Habitação

This paper analyses trends in the living conditions of slum and non-slum populations over the period 1990–2003, using urban and slum indicators from several developing world cities. It explains why where a person lives might condition his/her general health and household vulnerability. The data used are from UN-Habitat’s Global Urban Observatory database for 188 cities belonging to 8 different Millennium Development Goals Regions. The study provides evidence of a general improvement in various slum indicators, such as durable structures, access to safe water and access to improved sanitation. However, although there has been a decrease in under-5 mortality at city level, we observe that the same indicator can be up to five times higher for slum than for non-slum groups. We conclude that this evidence supports the importance of slum improvement and highlights this issue as one of the major challenges that a predominantly urbanized world faces.

Across the world, approximately 1.2 billion people live in rented accommodation. This article attempts to summarise how that situation has come about, what role renting plays in the housing systems of different countries, and how governments might improve their policies towards the rental sector. The paper is premised on the assumption that rental housing is an essential ingredient in any shelter programme and laments the reluctance of so many governments to have paid it attention in recent years.

Appropriate finance can greatly increase the speed and lower the cost of incremental housing - the process used by much of the low/moderate-income majority of most developing countries to acquire shelter. Informal finance continues to dominate the funding of incremental housing. However, new sources have developed including housing microfinance, community-based finance savings and loan groups, and consumer credit for building materials. This paper examines informal and formal finance for incremental housing and makes recommendations for the vast expansion necessary to meet the affordable housing demand from the huge urban wave in developing countries projected over the next three decades.

This paper explores the housing challenges that Rio de Janeiro faces, which is specifically manifested in the form of favelas or squatter settlements, and that municipality’s strategies to overcome these challenges. The Favela Bairro slum upgrading program (FBP), which seeks to transform favelas into formal neighbourhoods, is seen as a complex and appropriate solution to Rio’s housing woes. The paper specifically focuses on land tenure challenges in Rio and the way the FBP dealt with this issue. The FBP is noteworthy as an example of slum upgrading without full land tenure legalization and for its use of state of exception, primarily the concession of right to use but not full ownership of land in order to allow this program to take place. This placed greater emphasis on infrastructural and living condition improvement rather than legalization of land tenure. As a result, the implementation of FBP has had the effect of increasing the security of tenure of favela residents.

Over the past decade there has been a sudden, extraordinarily large, and simultaneous expansion of multi-billion dollar housing programs in many emerging and developing economies. This shift occurred after a long period of limited public involvement in social housing production. Yet, despite the fact that countries and cities have introduced such large-scale programs, there has been little independent analysis of the rationale, efficacy and potential long-term effects of these interventions. Adopting a perspective that expands beyond typical public finance approaches, this paper examines the renewed shift in public housing provision. It provides an outlook of recent experiences in housing provision, showcases general trends in housing, proposes an evaluation framework, and offers a series of recommendations aiming at strengthening the programs. The paper concludes that if large-scale housing assistance is to help accommodate the almost 2 billion additional people who will live in cities over the next 35 years, as well as help to address the growing housing affordability issues, much more attention should be paid to the lasting effects that such programs can have on the structure of cities for generations to come.

Recently a large data set has been collected for LAC countries, which permits detailed study of household tenure. This data set constitutes the empirical basis of this paper in which the following research questions are addressed: What are the main patterns of urban housing tenure in LAC countries and how and why do they differ? What is the role of household income in determining urban housing tenure? To what extent does the presence of informal housing upset the positive linear relationship between income and tenure that is typically found in developed countries? The paper is organised as follows. The first section offers a brief review of the existing literature on the role of household income and tenure. The methodology employed in the study is explained in the second section and the results are presented in the third section.

More than half of the world's population currently resides in urban areas. In the majority of developing countries slums are a defining part of the urban scape. Their supply with energy, basic infrastructure, among others is one of the main challenges of modern civilizations. To provide an optimal supply, the spatial patterns of slums in cities have to be explored. While most of current literature is focused on inter-urban dynamics, this paper is focused on intra-urban pattern (i.e. the spatial pattern of morphological slums within a city) and its link to the inter-urban ones. Therefore, census and remote sensing data are analyzed to create rank size distributions of morphological slums in different cities of developing countries. The observations were compared to rank size distributions of cities in a respective developing country. It is found that typical inter-urban pattern can be transferred to intra-urban pattern. Surprisingly is the fact that the size of slums is independent from city and global region in the analyzed cities. The slums in Mumbai, Manila, Rio de Janeiro and Cape Town have an average area of 0.016 km2 with a standard deviation of only 0.004 km2 .

Existing studies on spatial justice discuss how different aspects of spatial injustices repeatedly deprive the poor and low-income urban dwellers of access to urban amenities. According to these studies, increasing equity in the allocation of urban resources for all categories of urbanites can remedy these injustices. However, land tenure security, a pre-condition for access to urban amenities for the poor and low-income urban dwellers, is hardly addressed. This study explores the potential of spatial justice to land tenure security discourse, using a metasynthesis of the literature on both concepts. It draws upon the Brazilian experience of implementing inclusive urban (re)development framework, which aims at integrating the poor and low-income urban dwellers in the urban fabric. Land tenure security is understood from the spatial aspect of social justice, rather than its traditional economic conceptualisation. We find that the pursuit of the three forms of spatial justice (alongside the processes of urban (re)development) promotes the three elements of tenure security differently. Procedural justice is identified as the main driver of land tenure security, whose prominent features are the perceived and the de facto tenure security.

The spontaneous conversion of formal residential and commercial buildings into high-density, informal housing is a major policy issue in the inner cities of developing countries. Yet there remains little research material to date analysing the residence dynamics, environmental health and related policy implications of this form of settlement. This paper presents and compares findings from two preliminary studies of informal sub-divided housing in the cities of São Paulo, Brazil, and Johannesburg, South Africa. It points to some of the policy implications of the work, in the light of broader debate on the management of informal settlements, and calls for further research examining this housing form within developing countries.

Growing global low-income populations living in informal urban settlements need basic services to live healthy, productive, dignified lives, but their informal status presents a legal barrier to service extension. In this paper we explore the informal mechanisms or ‘negotiated institutions’ that emerge to overcome this barrier, and the resulting link between service extension and tenure security. Primary data was collected in São Paulo, Brazil through semi-structured interviews with water supply decision makers and two community-level case studies. Interviews identified four mechanisms for approval of service extension: two forms of ‘permission’ (non-opposition) at the municipal level, a local elected official signing a law (without legal standing) or a unique instance of victory in court. We argue that the factual circumstances of de facto tenure security have to be interpreted through the lens of the entity with the power to evict. Thus, the impact of ‘negotiated institutions’ on de facto tenure security depends on the level of political support. In this case, the use of informal mechanisms to extend services did not change legal tenure status but improved de facto and perceived tenure security. Understanding these ‘negotiated institutions’ and how they emerge is crucial to being able to harness them to the advantage of informal communities that lack access to basic services.