Do we need innovation in housing policy? Mass production, community-based upgrading, and the politics of urban land in the Global South

Abstract

The papers in this Special Issue demonstrate three persistent, global challenges to urban housing policy: that it is difficult to mass produce housing well; that community-based upgrading programmes often fail to benefit the worst off; and that ultimately, housing policy is a political problem that often fails to consider the diversity of populations at the expense of the least powerful. Importantly, some of the papers problematise what many consider the two most successful areas of housing policy in these regions: the community-based land sharing programmes for redevelopment in south-east Asia and the finance-driven social housing programmes in Latin America. The collection of scholarship, which spans cases in nine countries and touches on mass housing production programmes, incremental development processes, community-based urban upgrading, the legal structure of condominiums, and land-sharing policies, also highlights challenges to policy learning across contexts. In addition to synthesising the major research findings in the component articles in pairs, this editorial introduction reframes the idea of innovation in housing policy and argues that scholars should expand the topics and focus of housing policy research.

Keywords:

• housing policy
• housing politics
• innovation
• comparative housing policy
• Global South

Introduction

Housing problems have become increasingly complex in the Global South. The continued need for new housing of decent standards for migrants to cities is compounded by increased need for upgrading – not only of temporary or improvised dwellings, but also incrementally consolidated inner-suburbs of many cities (Ward, 2015). Moreover, economic growth and larger numbers of middle- and high-income households in many cities of the Global South have generated affordability problems and gentrification in many neighbourhoods, especially in high-opportunity neighbourhoods (Sengupta, 2010). In these cases, the cities of the Global South have also started to demonstrate housing problems associated with urbanisation in the Global North.

Housing policies sometimes compound housing problems and in other cases generated new ones. For example, mass housing construction programmes created to address a quantitative housing deficit have created new neighbourhoods lacking in services and located far from city centres. Mexico's government-run housing finance system, for example, has contributed to the country's high housing vacancy rate due to oversupply of housing in many places (Monkkonen, 2014). Redevelopment policies can also generate problems, even in cities regarded for their progressive urban policy agenda (Pinto Alvarez, 2016). Unequal political power across neighbourhoods leads to an unequal spatial distribution of redevelopment. People of all income levels resist the building of new higher density housing near them but higher-income neighbourhoods have disproportionate success in preventing redevelopment. Moreover, many urban planning processes, even those with the ostensible goal of public participation, exacerbate imbalances in local political power (Monkkonen, 2016).

In the face of these challenges, is innovation in housing policy a necessary or even appropriate goal? When we know that cities need sufficient infrastructure, subsidies for low-income households, and regulations that allow redevelopment as urban areas grow, the innovation needed is often in political organising around these goals. Innovation in a policy arena might actually generate new problems. Though innovation is primarily associated with increasing economic productivity by increasing the output per worker and machine, it can also have negative consequences. Innovation often disrupts traditional employment structures, leaving many unemployed. In the realm of housing and urban policy, innovation evokes technological or design solutions to housing problems. Though there might be room for improvement in building materials and design, these are not the core challenges in the housing arena. In fact, the tendency for technological and design solutions to urban and housing challenges in the Global South has been criticised as having imperialistic tendencies (Nussbaum, 2010), and many kinds of ‘improvement’ can lead to higher housing costs and displacement of the worst off.

Therefore, I argue that the required innovation is in our framework for thinking about what constitutes housing policy. The policies that shape housing outcomes are much more than housing subsidies, especially in the Global South where subsidy programmes tend to be limited. Matthew Desmond (2015) rightly rebukes housing scholars in the United States for overemphasising research on subsidy programmes. The growing body of scholarship on the role of planning regulations (Anthony, 2017) and local political opposition to new housing (Monkkonen, 2016) affirms the importance of these areas in housing affordability crises in the United States. Similarly, housing policy studies in the Global South ought to focus less on new ways to subsidise housing or to design financing schemes, and more on urban land and planning policies, legal systems, and social movements.

