Singapore nude and Industry July 1973,

T h s process is documented in our study of Upper Orchard Road, Singapore. This area is now one of Singapore’s major shopping and hotel centres. In the 1950s it connected the central business district with the upper-class area of Tanglin and was lined by Chnese shop houses, hawker centres and middle-class residences. In our study, we coded the land sales from the records of the land registry. Between 1950 and 1960 the turnover rate was low. Some subdivision took place when new shop houses were built. Thus, the number of lots increased from 107 to 114 in this 10-year period. In the following five years from 1962 to 1966 land sales increased and 66% of the lots changed their owners. The number of lots almost doubled through subdividsion, a sure sign of rapid urban development. After 1967, it turned out that land has systematically been acquired by some large companies rather than by individual owners as before. Land was amalgamated to larger plots suitable for the building of large shopping centres and hotels. Land sales were still high (about half the land was sold again between 1967 and 1971) but this time primarily from land development companies to hotel and business concerns. Table 1 summarizes this development.

21, 11).

Table 1 Turnover of urban land, Upper Orchard Road, Singapore 1952-7 1

1952-56 1957-61 1962-66 1967-71

Total number of subdivided lots 107 114 172 89 Cases of turnover of land 30 31 114 43

A new wave of speculation, but now mainly in apartments, hit Singapore in 1978-80, followed by a decline in 1981/82. But in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, property prices were still rising by about 50% in 1980 (Far Eastern Economic Review 13 February 198 1,52).

Similar data on landownership in the other ASEAN capitals, like Bangkok, Manila and Jakarta, as well as other major towns, could be marshalled to show what amounts to a similar pattern of land speculation and urban landownership. In very general terms the following picture emerges: The first wave of land speculation takes place in the inner suburbs where new subsidiary town centres and new middle and upperclass housing develops. A second wave of speculation then engulfs the city centre and creates a new and dense central business district with offices of local and multinational corporations. The resulting population movements create a severe urban crisis. Inhabitants of the former inner-city slums are pressed to move to the suburbs where they compete with land speculators and housing developers. At the

Hans-Dieter Evers 485

same time rural-urban migrants move into the suburban ring further intensifying the struggle for urban land. This latter process is strengthened by the land speculation that has started in the rural areas surrounding the big cities of southeast Asia.

This process is well documented, also for the capitals of those ASEAN countries in which, unlike in the Philippines, large-scale absentee landlordism was, until now, the exception rather than the rule. When Prime Mmister Sarit died in December 1963 after five years in office, it was disclosed that he and his wife owned vast tracts of land, especially along the highways leading out of Bangkok. While in 1971 the US Department of Agriculture still thought fit to state that ‘problems of land tenure are not acute in Thailand . . . nearly 82% of the Thai farmers own all or part of the land they cultivate’ (1972, 17), the report introduced a note of caution in 1972. Based on information supplied by international organizations and the Bang- kok Bank, it disclosed that ‘tenancy in the central plain is spreading largely because of land speculation (generally by urban residents) and mortgage foreclosures’. Although the Thai nobility already owned land in irrigation schemes introduced in the 1930s, absentee landownerism, particularly in the central plain surrounding Bangkok, has become widespread only recently and now poses a serious threat to Thai peasants.

Absentee landlordism is in fact largely an urban phenomenon. This applies also to Indonesia. Whereas rural unrest in the 1960s and the rural conflict and large- scale killings following the 1965 coup might still partly be explained in terms of a rural class conflict between landless labourers and small peasants on one hand, and middle and large peasants including large landowners on the other (Wertheim, 1969), the situation appears to have changed considerably. Land speculation in Jakarta connected with the Indonesian oil boom and the influx of expatriates in the 1970s have meanwhile been extended to the rural areas surrounding Jakarta as well as other larger Indonesian towns. Though there are no survey data of landownership in Jakarta or its surrounding areas, spot checks have revealed that vast tracts of land, especially in the hill country of the Priangan, have changed hands and now belong to Indonesian generals and their families, higher government officials and other members of the Indonesian upper class. ‘Officials are moving into riceland ownership on a considerable scale, significantly changing the power structure in rural Indonesia’ (Robison, 1978,33).

