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Sunday, July 27, 2008

Village

Village


A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet, but smaller than a town or city[1]. Though generally located in rural areas, the term urban village may be applied to certain urban neighbourhoods, such as the West Village in Manhattan, New York City and the Saifi Village in Beirut, Lebanon. Villages are normally permanent, with fixed dwellings; however, transient villages[2] can occur. Further, the dwellings of a village are fairly close to one another, as against being scattered broadly over the landscape (‘dispersed settlement’).

Villages have been the usual form of community for societies that practice subsistence agriculture, and even for some non-agricultural societies. Towns and cities were few, and were home to only a small proportion of the population. The Industrial Revolution caused many villages to grow into towns and cities; this trend of urbanisation has continued, though not always in connection with industrialisation. Villages have thus been eclipsed in importance, as units of human society and settlement.

Traditional villages

Although many patterns of village life have existed, the typical village was small, consisting of perhaps 5 to 30 families. Homes were situated together for sociability and defense, and land surrounding the living quarters was farmed.

South Asia

India

A village in central India.
A village in central India.

"The soul of India lives in its villages", declared M. K. Gandhi [3] at the beginning of 20th century. According to the 2001 Indian census, 74% of Indians live in 638,365 different villages.[4] The size of these villages varies considerably. 236,004 Indian villages have a population less than 500, while 3,976 villages have a population of 10,000+. Most villages have their own temple, mosque or church depending on the local religious following.

Southeast Asia

Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia

The kampong of Pariangan, West Sumatra.
The kampong of Pariangan, West Sumatra.
A kampung in the Malaysian state of Johor.
A kampung in the Malaysian state of Johor.

The term kampung in the English language has been defined specifically as "a Malay hamlet or village in a Malay-speaking country" [5] In other words, a kampung is defined today as a village in Brunei, Indonesia or Malaysia. In Malaysia, a kampung is determined as a locality with 10,000 or fewer people. Since historical times, every Malay village came under the leadership of a penghulu (village chief), who has the power to hear civil matters in his village (see Courts of Malaysia for more details). A Malay village typically contains a "masjid" (mosque) or "surau" (Muslim chapel), stilt houses and paddy fields. Malay and Indonesian villagers practice the culture of helping one another as a community, which is better known as "joint bearing of burdens" (gotong royong)[6], as well as being family-oriented (especially the concept of respecting one's family [particularly the parents and elders]), courtesy and believing in God ("Tuhan") as paramount to everything else. It is common to see a cemetery near the mosque, as all Muslims in the Malay or Indonesian village want to be prayed for, and to receive Allah's blessings in the afterlife.

Philippines

In urban areas of the Philippines, the term "village" most commonly refers to private subdivisions, especially gated communities. These villages emerged in the mid-twentieth century and were initially the domain of elite urban dwellers. However, they are now common in Metro Manila and other major cities in the country and their residents can have a wide range of income levels. They may or may not correspond to administrative units (usually barangays) and/or be privately administered. Some examples of well-known villages in Metro Manila are Forbes Park and Dasmariñas Village.

Vietnam

Village, or "làng", is a basis of Vietnam society. Vietnam's village is the typical symbol of Asian agricultural production. Vietnam's village typically contains: a village gate, "lũy tre" (bamboo hedges), "đình làng" (communal house) where "thành hoàng" (tutelary god) is worshiped, "đồng lúa" (rice field), "chùa" (temple) and houses of all families in the village. All the people in Vietnam's villages usually have a blood relationship. They are farmers who grow rice and have the same traditional handicraft. Vietnam's villages have an important role in society (Vietnamese saying: "Custom rules the law" -"Phép vua thua lệ làng" [literally: the king's law yields to village customs]). Everyone in Vietnam wants to be buried in their village when they die.

North America

United States

Incorporated villages

See also: Administrative divisions of New York#Village and Village (Oregon)

In twenty[10] U.S. states, the term "village" refers to a specific form of incorporated municipal government, similar to a city but with less authority and geographic scope. However, this is a generality; in many states, there are villages that are an order of magnitude larger than the smallest cities in the state. The distinction is not necessarily based on population, but on the relative powers granted to the different types of municipalities and correspondingly, different obligations to provide specific services to residents.

In some states such as New York, Wisconsin, or Michigan, a village is an incorporated municipality, usually, but not always, within a single town or civil township. Residents pay taxes to the village and town or township and may vote in elections for both as well. In some cases, the village may be coterminous with the town or township. There are also many villages which span the boundaries of more than one town or township, and some villages may even straddle county borders.

There is no limit to the population of a village in New York; Hempstead, the largest village in the state, has 55,000 residents, making it more populous than some of the state's cities. However, villages in the state may not exceed five square miles (13 km²) in area.

In the state of Wisconsin a village is always legally separate from the township(s) that it has been incorporated from. The largest village is Menomonee Falls, which has over 32,000 residents.