Additionally, innovations in housing politics might change political dynamics to increase support for housing for low-income households. In the USA, a vibrant debate continues over the relative merits of supply-driven subsidy programmes like the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit versus demand-side programmes like housing choice vouchers, but in fact the government has never made sufficient funds available to cover even a major proportion of eligible households through either one (Quigley, Stegman, & Wheaton, 2000). Without political support, the most innovative policy solutions will never succeed. Ultimately, the importance of political conflicts over land and access to the city means that we need to look broadly as housing scholars at work ranging from anti-eviction movements (Roy, 2017) as well as Yes-In-My-Backyard zoning reformers (Semuels, 2017).

This Special Issue seeks to bring a comparative perspective to several new approaches to housing policy around the world and to critically assess their potential transferability. From the large-scale housing finance programmes in Latin America to slum redevelopment schemes in south-east Asia, we were interested in assessments of responses to the continuing housing challenges in the Global South as well as learning how innovative housing policies are crossing borders. As such, The International Journal of Housing Policy sponsored two panels at the Urban Affairs Association conference in Miami in 2015 on Housing Policy Innovations in the Global South. The collection of scholarship stemming from these two panels reflects the diversity of issues in the field of housing policy, with cases spanning nine countries (Brazil, Cambodia, Colombia, Ecuador, India, Indonesia, Mexico, the Philippines, and Thailand).

One important contribution of this Special Issue is the discussion and constructive critique of the two most ‘successful’ models of housing policy in these regions: the community-based land sharing redevelopment model in south-east Asia and the mass social housing programmes prevalent in Latin America. Community-based redevelopment through land sharing began in Thailand as the Baan Mankong programme and expanded throughout the region in part through the efforts of the Asian Coalition for Community Action. Existing scholarship on this model has been laudatory, without sufficiently considering or addressing criticism (see for example, the Special Issue of Environment and Urbanisation edited by Mitlin & Satterthwaite, 2012). The mass social housing programmes of Latin America are most widespread and notorious in Mexico, which began a dramatic increase in financing in the 1990s. Early scholarship was also laudatory (Zearly, 1993) and did not consider criticisms of the approach, which are now widespread. These two policy approaches are very different, and their juxtaposition here is not meant to equate them. Rather, it is to show that all policy can benefit from constructive criticism.

The first two papers in this Special Issue provide evidence of the problems associated with mass housing development in the urban periphery of Latin American cities (Libertun de Duren, 2018) on the one hand, and the benefits of informal, incremental urban development processes (Peek, Hordijk, & d'Auria, 2018) on the other. Taken together, they leave us with the pressing question of how to scale up the positive aspects of the decentralised processes that effectively house families with limited resources, on the one hand, and how to address the problems of mass-produced peri-urban housing on the other.

The second two papers in the issue are an ambitious comparison of pro-poor upgrading programmes in three countries by Das (2018), and a case study of recovery in informal settlements after a major earthquake in India by Mukherji (2018). They give us insight into how the scaling of decentralised, non-bureaucratic processes into larger government operations might actually come to pass through greater participation by both the private and non-profit sectors. The papers also address how changes in governance of housing policy can create opportunities for interventions by civil society.

The last two papers are, first a study of a land-sharing redevelopment project of the model pioneered by the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights in Cambodia by Talocci and Boano (2018), and, second, an empirical analysis of the impact of laws governing condominium management in Latin America by Donoso and Elsinga (2018). Together, they illustrate challenges of implementation, and the importance of understanding that disregarding the heterogeneity of the ‘urban poor’ can lead to policy failure. The Cambodian case study reveals that an apparently innovative policy is unsuccessful because it fails to consider political power in its design. The comparison of condominium management in Colombia and Ecuador demonstrates the fundamental importance of context in policy transfer across countries.

The problems of mass housing and virtues of incremental construction

This Special Issue begins with a pair of papers that clearly contrast the problems of mass housing and the virtues of incremental building. It sets up one of the challenges at the heart of the housing question – how can housing that meets families’ needs be provided on a large scale, quickly.