As alternative investment opportunities have been expanding in most southeast Asian countries during the 1980s a decline in urban land speculation may be envisaged. The rather spectacular collapse of the land market in Hong Kong and, t o a lesser degree, in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, appear to point in this direction.

We might thus summarize the general picture as follows: land speculation on a large scale has started in the ASEAN cities at different times but has taken similar forms. Speculation normally started with an upswing of the national economy (GNP growth rates of more than 5%), and the concentration of wealth in an urban upper class. In the beginning, land speculation took place primarily in the inner- city suburbs, and then extended both to the city centre, the rural urban fringe, and then into the rural areas surrounding the cities. Land speculation and change in the


ownership of urban and rural land has certainly contributed to a redistribution of the urban population: high population densities in the inner suburbs, mixing of ethnic groups, urban conflict between squatters and landowners, and racial riots.

I1 Ethnicity and urban landownership

The ownership of urban land, one of the most scarce and valuable assets in any country, has indeed hardly ever been subjugated to research and analysis in southeast Asia. There are no statistics available so far on who owns Manila, Jakarta, Singapore or Kuala Lumpur. Major legal and administrative measures like the Malaysian National Land Code (Act No. 56 of 1965), or the Indonesian Land Law (hukum agraria 1965) take little note, if any, of the special conditions of urban landownership. The anti-land speculation legislation of Malaysia has been enforced without any prior knowledge of the structure of urban landownership and consequently with little chance of estimating the llkely results. Urban master plans now available for all ASEAN capitals are worked out and zoning is attempted without studying the effects on the redistribution of urban land.

Overall national planning also touches on urban land problems without being able to refer to an adequate data base. The Third Malaysia Plan, 1976-80, stipu- lates that the precentage of Malays in urban areas of 10 000 population and above will have to increase from 18% in 1975 to 21.3% in 1980 (7'hirdMalaysia Plan, p. 149). Will these urban Malays be tenants or landowners? Will they share in the ownership of strategically located and valuable city centres, allowing them to participate in trade or commerce? Or will they dwell on the semirural fringe, owning the remnants of rural land so far left untouched by the urbanization process? The new economic policy inaugurated after the bloody urban riots in May 1969 in Kuala Lumpur promises Malays a greater share in the Chinese-dominated economy. Policy measures are largely seen in a racial framework, either directly by fixing targets on the proportion of capital, market shares etc. to be held by Malays or, indirectly, by giving the Malay-dominated Civil Service a share in the economy by founding government corporations and enterprises. M A W , a trading organization, and UDA, an urban development authority, have been used to acquire city property to give Malays a greater chance to participate in urban life and urban commerce. In this respect the ethnic distribution of landownership became extremely important. Also in Indonesia, the domination of shopping centres and business districts by Chinese has been the cause for urban riots and disturbances (Jakarta, January 1974; Ujung Pandang, 1981 and many more). Ownership of urban land and, therefore, access to business opportunities have, indeed, become a major issue in southeast Asia's plural societies, but again little is known about the distribution of urban land by race, not to be confused with occupancy which can be studied from census reports.

In Malaysia, more than in any other southeast Asian country, there has been a tendency towards rural/urban residential segregation and occupational specialization


by ethnicity . Whereas Malays have concentrated in rural or administrative occupations, a disproportionately large number of commercial and industrial jobs have been filled by Chinese. The policy under the Malaysia Plans to reduce the imbalance by ‘restructuring society’ is, however, made difficult by the pattern of urban landownership. Access to the urban commercial market and access to participation in commercial activities is conditional upon access to urban areas, particularly the central business district of Malaysian cities. Conflict over urban land has arisen on various occasions and seems to have been a major factor in the riots and killings of 13 May 1969, that led to the proclamation of a state of emergency and the virtual abolition of the democratic political system in Malaysia from 1969-74. Indeed, access to urban areas and the use of urban land is, to a large extent, determined by the property owner. Without ownershp of urban land, participation in the urban economy is extremely difficult. Some relevant data are provided by our survey of urban landownership in Peninsular Malaysia.’

