2 The Pending Agenda of Property Right Formalisation in Peru: Conceptual and Public Policy Aspects JULIO CALDERÓN COCKBURN Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos This chapter addresses one of the most important urban policies in Peru in recent decades: the Plan Nacional de Formalización (PNF, Property For- malisation Programme), the second phase of which was developed with the Proyecto de Consolidación de los Derechos de la Propiedad Inmobiliaria (PCDPI, Consolidation of Real Estate Rights Project) supported by the World Bank (2007–2011). This project was publicly presented in March 2008, and represented a continuation of the Proyecto de Derechos de Propiedad Urbana (PDPU, Urban Property Rights Project) (1998–2004). It sought to consolidate the property rights already achieved for its benefciaries, strengthen the land registry system, and integrate the state institutions responsible for socio-economic development and land administration. The analysis presented here covers two levels: conceptual and public policy. To this end, it delves into the historical, theoretical and ideological foundations of the policy and tests its results against empirical evidence. Conceptual questions that emerge are: whether the results of the policy are meeting the objectives it has set; whether the connections have been made between its practical applications and the conceptual proposals that under- pinned them; and its relationship with other urban and housing policies. It is concluded that the policy has met its goals but not its neoliberal objectives and, in reality, generates understandings, perceptions and uses of property in the affected families that are very different from those proposed by its promoters, based on practical aspects related more to use value of property rather than its exchange value. This work goes beyond understanding of the needs of the Peruvian state and its public policy, to address aspects of the regularisation of the country’s poor urban settlements. Given that there is almost total consensus among politicians, academics and multilateral cooperation, it is important to specify the type of policy to which the formalisation of property rights belongs. One urban tradition in Latin America consists of regularising tenure and