Originally published in 1990, this book reveals the extent to which petty landlordism is developing not just in the African urban settlements that have sprung up but in government-sponsored low-cost housing estates. The first part of the book traces African governments' changing responses to urban growth since the 1960s. The second presents case studies of housing markets and landlord-tenant relations north and south of the Sahara. The third examines World Bank involvement, and the book ends by considering policy implications.
The global increase in the number of slums calls for policies which improve the conditions of the urban poor, sustainably. This volume provides an extensive overview of current housing policies in Asia, Africa and Latin America and presents the facts and trends of recent housing policies. The chapters provide ideas and tools for pro-poor interventions with respect to the provision of land for housing, building materials, labour, participation and finance. The book looks at the role of the various stakeholders involved in such interventions, including national and local governments, private sector organisations, NGOs and Community-based Organisations.
This open access book utilizes new data to thoroughly analyze the main factors currently shaping the African housing market. Some of these factors include the supply and demand for housing finance, land tenure security issues, construction cost conundrum, infrastructure provision, and low-cost housing alternatives. Through detailed analysis, the authors investigate the political economy surrounding the continent’s housing market and the constraints that behind-the-scenes policy makers need to address in their attempts to provide affordable housing for the majority in need. With Africa’s urban population growing rapidly, this study highlights how broad demographic shifts and rapid urbanization are placing enormous pressure on the limited infrastructure in many cities and stretching the economic and social fabric of municipalities to their breaking point. But beyond providing a snapshot of the present conditions of the African housing market, the book offers recommendations and actionable measures for policy makers and other stakeholders on how best to provide affordable housing and alleviate Africa’s housing deficit. This work will be of particular interest to practitioners, non-governmental organizations, private sector actors, students and researchers of economic policy, international development, and urban development.
About half of the region's poor live in cities, and policy makers across Latin America are increasingly interested in policy advice on how to design programmes and policies to tackle poverty. This publication argues that the causes of poverty, the nature of deprivation, and the policy levers to fight poverty are, to a large extent, site specific. It therefore focuses on strategies to assist the urban poor in making the most of the opportunities offered by cities, such as larger labour markets and better services, while helping them cope with the negative aspects, such as higher housing costs, pollution, risk of crime and less social capital.
There is a dearth of collections of scholarly works dedicated wholly to African issues, that comes out of the work done by African scholars and practitioners with both African collaborators and from elsewhere. This volume brings together scholarly works and thoughts that cut across and intertwine the tripods-environment-consciousness, socially just development and African development into options that could deliver on the promise of the SDGs. The book project is an initiative of the Centre for Housing and Sustainable Development at the University of Lagos, which realized the gap in ground research linking the housing sector with the SDGs in African cities. This book therefore presents chapters that explore the interconnections, interactions and linkages between the SDGs and Housing through research, practice, experience, case-studies, desk-based research and other knowledge media.
Over the past two decades it has become widely recognized that housing issues have to be placed in a broader framework acknowledging that civil society in the form of Community Based Organizations (CBOs) and their allies are increasingly networking and emerging as strong players that cannot easily be overlooked. Some of these networks have crossed local and national boundaries and have jumped political scales. This implies that housing issues have to be looked at from new angles: they can no longer simply be addressed through localized projects, but rather at multiple scales. The current debate is largely limited to statements about the relevance of individual organizations for local housing processes and tends to overlook the innovativeness in terms of re-scaling those processes and of influencing institutional change at various levels by transcending national boundaries. There is a significant lack of a systemic understanding of such globally operating grassroots networks and how they function in the housing process. This book brings together different perspectives on multi-scalar approaches within the housing field and on grassroots’ engagement with formal agencies including local government, higher levels of government and international agencies. By moving away from romanticizing local self-initiatives, it focuses on understanding the emerging potential once local initiatives are interlinked and scaled-up to transnational networks.