Contrary to popular perception Chmese do not necessarily own more urban land than should be due to them according to their share in the urban population. Over- all there is a slight imbalance in favour of Chinese owners, however, the distribution of urban land by ethnic group varies considerably from town to town. In Kota Bharu, on the east coast, and in Alor Setar, on the west coast, Malays own the largest proportion of urban property. This may partly be due to the fact that a large proportion of the land owned by Malays is, in fact, ranah ~ ~ k a f , i.e. Muslim religious endowments, or Malay reservation, that cannot be alienated to members of other ethnic groups.’ In some cases, rural Malay kampongs have recently been included in the town boundary, thus increasing the share of Malay-owned land.

Of all the urban areas in our sample of 16 Malaysian towns, which to a certain extent might be thought of as representing the overall situation in Peninsular Malaysia as a whole, 29% of urban land is owned by Malays, 61% by Chinese, 9% by Indians and 1% by others. In comparison, the population distribution by ethnic groups in these towns is 30% Malays, 58% Chinese, 11% Indians and 1% others.

I One of the few studies on urban landownership (the only comprehensive study in Asia) was conducted in 1975-79 in a sample of 16 Malaysian cities. This study was conducted under the auspices of the Centre for Policy Research, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang. It was directed by Hans-Dieter Evers and Goh Ban Lee with the assistance of the Urban Development Authority of Malaysia. These towns have been selected to represent major types of urban areas in terms of population size, location in different economic zones of Peninsular Malaysia, and in terms of the racial composition of its population. Though we cannot claim that the selected towns and cities comprise a statistically representative sample of all Malaysian urban areas, at least our sample coincides with some of the major parameters of the Malaysian urban population. In a rather laborious process the parcels of land were listed from data contained in the State Survey Offices. These lots were then searched in the Legal Land Records and coded according to size, land use, ownership by type, ethnicity of owner, frequencies of sales, or inheritance, mortgages, subdivision and other variables. ‘Malay reservations were introduced by the British in the 1930s after the great economic crisis to protect Malay peasants from losing agricultural land to other ethnic groups, particularly Indian moneylenders. Though urban areas were largely excluded from Malay reservations, urban expansion has increasingly enclosed Malay reservations in some states (Ali, 1983).


This almost equal ethnic distribution of urban property might, however, give a wrong impression. Even in those towns in which the majority of the land is owned by Malays, the city centre or the commercial district tends to be more or less com- pletely owned by Chinese. In fact, land owned by Malays, is less subdivided than land owned by the other ethnic groups, indicating a lower state of urban development or a predominance of multiple or communal ownership. More than one third of urban land of lots of more than 5000 sq ft (i.e. larger than normal housing lots) is owned by Malays. This also indicates that Malay land is often rural land on the city fringe recently incorporated into the town limits. With further urban expansion this land might be taken over by development corporations which later sub- divide, build houses and sell them to more affluent, mostly Chinese, urbanites. Malays migrating to urban areas are then faced either with overcrowded slums in Malay-owned areas or are faced with paying rent to Chinese landlords. The government has therefore stepped in recently and started to support the building of low-cost housing estates in which preference is given to Malay tenants. These government measures should also be seen as a strategy to reduce the likelihood of urban conflict.

In general, there was up to 1975/76 still a tendency for an increase in the ethnic imbalance of urban landownership. In 1975/76 most urban land that changed ethnic ownership was sold by Indians to Chnese showing both the general decline of the economic importance and the wealth of Indians in Malaysia. On the other hand, this might also reflect the last stage of earlier patterns in which Indian Chettiar moneylenders bought up Malay land due to foreclosures and sold it at a later date to Chinese businessmen. There was also a net transfer of land from Malays to Chinese indicating that all government policies t o the contrary have not yet had the desired effect.

On the basis of the available data we might thus conclude that the balance between urban landownership and urban population is only slightly tilted in favour of Chinese if we consider the overall situation. There is, however, increasing pressure on Malays and Indians, the two urban minority groups, to sell land to the Chinese. This may be due to the expansion of urban areas into the urban fringe and the building of housing estates for middle-income groups as indicated above. Lower- income groups to which a large section of the urban Malay population belongs, are forced to sell and to move either beyond the city limits to squatter areas, or as tenants into low-cost housing projects.

