Housing in Third World cities: The critical issues

Millions of urban families in the so-called Third World face a severe housing problem. They live in homes that lack adequate sanitation, have an irregular electricity supply and are built of flimsy materials. However, the form that the housing problem takes varies greatly between and within countries: homelessness is significant in some places, elsewhere the main problem is one of overcrowding or the unavailability of infrastructure and services. In many Third World cities most poor families rent accommodation, elsewhere they are forced to live in their 'own 'flimsy shelter One relatively constant feature is that housing in the countryside is generally worse than that in urban areas. There are no easy solutions to the Third World's diverse housing problems because a lack of adequate shelter is merely one manifestation of generalised poverty . Decent shelter for all can never be guaranteed so long as there is widespread poverty. At the same time, sensible policies can help mitigate shelter problems. It is important to remove biases in official policy, for example subsidies should be shifted from the rich to the poor and unnecessary land-use and building regulations should be removed. More should also be done to improve the chances of poor families contributing to their own housing solutions. Making land more accessible, guaranteeing that building materials are not overpriced and providing land with basic services would all help. Little is likely to be gained by slum demolition because that simply increases the number of families requiring shelter. More should be done to encourage the development of rental housing, especially where most poor urban dwellers are tenants and where most landlords live in the same accommodation themselves. The nature and diversity of the housing problem MILLIONS OF URBAN families in the so-called Third World live in homes that lack adequate sanitation and security, have an irregular electricity supply and are built of flimsy materials. Millions of others live in more solid and serviced accommodation but in overcrowded conditions. Apart from the households living in shacks or overcrowded tenements and those lacking adequate services, millions more would claim to have a housing problem. They live in houses that do not match their hopes and needs: they have difficulty paying their rent or mortgage, they have a long journey to work, their home is too small, they wish to own a house rather than rent. Put simply, the Third World has a major housing problem. Identifying the main problems While there is little doubt about the severity of the problem to be tackled, any precise definition of the extent of the housing problem is complicated by the fact that it cannot be computed accurately In any society, the housing problem is defined socially and culturally. The kind of house that may be tolerated in one society may be damned in another; what may be praised by one social class may be anathema to another. In addition, the definition of poor housing may have little to do with physical standards. As John Turner (1968) long ago demonstrated, there is little point providing a poor family with a fully serviced, three-bedroomed house if the family cannot afford the rent or mortgage payment. The most suitable shelter for such a family may be something rather flimsy. Adequate accommodation has to meet the total needs of the family rather than being determined on purely physical grounds. As such, the housing problem is not something that can be solved by architects and planners alone. It is a multi-faceted problem that can only be helped through raising living standards, improving employment opportunities and applying sensible urban regulations. However, the nature of the housing problem in Third World countries is often diagnosed in excessively simple ways. Sometimes this is due to GEOGRAPHY