Housing in Developing Cities by Patrick Wakely

Author:Patrick Wakely
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)
Published: 2017-01-03T00:00:00+00:00

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Thus, in most countries, recognition of the principle of subsidiarity and the devolution of authority in the housing sector is an essential starting point. However, ‘municipalisation’ and the co-existence, not to mention the integration, of alternative policy approaches are likely to pose some fundamental political/ideological contradictions (Fiori & Ramirez 1992). It also invariably calls for radical changes in the management of urban development and the administration of urban infrastructure and service delivery that in many towns and cities require complex and often contentious processes to ensure inter-agency cooperation or collaboration.

To assist and enhance this, it is conceptually helpful to disentangle the production of dwelling units to meet politically determined production targets (the ‘numbers game’) from the contribution of good, safe and secure housing and domestic infrastructure to the wider social processes of equitable urban development, notably the alleviation of the social impacts of poverty, poverty reduction and enhancing the productivity of low-income urban communities and enterprises in the urban economy at large. Clearly, to be effective municipal housing policies and programmes must address all these issues simultaneously, combining ‘non-conventional’ participatory incremental housing production, maintenance and management with, for example, ‘conventional’ constructed (subsidised) public rental housing. Such an approach should also take into account and contribute to the rationalisation of the urban structure (form) of the city to ensure coherence between different areas of the city and the functions and amenities that they provide for the city as a whole as well as for those who live and/or work in them. Thus, initiating integrated and sustainable urban development, as expounded by the 2016 United Nations New Urban Agenda, for Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III) and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2015–20301 and embracing the goals and targets for the mitigation of climate change in and by urban areas, principally the reduction and control of greenhouse gas emissions, as agreed by the The Paris Agreement of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Paris in December 2015.2

As pointed out at the start of this book, in physical terms, housing is a major component of all towns and cities in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean, typically covering 60–80 per cent of the developed land area of towns and cities and accounting for 50–70 per cent of the value of the fixed capital formation of the urban areas of which it is an integral part (UN-Habitat 2003). Thus, low-income group housing policies and strategies for their implementation cannot be divorced from policies and strategies for the development, planning and management of towns and cities as a whole, as they have been, and still are, in many countries.

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