The ethnic ownership of land in other southeast Asian countries is not known, but it can be assumed that there are considerable differences between occupancy and ownership. Conflicts have certainly arisen out of this situation, particularly in connection with migration and the internal redistribution of the urban population. In fact, changes in the ownership of urban land giving access both to urban production and commerce and also to the means of urban living reflect perhaps more than any other economic feature the most basic social processes in any given society.


A B C

No ethnic change Change between different categories of owners Change between three major ethnic groups

Acres MALAY CHINESE INDIAN

Sold 506.9 354.4 718.7 Bought 283.4 991.1 307.5 Balance -223.5 +636.7 -41 1.2

Figure 2 Change in urban landownership by ethnic group in west Malaysia 1975-76 (sample of 16 towns).

Source: CPR Urban landownership study by H.D. Evers and Goh Ban Lee

111 Landlords and tenants

Despite increasing pressure on rural land throughout southeast Asia, in most villages the housing plots are at least owned by the occupants. Among some ethnic groups, i.e. the Malays, land within settlements was deemed to be relatively unimportant. Consequently, a division was made between the ownershp of houses - a valuable asset - and the right to put up a house, according to the advice of the village head.

In urban areas the situation is, of course, quite different. Despite the fact that in some towns like in Padang, west Sumatra, traditional forms of communal land- ownershp are still found (Evers, 1975b) private property rights are firmly estab- lished. Urban land has become very scarce indeed, and has been extended into a vertical dimension piling up floor after floor in multistoried buildings which may be owned separately in the form of condominiums or apartments. In some documented cases individual occupancy or even property rights to very small spaces have developed while land prices have soared.

Whereas rural land has become the major means of production in the countryside,


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urban land is now the most important means of :eproduction of the urban population. With increasing commercialization of the peasant sector agricultural products are used less for own consumption but more and more for cash crop production. In urban areas, however, a relatively small proportion of urban land is used for market oriented productive purposes. Most urban land is utilized as living space for the reproduction of the urban population. The typical Chinese shop house in southeast Asian cities shows a combination of both. The ground floor is used for commerce or manufacturing, the upper floor for living.

The ownership of urban land, i.e. the ownershp of the means of reproduction, has become, I would submit, a major criterion in defining class relations in southeast Asian cities. Perhaps it is even justified to venture that the contradiction between urban landlords and tenants is still more decisive than the contradiction between employers and wage labourers. This may be due to the relatively small size of the wage labourforce in the so-called formal sector and the preponderance of commerce and informal sector occupations.

Who then owns urban land in the southeast Asian city? There are four major categories: individual landlords, companies and corporations, religious and other institutions, and the government. If we exclude land for ‘collective consumption’ like roads, places and thoroughfares, urban land in our sample of 16 Malaysian towns was owned as follows (Even, 1982,2 17):

individual landlords 5 5% companies 1 4% religious and other institutions 9% government 22%

Individual landowners should further be divided among ownerfoccupants and small or large landlords who rent land and houses to others. If we add the class of non- owners we can draw the following figure:

Big Landlords Companies Institutions Government Medium Owners religiouslothers Owner occupants

Tenants Subtenants Boarders Squatters Homeless Subsquatters

1

The upper section of the landowning class is very marked in southeast Asian cities. Though, for instance, the Indonesian upper class has invested in all sorts of companies,

the focus of capital investment in fully-owned companies has been primarily in real estate. This tendency is logical enough. Fall from office will not affect ownership of real property since retention of such property is now dependent on continuing control over allocation

Hans-Dieter Even 49 1

of concessions nor does it involve reinvestment or production. The big families have moved into urban property in hotels in a substantial way just as they have on a smaller scale also moved into the purchase of private luxury homes of resort housing and ofrice- land in rural Indonesia (Robison, 1978, 33).