The important study by Libertun de Duren (2018) documents some of the core problems of massive, finance-driven, social housing construction programmes in Latin America, specifically in the three countries where they are most prevalent (Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico). It illustrates the core trade-off in this kind of housing programme. Peri-urban land enables housing to be inexpensive – not only is the land cheaper, the size of parcels allow for economies of scale in production – but the housing is far from jobs, public services, and other urban amenities.

Though the criticism of the location of these mass social housing programmes has been widespread, this paper is the first to empirically document this trade-off. Libertun de Duren reports the results of surveys in three pairs of social housing developments including one peri-urban and one centrally located. Although housing units are significantly cheaper in peripheral locations, households have much higher commuting costs (in terms of time as well as money) and their social networks suffer compared to those households who manage to find a unit in one of the few projects located centrally. This raises an important question. If subsidies are to be spread broadly across large numbers of households, the best way to use them may not be for the least expensive new, finished housing. Instead, households might be better off with some support for incremental housing solutions.

Peek et al. (2018) report on a case study of incremental, community housing construction methods in Guayaquil, Ecuador, which they contrast with the new formal mass housing developments in the city. They document how design practices from incrementally built neighbourhoods can inform new formal housing arrangements, and provide policy-makers with three key lessons. First, they highlight how the customisation of housing in incrementally built neighbourhoods, and the multiple subdivisions horizontally on the lot or vertically by floors, assist families and create a diverse urban environment. This, they point out, is aided by the larger lots in incrementally developed neighbourhoods, and little-to-no regulation by local governments.

Many of the advantages pointed to by Peek and colleagues relate to the heterogeneity of neighbourhoods built incrementally. Thus not only do houses take diverse forms, but also neighborhoods built incrementally have a heterogenous urban design. The homogeneity in the layout of new, mass-produced neighbourhoods, they argue, reduces interaction between households and hampers the optimal use of streets and other kinds of public space. Not only does a less monotonous layout increase social interactions and the use of open space, they contend that it offers flexibility in the productive use of outside space for recreation or economic activities. Finally, they discuss how the incremental building of neighbourhoods leads to a more diverse social environment. They highlight the benefits of extended families being able to purchase various lots within the same street and thus create more strongly knit communities.

Peek and colleagues strongly condemn the monotonous spaces of Socio Vivienda II, a new mass-produced housing development, and contrast them with the consolidated urban fabric in an incrementally built neighbourhood that is much older. Yet to some extent, the issue is the time horizon. Over time, these newly built developments might come to resemble the vibrant urban fabric that Peek et al. applaud. This process is abetted by the fact that the government of Ecuador has begun to relax rules such as prohibitions on home-based income generating activities and renovations that add floors to new houses. Housing is a process, and future new mass housing developments should incorporate a longer time horizon to more effectively accommodate residents.

Scaling pro-poor community-based housing policies

The second two papers reveal through several case studies how governments can successfully expand pro-poor, community-based processes to many places (Das, 2018; Mukherji, 2018). Both studies demonstrate the importance of civil society and community participation in upgrading and housing recovery, and the authors argue that these practices yield outcomes that are more equitable and more efficient processes than top-down policies.

Das (2018) takes on the question of innovation in housing policy directly, questioning whether innovative policies are actually effective. He focuses on programmes that seek to increase the role of local governments and other small-scale stakeholders in shelter delivery in Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines. In assessing the scalability, habitability, affordability, accessibility, and inclusivity, the paper makes several arguments. Broadly, Das comments on all shelter programmes’ shrinking focus on the poor, in part due to the ascendancy of neoliberal approaches.