Michigan and Illinois also have no set population limit for villages and there are many villages that are larger than cities in those states.

Villages in Ohio are almost always legally separate from any townships that they may have been incorporated from (there are exceptions, such as Chagrin Falls, where the township includes the entirety of the village). They have no area limitations, but must reincorporate as cities if they grow to over 5,000 in population. Villages have the same home-rule rights as cities with fewer of the responsibilities. Unlike cities, they have the option of being either a "statutory village" and running their governments according to state law (with a six-member council serving four-year terms and a mayor who votes only to break ties) or being a "charter village" and writing a charter to run their government as they see fit.
[citations needed]

In Maryland, a locality designated "Village of ..." may be either an incorporated town or a special tax district.[11] An example of the latter is the Village of Friendship Heights.

In states that have New England towns, a "village" is a center of population or trade, including the town center, in an otherwise sparsely-developed town or city — for instance, the village of Hyannis in the city of the Town of Barnstable. Although over the years the village has become more like a small town within a town with it now being the center of everything for Barnstable.

Unincorporated villages

In many states, the term "village" is used to refer to a relatively small unincorporated community, similar to a hamlet in New York state. This informal usage may be found even in states that have villages as an incorporated municipality, although such usage might be considered incorrect and confusing.

Property management

Property management

Property management is the operation of commercial, industrial and/or residential real estate. This is much akin to the role of management in any business.

Roles

One important role is that of liaison between the landlord and/or the management firm operating on the landlord's behalf and tenant. Duties of property management include accepting rent, responding to and addressing maintenance issues, advertising vacancies for landlords, and doing credit and background checks on tenants. In exchange for the service they provide, property management companies charge landlords a percentage of the gross rent collected each month.

Property managers may manage construction, development, repair and maintenance on a property. Property manager relations with tenants gives a face to the landlord and provides a buffer for those landlords desiring to distance themselves from their tenant constituency.

There are many facets to this profession, including participating in or initiating litigation with tenants, contractors and insurance agencies. Litigation is at times considered a separate function, set aside for trained attorneys. Although a person will be responsible for this in his/her job description, there may be an attorney working under a property manager. Special attention is given to landlord/tenant law and most commonly evictions, non-payment, harassment, reduction of pre-arranged services, and public nuisance are legal subjects that gain the most amount of attention from property managers. Therefore, it is a necessity that a property manager be current with applicable municipal, county and state laws and practices.

Property management, like facility management, is increasingly facilitated by computer-aided facility management software [1].


Licensing


United States

Most states require property management companies to be licensed real estate brokers if they are collecting rent, listing properties for rent or helping negotiate leases[2]. A property manager may be a licensed real estate salesperson but generally they must be working under a licensed real estate broker. Most states have a public license check system on-line for anyone holding a real estate salesperson or real estate broker's license. A few states, such as Washington, Idaho and Maine, do not require property managers to have real estate licenses.

Generally, property managers who engage in only association management need not be licensed real estate brokers. In Connecticut, however, a broker's license is required. Some states, while not requiring a real estate license, do require association managers to register with the state.


Australia

Every state of Austrlia has different licensing requirments. To be able to trade as property management company the company has to be licensed with a principal or licensee in charge. Each staff memeber of the company has to have a certificate of registration.

Professional Designations

Building Owners & Managers Institute International (BOMI) offers industry-standard designations that certify the training associated with Property Management:

  • the Real Property Administrator (RPA)
  • the Facilities Management Administrator (FMA)
  • the Systems Maintenance Administrator (SMA)
  • the Systems Maintenance Technician (SMT)

The National Association of Residential Property Managers (NARPM) has the following designations:

  • Residential Management Professional (RMP)
  • Master Property Manager (MPM)
  • Certified Residential Management Company (CRMC)
  • Certified Support Staff (CSS)

National Apartment Association (NAA) has the following designations:

  • Certified Apartment Manager (CAM)
  • Certified Apartment Property Supervisor (CAPS)

Other uses

The term property management is used to describe the practise of managing capitalized assets that are not real estate in nature, such as equipment and consumables. This is particularly the case in some post-secondary institutions, federal agencies and organizations that must manage government-furnished property, such as government contractors.

External links



From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Real property

Real property

In the common law, real property (or realty) refers to one of the two main classes of property, the other class being personal property (personalty). Real property generally encompasses land, land improvements resulting from human effort including buildings and machinery sited on land, and various property rights over the preceding.

The concept is variously named and defined in other jurisdictions: heritable property in Scotland, immobilier in France, and immovable property in Canada, United States, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malta, Cyprus, and in countries where civil law systems prevail, including most of Europe, Russia, and South America.

Estates & ownership interests defined

The law recognizes different sorts of interests, called estates, in real property. The type of estate is generally determined by the language of the deed, lease, or bill of sale through which the estate was acquired. Estates are distinguished by the varying property rights that vest in each, and that determine the duration and transferability of the various estates. A party enjoying an estate is called a "tenant."