What Robison has outlined on the basis of a detailed study of the ownership of Indonesian companies could probably also be said about the investment strategies of the bourgeoisie in other southeast Asian cities. The rising cost of land and houses leads to a considerable strengthening of an urban landowning class that comes into the possession of a huge and constantly growing ‘urban capital stock’ consisting of urban land and buildings. The concentration of landownership is very high indeed. Thus, our survey revealed that 5% of the landowners owned 52.8% of the urban land in the 16 towns. That concentration is high is shown by comparison with a middle-sized German town. In Gijttingen the top 5% of the landowners owned only 17% of the urban land in the central area in 1970 (St adtebauliche Forschung 1972, 1 14-1 7). In comparison 5% of landowners owned 44% of the land in Taiping, and more than 50% in Georgetown, Penang. If we were to use land prices and the consolidated value of the land, this would probably show an even greater concentration as big landowners and speculators alike tend to accumulate the most valuable property. But even without these figures based on land prices, it is obvious that an urban landowning class owns a large proportion of Malaysia’s fixed urban capital, that is urban housing and land.

It would be most interesting to follow up the process of land concentration or deconcentration in the same way as we have tried to provide at least some data on changes in the ethnic distribution of land.

Data on the long-term development of landownership would, indeed, be useful in answering the question whether economic and industrial development and the urbanization process in general lead to a concentration of urban land in the hands of an urban upper class. As these data have not been processed so far a comparison of Malaysian towns at various stages of urban development might at least give some indication. If we compare Penang, a highly developed commercial town, with Kota Baharu, the old capital of the sultanate of Kelantan with a largely Malay urban population, little commerce and even less industry, and Jeli, a still largely rural area, earmarked for urban development, with the completion of the east-west highway linking Kota Baharu and Penang, a fairly clear picture emerges. In the pre- urban area of Jeli, land is almost equally distributed. In Kota Baharu, some land concentration, particularly in the city centre, has taken place. In Penang, concentration has already reached a high stage.

A similar picture emerges if we compare towns according to their industrial development. In Figure 4 we have used the percentage of the manufacturing work- force in metal production in 1970 as an industrialization index and a land concentration index, namely the percentage of land owned by the top 1% of landowners, according to our survey in 1976. A very high correlation between the two indices seems to indicate that in towns with a high development of modern-type industrial production land concentration is high whereas non-industrialized towns also exhibit a low degree of land concentration.


20 -

10

Land Concentration

x BM

X T

X YB

x M

4 0 1

AS x

X

B

X P

Industrial development

Figure 4 Concentration of urban landownership by industrial development in selected Malaysian towns, 1970-76.

Land concentration = percentage of land owned by top 1% landowners, 1976. Industrial development = percentage of manufacturing labourforce in metal production, 1970.

M = Mentakab; KB = Kota Baharu; T = Taiping; BM = Bukit Mertajam; BP = Batu Pahat; K = Kulim; P = Penang; AS = Alor Setar; B = Butterworth.

Although Figure 4 shows clear-cut results, the question remains whether the comparison of towns could be interpreted to represent an evolutionary sequence. This is, indeed, highly questionable. On the other hand, data on land speculation seem to suggest that economic growth and an increasing income differentiation are linked with land speculation and consequently the concentration of land in the hands of a small urban upper class becomes greater. Th~s, again, is in line with the findings of studies on the effects of the Green Revolution and agricultural intensifi- cation on rural land tenure. Also here a differentiation of the peasantry and an increase in absentee landlordism seems to have occurred at least initially.

There is, however, no doubt that in the ASEAN countries the accumulation of capital has taken place largely in terms of iand speculation and concentration of urban land in a few hands. This process has often been hdden by increasing subdivision of land while owners own many small parcels in different locations. I would, therefore, be hesitant to call this concentration of land ‘urban latifundismo’, a term used by Cornelius (1976, 249-70). That the large urban landowners con- stitute an upper class, accumulating surplus from the urban tenants, is shown in

Huns-Dieter Evers 493

the severe overcrowding in the large cities, where houses are often sublet, even rooms subdivided. A ‘trickle-up’ of rent is accumulated by landowners, and living quarters of low-income groups are further compressed by urban development, slum clearance and construction of housing estates for middle-income groups. Administrative and political control over the ‘means of reproduction’ through the establishment of very small administrative units and vigilante groups, both in Malaysia and Indonesia, and countermoves by the lower classes which take land as squatters, should, therefore, be seen as complementary in the process of urban growth and underdevelopment.