Of the four programmes Das reviews, he finds the Baan Mankong programme in Thailand is by far the most innovative and successful. This urban upgrading programme uses a community-based lending model and a strong participation component. In many ways, it is innovative but not without blemishes. Das points out that the very flexibility of the programme privileges communities that have more resources, capacity, and greater social capital. Poorer communities with fewer resources, which tend to be in greater need of improvement, are less likely to be able to participate. He also analyses the innovative Slum Upgrading Facility (SUF) in the city of Solo, Indonesia. Indonesia has a long legacy of neighbourhood upgrading programmes, and the model is fairly well developed. The main criticism of the SUF is that it has had very limited impact. He argues that the SUF should have leveraged more state-civil society collaboration and garnered more resources from the government.

The comparison of neighbourhood upgrading programmes to new housing programmes – resettlement in Metro Manila and Rusunawa or low-income rental flats in Indonesia – is evocative of the previous problems with mass-produced housing in Latin America. Housing that is far from city opportunities is not a good option, even if it is of a higher quality. Moreover, in the case of Metro Manila, Das argues that the large-scale dependence on private sector developers is a problem and consumes much of the social housing budget. Policies are more successful, he posits, where multiple local institutions, such as civil society groups, universities, as well as government agencies, can play meaningful roles in the upgrading process. Moreover, successful cases have had strong leadership by one of the institutional partners, as well as private sector involvement.

Mukherji (2018) describes how the recovery after a natural disaster created the opportunity for a massive land titling programme. Importantly, she uncovers how this occurred, and how a non-profit organisation was able to insert themselves into the government and centralise a process to benefit squatters. Squatters previously would not have been able to get a property title, and some did not actively seek title because they were not normally under threat of eviction. However, everything changed after a major earthquake.

The case study of nine squatter settlements that were close to the epicentre of the earthquake in Gujarat, India, reveals how an organisation can work within an enabling governance policy paradigm to effect positive change. After the earthquake, disaster governance was centralised. There was no local municipal representation in reconstruction decisions, whereas beforehand local authorities controlled land tenure decisions. Although the regional authorities might be less inclined to give land titles to squatters, a non-governmental organisation, Unnati, was able to make this happen. Unnati worked as a consultant to the regional government, and took on so much of the recovery work that they became almost an extension of the State itself.

Politics, heterogeneity, and context

The final two papers in the Special Issue, by Donoso and Elsinga (2018) Talocci and Boano (2018), illustrate the fundamental importance of context in the implementation of policy and the differential outcomes similar policies may have. They also raise the issue of how heterogeneous political power shapes the implementation of policies, especially in pro-poor, community-based processes.

Donoso and Elsinga study the maintenance of condominium buildings as a collective action problem. They investigate how two different legal and institutional contexts – Colombia and Ecuador – lead to different outcomes in terms of self-organisation and maintenance of multi-owner buildings. More specifically, they test the hypothesis that Colombian condominium laws lead to better maintenance outcomes than those in Ecuador, because they enforce self-organisation among residents of condominium buildings. Broadly, they fail to reject this hypothesis and argue that indeed, the Colombian system does lead to more self-organisation and better perception of maintenance levels.

They caveat their findings with an emphasis on the interaction between many factors in determining maintenance outcomes and the perception of the same. They find that the details of the self-organisation itself, that is, whether people trust their community leaders, participate in meetings, and have some consensus about who is responsible for maintenance, have significant impacts on perceptions of maintenance. Surprisingly, however, they find that participation in self-organisation in Colombia had a negative effect on individuals’ perception of maintenance, even though outcomes were systematically better there than in Ecuador. In Ecuador, on the other hand, higher levels of participation led people to perceive maintenance more positively.

Talocci and Boano (2018) report on a case study of a land-sharing programme, which is part of a redevelopment project in Cambodia's capital city Phnom Penh. This policy was an example of the model of community-based slum upgrading and redevelopment, in which existing residents are re-housed on site. Talocci and Boano make a simple but important point in their narrative of the redevelopment project: that the power imbalance within this neighbourhood led to exclusion of several groups of people after the project was complete. The government evicted some original residents and gave others substandard housing, not the new units that most obtained. This exclusion resulted, they argue, from the treatment of the ‘urban poor’ as a homogenous group rather than being composed of households with different tenure claims and different levels of resources.

