Confronting The Urban Housing Crisis In The Global South

"Well-located, secure and affordable housing is lacking in many cities and is only projected to get worse--it is estimated that 1.6 billion people will lack adequate housing by 2025. Good housing is fundamental to physical and financial security, economic productivity, healthy communities, and human well-being. Addressing the affordable housing gap should be a priority for cities, as it offers the trifold benefits of improved economic productivity, environmental sustainability and equity for cities. The first thematic paper of WRI's flagship World Resources Report (WRR), Towards a More Equal City, describes three challenges to providing adequate, secure and affordable housing in the global south: the growth of informal settlements, prioritization of home ownership and laws that push poor out of the city. This paper offers a new approach to analyzing housing options and offers three solutions to addressing housing challenges in urban areas"--Publisher's description.

From Britain's 'Generation Rent' to Hong Kong's notorious 'cage homes', societies around the world are facing a housing crisis of unprecedented proportions. The social consequences have been profound, with a lack of affordable housing resulting in overcrowding, homelessness, broken families and, in many countries, a sharp decline in fertility. In Broken Cities, Deborah Potts offers a provocative new perspective on the global housing crisis arguing that the problem lies mainly with demand rather than supply. Potts shows how market-set rates of pay and incomes for vast numbers of households in the world's largest cities in the global South and North are simply too low to rent or buy any housing that is legal, planned and decent. As the influence of free market economics has increased, the situation has worsened. Potts argues that the crisis needs radical solutions. With the world becoming increasingly urbanized, this book provides a timely and urgent account of one of the most pressing social challenges of the 21st century. Exploring the effects of the housing crisis across the global North and South, Broken Cities is a warning of the greater crises to come if these issues are not addressed.

This handbook focuses on the practices, initiatives, and innovations of urban planning in response to the rapid urbanisation in Indonesian cities. The book provides rigorous evidence of planning Indonesian cities of different sizes. Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous country, is increasingly urbanising. Through the lens of the Sustainable Development Goals, chapters examine specific policies and projects and analyse 19 cities, ranging from a megacity of over ten million residents to metropolitan cities, large cities, medium cities, and small cities in Indonesia. The handbook provides a diverse view of urban conditions in the country. Discussing current trends and challenges in urban planning and development in Indonesia, it covers a wide range of topics organised into five main themes: Indonesian planning context; informality, insurgency, and social inclusion; design, spatial, and economic practices; creative and innovative practices; and urban sustainability and resilience. Written by 64 established and emerging scholars from Indonesia and overseas, this handbook is an invaluable resource to academics working on Urban Studies, Development Studies, Asian and Southeast Studies as well as to policy-makers in Indonesia and in other cities of the Global South.

COMPANION TO URBAN AND REGIONAL STUDIES Indispensable overview and timely coverage of the major issues, debates, and research topics in urban and regional studies Companion to Urban and Regional Studies offers an up-to-date view of the rapidly growing field, exploring a diversity of theoretical perspectives, current and emerging research, and critical global policy concerns. Uniquely broad in geographical and thematic scope, this comprehensive volume brings together essays by more than fifty international scholars and researchers to provide expert assessments spanning the many dimensions of urban studies. Organized into five parts, the Companion begins with a review of the current state of cities across East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, North America, Europe, and Latin America, and all other world regions. Subsequent sections discuss contemporary theoretical perspectives, describe common methodological approaches used by urban scholars, and examine the political, social, and economic problems facing twenty-first century cities. Covering historical issues, current challenges, and comparative perspectives in urban studies, this timely resource: Addresses intensely debated policy issues such as governance, housing, immigration and migration, segregation, social mix, and gentrification Describes the use of demographic methods, advanced spatial analysis, social networks, policy mobilities, and ethnographies in urban studies research Discusses critical urban theory, feminist urban research, urbanization and environmental change, and the legacy of the Chicago School Covers contemporary research topics such as urban and regional inequalities, social heterogeneity and diversity, financialization Includes representative case studies of each region, including Australasia, Latin America, East Asia and South Asia Companion to Urban and Regional Studies is essential reading for scholars, researchers, practitioners, urban activists, and students, and it represents a must-have complement to The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies.

Urban Resettlements in the Global South provides new perspectives on resettlement through an urban studies lens. To date, resettlement has been theorised through development studies and refugee studies, but urban resettlement is also a major dimension of urban development in the Global South and may help to rethink contemporary urban dynamics between spectacular new town developments and rising incidences of eviction and displacement. Conceptualising resettlement as a binding notion between production/regeneration and destruction/demolition of urban space helps to illuminate interdependencies and to underline significant ambiguities within affected people’s perspectives towards resettlement projects. This volume will offer an interesting selection of ten different case studies with rich empirical data from Latin America, North and Sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia, focused on each stage of resettlement (before, during, after relocation) through different timescales. By offering a frame for analysing and rethinking resettlement within urban studies, it will support any scholar or expert dealing with resettlement, displacement, and housing in an urban context, seeking to improve housing and planning policies in and for the city.