The new economic policy of the Malaysian government promises the eradication of poverty. President Suharto of Indonesia has even gone so far as to proclaim in 1979 the so-called ‘eight ways of increasing equality’ (delapun julur pernerufuun). These are promises, but the degree of concentration of ownerdup of urban land has not been mentioned expressively in any of these policy statements. It may not be without importance that the politicians and civil servants proclaiming these policies of eradication of poverty and equal distribution of income are heavily involved in urban landownership and land speculation as shown by our analysis.

Another aspect may be of importance. As we know from household budget surveys (including our own survey in Jakarta 1979, see Evers, 1981), a very large proportion of the income of lower-income groups in urban areas is spent on rent whch in turn is acquired by property owners. If the ownershp of large tracts of urban land is concentrated in the hands of a few persons, families or companies, the majority of the population has no chance to own the land on which they live. SO far, strangely enough, there is no ‘land to the urban tenant’ movement comparable to a ‘land to the tiller’ movement in rural areas. Concentration of landownership tends to lead to overcrowding and high population density in some urban areas and underutilization of space in others, if land is held for speculation (‘leap-frog development’). Property taxes, so far do not help to alleviate the situation, as quit rents and property taxes do not follow the principle of progressive taxation introduced in income taxation a long time ago and used as a major measure to achieve a more equal distribution of income. Without accurate data on the degree of concentration of urban landownership appropriate measures cannot be taken to effect a more equal distribution of urban land, should this be desired by benevolent governments.

The most consistent land policy has been followed by the Singapore government. Urban land has been acquired, public housing has been constructed and the subdivided flats have been rented or sold to the poorer sections of the Singapore population. The government thus maintains a high degree of control over the means of reproduction of the Singapore working class by controlling not only access to urban space but also by regulating the conditions of urban living.

IV Conclusions

It is generally assumed that the ownership and control of the means of production


is the basis for capital accumulation and the formation of an upper class. The situation is, however, somewhat peculiar in countries on the periphery of world capitalism, in countries of dependent production. Here the means of production are largely owned by foreigners and multinational corporations. The local bourgeoisie is consequently restricted to own what is left by multinational corporations. In the absence of large-scale industries which, if they exist, are largely foreign-owned, the ownership of land and the construction of housing become important fields of local investments. Ownership in these sectors does, however, control the reproduction of the urban population and urban living in general. If we assume that the urban lower classes in the developing countries use up to one thud of their household expenditure on housing and rent, i.e. on ‘habitat reproduction’, and another two thirds on food, large parts of the urban economy seen from below are determined by the reproduction sphere. Though the income utilized for household reproduction circulates largely among the proto-proletariate of hawkers and market vendors, wholesalers eventually establish the connection with the other parts of the urban economy.

As formal sector employment is still low, the relationship between ‘capitalists’ and wage labourers does not necessarily provide the main structural principle in urban society. At least, an analysis of urban class conflict would go wrong if this contradiction was assumed to be the most essential. Ownership of the means of reproduction, i.e. urban land, that controls access to urban living space as well as to other economic activities, is perhaps more important than the usually assumed class relations in hghly developed capitalist societies. An urban class structure divided into landowners and landless tenants might, indeed, provide a key for a better understanding of urban processes and urban conflict in third world cities.

V References

Ali, S.H. 1983: Poverty and landlessness in Kelantan, Malaysia. Bielefeld Studies in the Sociology of Development Vol. 19, Saarbriicken and Fort Lauderdale: Breitenbach Publishers.