Exclusion, they argue, also resulted from the de-politicisation of this housing policy in Cambodia. By this, they mean that rather than accepting and negotiating the contention and conflict in this (and perhaps any) proposal to redevelop, the government presented an apparent consensus as pro-poor. The government then used the housing as a pacifying tool against dissent among the most active or vocal of the urban poor, and the project excluded those without sufficient political influence.

Conclusions

The papers in this Special Issue cover a wide variety of housing policies, from those focused on urban upgrading and redevelopment, to new mass housing construction and incremental housing construction. Taken together, they highlight three pressing questions for housing scholars. First, it is difficult to mass produce housing well. Second, community-based upgrading programmes can fail to benefit the worst off. Third, housing policy is a political problem and policies often fail to consider the diversity of target populations, an omission that again can come at the expense of the least powerful.

Given the problems associated with mass-produced housing, the work here invites us to identify concrete ways that policy-makers can best support and expand the virtuous elements of incremental, self-built housing, which is a fundamentally decentralised process. Moreover, incremental development might make it possible to expand the housing stock of cities rapidly in a way that does not generate significant costs to the residents of new housing. Policy should strive to consolidate and in some cases redevelop existing neighbourhoods in a way that does not exclude those with the least resources, perhaps by involving residents directly in that process. New policies supporting rental housing markets by governments in the Global South can not only encourage incremental expansion of the housing stock but also provide livelihood assistance to existing residents.

The work on community-based urban upgrading demonstrates a second unanswered challenge that community-based programmes must tackle explicitly, the inevitable imbalance of power within all neighbourhoods. Power imbalances are a challenge to all planning exercises, but some scholars studying urban upgrading assume that community-based indicates some degree of consensus. Evidence from Cambodia and other places indicate community-led projects often exclude the least well off. Recognising the heterogeneity of neighbourhoods and explicitly how upgrading projects will affect different groups is essential.

The heterogeneity of all population sub-groups further complicates housing policy because it complicates housing politics. Political support for different policies can come from majority groups without considering, or at the expensive of, minority groups. Also, as Talocci and Boano argue in their research on Cambodia, the government can use housing policy to pacify dissent from the most active of minority groups and exclude those without sufficient political influence. Democratic housing politics are challenging when we buy, sell, and rent housing in a market, because of the fundamental tension between renters and owners. Owners benefit when housing costs go up, but renters pay the price.

In addition to setting up these three challenges, the research in this Special Issue offers important findings for scholars and policy-makers. First, allowing incremental development in newly built mass housing projects will enable families to customise units to meet their needs and create communities that are more vibrant. In fact, cities would do well to develop programmes to support this kind of incremental upgrading in ‘formal’ neighbourhoods. Second, providing improved public transportation connections for newly built peri-urban neighbourhoods might mitigate some of the negative impacts of peri-urban construction, but stronger urban planning practice could also curtail some of the problems found in these suburban areas. Third, in spite of critiques, it is important and effective to use community-based approaches for urban upgrading and redevelopment, and to incorporate civil society and non-profit organisations in projects.

Finally, the topic of innovation that brought this Special Issue together invites housing scholars to reconsider and refocus on what specific topics and areas the field of housing policy and housing studies should include. It encourages us to identify and focus more on the most important policies that shape housing outcomes, which in many countries is not subsidy policy or housing finance policies. Although the important policies are context-dependent, frequently it is the planning regulations, laws regarding land ownership, and the enforcement of both, that should return to centre stage. If our ultimate goal is to improve the housing outcomes of the worst off, we must focus on innovation in the political coalitions and social movements and how we can change them.

Acknowledgments

A heartfelt thanks is due to the many people who made this Special Issue possible: Richard Ronald for initiating the idea, all the presenters and participants at the UAA panel that kicked it off, and of course the authors and reviewers on the final articles that made it to publication.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.