Housing Provisions

Introduction

The subject of housing provision side to side the private market apparatus in developing countries has been on the schedule of housing studies ever since the mid 1970s (Kirwan; Kitay; Grimes and World). During the 1980s, though, there was an roughly universal recognition of reducing the role of the government in through provisory roles in the economy and augmented reliance on the clandestine sector ( Israel, 1990 and World). In different degrees most countries irrespective of ideology, political structures or levels of development have pursued this policy ( Israel, 1990 and World). Consequently, the expansion of the role of the private market in the field of housing provision in developing countries also became increasingly the focus of attention during this decade. This was particularly advocated by the World Bank and its allied writers during the 1980s who developed an enabling strategy for public sector support of private market activity in housing provision in developing countries ( World; LaNier; Cohen; Kimm; Linn and Loh). This approach also formed the basis of the Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000, which was adopted by UNCHS in 1988. The latest World Bank housing sector policy paper (1993) shows that the enablement of private housing markets has become the main focus of World Bank housing policy in developing countries as a basis for scaling up housing production and developing the housing sector as a whole. Similarly, while UNCHS has moved on to adopt 'adequate shelter for all and sustainable human settlements' in its 1996 Habitat II conference in Istanbul, enabling strategies for private markets still form the main plank of its shelter policies and recommendations ( UNCHS, 1996a and UNCHS, 1996b The Future of Human Settlements: Good Policy Can Make a Difference, 1996b).

Systems or modes of housing provision can be defined by the processes through which such provision is achieved. A useful analytical tool for identifying and examining these processes is the concept of structures of provision which is based on the identification of social relations and interactions of agents involved in all aspects of housing provision, i.e. production, exchange and consumption (Ball; Healey; Ball and Ball). The most comprehensive formulation of this conceptual tool of analysis, however, albeit for the property market as a whole, is probably provided by Healey and Barret (1990). The key to understanding the processes involved in land and property development, including housing, is identified as the relationship between the interests, strategies and actions of agents involved in land development and the socio-economic and political framework including values regarding land, property, buildings and the environment which governs or structures their decisions. There is, therefore, a need to understand the 'relation between structure, in terms of what drives the development process and produces distinctive patterns in particular periods, and agency, in terms of the way individual agents develop and pursue their strategies' (Healey and Barret, 1990, p. 90). The former relates to the framework created by the economic and political organisation of the country, interventions of the state at ...