Some important types of estates in land include:

  • Fee simple: An estate of indefinite duration, that can be freely transferred. The most common and perhaps most absolute type of estate, under which the tenant enjoys the greatest discretion over the disposition of the property.
  • Conditional Fee simple: An estate lasting forever as long as one or more conditions stipulated by the deed's grantor does not occur. If such a condition does occur, the property reverts to the grantor, or a remainder interest is passed on to a third party.
  • Fee tail: An estate which, upon the death of the tenant, is transferred to his heirs.
  • Life estate: An estate lasting for the natural life of the grantee, called a "life tenant." If a life estate can be sold, a sale does not change its duration, which is limited by the natural life of the original grantee.
  • Leasehold: An estate of limited duration, as set out in a contract, called a lease, between the party granted the leasehold, called the lessee, and another party, called the lessor, having a longer lived estate in the property. For example, an apartment-dweller with a one year lease has a leasehold estate in her apartment. Lessees typically agree to pay a stated rent to the lessor.

A tenant enjoying an undivided estate in some property after the termination of some estate of limited duration, is said to have a "future interest." Two important types of future interests are:

  • Reversion: A reversion arises when a tenant grants an estate of lesser maximum duration than his own. Ownership of the land returns to the original tenant when the grantee's estate expires. The original tenant's future interest is a reversion.
  • Remainder: A remainder arises when a tenant with a fee simple grants someone a life estate or conditional fee simple, and specifies a third party to whom the land goes when the life estate ends or the condition occurs. The third party is said to have a remainder. The third party may have a legal right to limit the life tenant's use of the land.

Estates may be held jointly as joint tenants with rights of survivorship or as tenants in common. The difference in these two types of joint ownership of an estate in land is basically the inheritability of the estate. In joint tenancy (sometimes called tenancy of the entirety when the tenants are married to each other) the surviving tenant (or tenants) become the sole owner (or owners) of the estate. Nothing passes to the heirs of the deceased tenant. In some jurisdictions the magic words "with right of survivorship" must be used or the tenancy will assumed to be tenants in common. Tenants in common will have a heritable portion of the estate in proportion to their ownership interest which is presumed to be equal amongst tenants unless otherwise stated in the transfer deed.

Real property may be owned jointly with several tenants, through devices such as the condominium, housing cooperative, and building cooperative.

Economic aspects of real property

Land use, land valuation, and the determination of the incomes of landowners, are among the oldest questions in economic theory. Land is an essential input (factor of production) for agriculture, and agriculture is by far the most important economic activity in preindustrial societies. With the advent of industrialization, important new uses for land emerge, as sites for factories, warehouses, offices, and urban agglomerations. Also, the value of real property taking the form of man-made structures and machinery increases relative to the value of land alone. The concept of real property eventually comes to encompass effectively all forms of tangible fixed capital. with the rise of extractive industries, real property comes to encompass natural capital. With the rise of tourism and leisure, real property comes to include scenic and other amenity values.

Starting in the 1960s, as part of the emerging field of law and economics, economists and legal scholars began to study the property rights enjoyed by tenants under the various estates, and the economic benefits and costs of the various estates. This resulted in a much improved understanding of the:

  • Property rights enjoyed by tenants under the various estates. These include the right to:
    • Decide how a piece of real property is used;
    • Exclude others from enjoying the property;
    • Transfer (alienate) some or all of these rights to others on mutually agreeable terms;
  • Nature and consequences of transaction costs when changing and transferring estates.

For an introduction to the economic analysis of property law, see Shavell (2004), and Cooter and Ulen (2003). For a collection of related scholarly articles, see Epstein (2007). Ellickson (1993) broadens the economic analysis of real property with a variety of facts drawn from history and ethnography.

Historical background

In common law, real property was property that could be protected by some form of real action, in contrast to personal property, where a plaintiff would have to resort to another form of action. As a result of this formalist approach, some things the common law deems to be land would not be classified as such by most modern legal systems, for example an advowson (the right to present to the living of a church) was real property. By contrast the rights of a leaseholder originate in personal actions and so the common law originally treated a leasehold as part of personal property.

The law now broadly distinguishes between real property (land and anything affixed to it) and personal property (everything else, e.g., clothing, furniture, money). The conceptual difference was between immovable property, which would transfer title along with the land, and movable property, which a person would retain title to. (The word is not derived from the notion of land having historically been "royal" property.[citation needed] The word royal — and its Spanish cognate real — come from the unrelated Latin word rex, meaning king.)

In modern legal systems derived from English common law, classification of property as real or personal may vary somewhat according to jurisdiction or, even within jurisdictions, according to purpose, as in defining whether and how the property may be taxed.

Bethell (1998) contains much historical information on the historical evolution of real property and property rights.



From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia