SUMMARY

The paper analyses spatial dimensions of land tenure security in situations, where land tenure is predominantly informal, as is the case in major parts of the world. It takes its point of departure in a dilemma constituted by:- on one side, the complexity of land tenure issues, and- on the other side, the simplicity of practices of registration and scarcity of data on land tenure in many parts of the world. The concepts of land tenure security are spatially analysed in view of the need for filling the land information gap between monitoring data at national level and specific land data, prior to availability of cadastral or other property data. The land tenure situation outside the formal systems escapes quantification through data sources currently available at land institutions in many countries. In accordance with the current understanding of lands rights as complex social, legal and institutional constructs this paper analyses the implications of the conceptual understanding of land rights for clarification of land rights. It is proposed that each of the social, legal and institutional aspects of land tenure is to be understood in an associated spatial context. The paper introduces the concept of a spatial hierarchy of land tenure security defined as- Factors determining for tenure security at levels above the individual property level (e.g., planning, land authority), and their equivalent spatial-organisational level; and- Spatial clusters of attributes of tenure security, which happen to be similar or common fo