Partnership: a strategic paradigm for the production & management of affordable housing & sustainable urban development

ABSTRACT

Urban housing policies, in the opening decades of the 21^st Century are in disarray. The objectives and targets set for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2015–30 and the United Nations New Urban Agenda call for comprehensive urban housing policies, based on inclusion and participation. This paper argues for housing policies and implementation strategies that go beyond participation and are governed and managed by inclusive cost- and benefit-sharing partnerships of local government authorities and low-income group community members, NGOs and private sector stakeholders. Approaches to the formation and maintenance of democratic and equitable partnerships based on mutualism, interdependence, respect and trust are examined in the paper as a means to the efficient and effective production and management of affordable and sustainable housing and urban development; and as an end mechanism for the generation and strengthening of democratic, equitable urban communities, social change and poverty reduction and the alleviation of its impact.

KEYWORDS:

• Participation
• authentic partnerships
• mutualism
• interdependence
• respect
• trust
• poverty alleviation
• urban governance
• urban management
• subsidiarity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. See Wakely, (2018) ‘Housing in Developing Cities: Experience and Lessons’, Routledge, New York, USA & Abingdon, UK.

2. Including (international) large-scale, and petty, ‘money laundering’.

3. Despite their previous reluctance to engage with low-income group housing, private sector developers welcomed such contracts as they brought with them the guaranteed payment by the government of the grant-funded subsidy component of the construction cost, relieving them of the risks and uncertainties of low-middle-income households having to secure credit (housing loans or mortgages).

4. The UN New Habitat Urban Agenda supports the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2015–2030, adopted by the UN General Assembly in Sept.2015. Of particular relevance is Goal 11: ‘to make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable’ (United Nations 2015).

5. See the seminal publications: Abrams, (1964), ‘Housing in the Modern World: Man’s Struggle for Shelter in an Urbanising World’, MIT Press, Cambridge MA USA and Turner and Fichter 1972, ‘Freedom to Build: Dweller Control of the Housing Process’, Macmillan, New York, USA.

6. The ‘Model Cities Program’ (1966–69) was initiated in and administered by the Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) as a political reaction to the urban riots in several American cities in the mid-1960s.

7. The lowest effective level of decision-making and authority in the principle of subsidiarity.

8. In the 1980s the privatisation of many hitherto public services and facilities was strongly promoted by the World Bank and other multilateral development agencies under the rubric of ‘structural adjustment programmes’ (SAPs) of economic and administrative reform, in the belief that the ‘enterprise culture’ of the profit-motivated private sector ensures efficacy and efficiency.

9. ‘Women together’.

10. Examples exist in which the interaction of low-income group community representatives with their city politician and technical and managerial partners has built their confidence and authority to the extent that has launched them on a career-path of political leadership at city, and even national, level.

11. The proposal was presented to the national government-appointed ‘Grenfell Tower Inquiry’ and the ‘Equality and Human Rights Commission’ as part of a composite submission to the national Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government.

12. A distinction is made between: 1) public rental housing, owned by the (local) state; and 2) social housing that is (constructed), owned and managed by low-income households and/or community-based institutions (Wakely 2018, pp.88, p. 99).

13. Regarded legally as wholly owned local authority non-profit companies.

14. An observation shared by Richard Lang (2019), with regard to ‘collaborative housing’ and ‘social sustainability’.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Patrick Wakely

Patrick Wakely is an independent consultant and Professor Emeritus of Urban Development in London University and former Director of the Development Planning Unit (DPU), University College London (UCL). An architect (AA Dipl, London), he has 40 years of experience of research, consultancy and teaching in housing, planning and urban development, on which he has worked in more than 20 developing countries.