The fragmentation of South Africa's cities persists despite the ending of apartheid. New forms of segregation are emerging in the context of globalisation and a largely neo-liberal policy environment. This poses an enormous challenge for policy-making, planning, and community activism. Although there has been an improvement in service infrastructure in certain parts of South African cities since 1994, the major structural changes required to alter the trajectory of urban change have not yet happened. This book provides a provocative, careful, analytical perspective on the problems of fragmentation, with particular reference to the provision of urban shelter. The cross-national nature of the author team reflects the fact that many of the issues facing South African cities are being experienced globally. This is a fascinating book. The text is both theoretical and practical. It will be of great value to policy-makers, planners, community leaders, and students in the field of development and the built environment.

The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of the City is an outstanding reference source to this exciting subject and the first collection of its kind. Comprising 40 chapters by a team of international contributors, the Handbook is divided into clear sections addressing the following central topics: • Historical Philosophical Engagements with Cities • Modern and Contemporary Philosophical Theories of the City • Urban Aesthetics • Urban Politics • Citizenship • Urban Environments and the Creation/Destruction of Place. The concluding section, Urban Engagements, contains interviews with philosophers discussing their engagement with students and the wider public on issues and initiatives including experiential learning, civic and community engagement, disability rights and access, environmental degradation, professional diversity, social justice, and globalization. Essential reading for students and researchers in environmental philosophy, aesthetics, and political philosophy, The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of the City is also a useful resource for those in related fields, such as geography, urban studies, sociology, and political science.

This book focuses on socially mixed (e.g. by income, tenure, ethnicity or any other characteristic) communities developed through housing renewal and critically examines the policies and practices in view of the growing urban inequality. The volume expands the discussion to the second phase of social mix – “social mix version 2.0” and offers constructive reflections on how social mix can “be better conceived and delivered, with fewer negative side effects” . The chapters in this book cover diverse national contexts and policy backgrounds, and represent the perspectives of many key stakeholders, including national and local governments, services and NGOs, developers and, most importantly, residents. Chapters present diverse case studies from Europe, the Middle East, Africa, India, Australia, and the United States and discuss projects that range in scale from small housing initiatives to neighborhoods and to whole districts. They focus on diverse experiences of social mix: between university students and young professionals and low-income social housing tenants, between older, low-income residents and younger, middle-class residents, between diverse ethnic and social class groups sharing a neighborhood, and between private and public housing residents. Chapters also vary on the tools used to create social mix, from local non-for-profit initiatives, a national policy intervention, and urban policies that aim to enhance social mix. Lastly, the book shows the range of analytical tools researchers have used to understand the diverse appearances of social mix, its underlying goals, and its consequent outcomes. These include comparative analyses of social mix in diverse national and political settings, including the Global East, an evaluation of social mix from the perspective of social justice, a historical analysis of the development of an urban district, and a design analysis of urban renewal projects. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Journal of Urban Affairs.

Cities are the future. In the past two decades, a global urban revolution has taken place, mainly in the South. The 'mega-cities' of the developing world are home to over 10 million people each and even smaller cities are experiencing unprecedented population surges. The problems surrounding this influx of people - slums, poverty, unemployment and lack of governance - have been well-documented. This book is a powerful indictment of the current consensus on how to deal with these challenges. Pieterse argues that the current 'shelter for all' and 'urban good governance' policies treat only the symptoms, not the causes of the problem. Instead, he claims, there is an urgent need to reinvigorate civil society in these cities, to encourage radical democracy, economic resilience, social resistance and environmental sustainability folded into the everyday concerns of marginalised people. Providing a dynamic picture of a cosmopolitan urban citizenship, this book is an essential guide to one of the new century's greatest challenges.

Despite the fact that virtually all urban growth is occurring, and will continue to occur, in the cities of the Global South, the conceptual tools used to study cities are distilled disproportionately from research on the highly developed cities of the Global North. With urban inequality widely recognized as central to many of the most pressing challenges facing the world, there is a need for a deeper understanding of cities of the South on their own terms. Locating Right to the City in the Global South marks an innovative and far reaching effort to document and make sense of urban transformations across a range of cities, as well as the conflicts and struggles for social justice these are generating. The volume contains empirically rich, theoretically informed case studies focused on the social, spatial, and political dimensions of urban inequality in the Global South. Drawing from scholars with extensive fieldwork experience, this volume covers sixteen cities in fourteen countries across a belt stretching from Latin America, to Africa and the Middle East, and into Asia. Central to what binds these cities are deeply rooted, complex, and dynamic processes of social and spatial division that are being actively reproduced. These cities are not so much fracturing as they are being divided by governance practices informed by local histories and political contestation, and refracted through or infused by market based approaches to urban development. Through a close examination of these practices and resistance to them, this volume provides perspectives on neoliberalism and right to the city that advance our understanding of urbanism in the Global South. In mapping the relationships between space, politics and populations, the volume draws attention to variations shaped by local circumstances, while simultaneously elaborating a distinctive transnational Southern urbanism. It provides indepth research on a range of practical and policy oriented issues, from housing and slum redevelopment to building democratic cities that include participation by lower income and other marginal groups. It will be of interest to students and practitioners alike studying Urban Studies, Globalization, and Development.