Castells, M. 1972: La question urbaine. Paris: Maspero. Cornelius, W.A. 1976: The impact of cityward migration on urban land and housing

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La proprittt de la terre urbaine, c’est d due la proprittt des moyens de reproduction, est considtrte comme un crittre majeur pour dkfinir les relations de classe dans les villes du Tiers Monde. Les conflits urbains en Asie du Sud-Est indiquent que la contradiction entre Ics pro- prittaires urbains et les locataires peut Ctre plus importante que la contradiction entre capitali- stes et travailleurs gage dans le secteur formel relativement petit. La sptculation de terre urbaine et la concentration de la propriktt urbaine, aspects importants en eux-m&mes du processus d’urbanisation, sont discuttes sur la base d’une Btude de donntes en Thailande, en Indonksie et en Malaysie. Pour ce dernier pays, les donnkes sur le changement des mod6les ethniques de la proprittt de la terre sont ajoutkes et discutkes par rapport au conflit urbain. La forte concentration de propriete terrienne urbaine parait augmenter avec I’industrialisation et tend d &tre like avec l’entassement dans certaines zones urbaines, et avec la sous utilisation de I’espace dans d’autres, Comme les impBts sur la propriktt ne suivent pas le principe de la taxation progressive, et que la terre urbaine n’est pas couverte par la legislation de la rtforme de la terre, la valeur de la proprittt de la terre urbaine a rapidement augment&. Cela await BtC une marche importante vers la distribution intgale de revenu et de richesse, et dans notre cadre thtorique, de la formation de classes.


Der Besitz stadtischen Grunds, d.h. der Besitz von Produktionsmitteln, wird als wichtiges Kriterium bei der Defmierung der Klassenbeziehungen in Stadten der dritten Welt betrachtet. Stadtische Konflikte in Siidostasien lassen erkennen, dal3 der Gegenstaz swischen stadtischen Vermietern und Mietern wichtiger sein konnte als der Gegensaz zwischen Kapitalisten und Lohnarbeitern im relativ kleinen offiziellen Sektor. Stadtische Grundstiickspekulation und die Konzentration stadtischen Grundeigentums sind wichtige Aspekte des Urbanisierungsprozesses. Sie werden anhand von Umfragedaten aus Thailand, Indonesien und Malaysia untersucht. Fur letzteres Land werden aul3erdem Daten zur sich wandelnden ethnischen Konfiguration des Grundeigentums angefuhrt und in bezug auf stadtische Konflikte erortert. Die Konzentration des stadtischen Grundeigentums scheint mit der Industrialisierung zuzunehmen und ist oft mit einer ubervolkerung in gewissen stadtischen Bereichen und einer nicht optimalen Raumnut- zung in anderen Bereichen verbunden. Da die Grundsteuern nicht gestaffelt sind und die Grund- stiicksreformgesetze nicht auf stadtisches Land zutreffen, nimmt der Wert stadtischen Grund- eigentums schnell zu. Dies ist im Rahmen unserer Theorie ein wesentlicher Grund fur die ungleichmslDige Einkommens- und Wohlstandsverteilung und die Klassenbildung.

La posesidn de terreno urbano, o sea la posesidn de 10s medios de reproduccibn, se ve como un importante criterio para la definici6n de las relaciones entre clases en ciudades del tercer mundo. Conflictos urbanos en el Sudeste Asidtico indican que la contradiccibn entre propietarios urbanos y sus inquilinos puede ser mds importante que la contradiccidn entre capitalistas y jornaleros en el sector formal relativamente pequefio. La especulacibn en terrenos urbanos y la concentracidn de la posesidn de terrenos urbanos, de por si importantes aspectos del proceso de urbanizacidn, se discuten basados en datos de una encuesta en Thailandia, Indonesia y Malasia. Pare este dltimo pais, se afiaden datos sobre 10s cambios Ctnicos en la posesidn de terrenos, y se discuten en relacidn con el conflict0 urbano. Una elevada concentracidn de posesidn de terrenos urbanos parece crecer con la industrializacidn, y tiende a estar conec- ta& con una gran concentracidn en algunas Areas urbanas y con infrautilizacibn de espacio en otras. Como 10s impuestos sobre la propiedad no siguen el principio de tributacidn progresiva, y 10s terrenos urbanos no estdn cubiertos por la legislacibn de reforma agraria, la posesidn de terrenos urbanos tiene un valor que aumenta rdpidamente. Esto ha sido una importante causa de la distribucidn desigual de la renta y de la riqueza y, dentro de nuestro marc0 tedrico, de la formaci6n de clases.

Urban landownership, ethnicity and class in southeast Asian cities

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