HABITATION FOR THE PLANET

A recently book released by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) entitled “Room for Development: Housing Markets in Latin America and the Caribbean” has pointed to the acute nature of the housing gap in the region’s largest cities.  The book provides an in-depth examination of 18 Latin American and Caribbean countries whilst specifically examining the magnitude of the issue as a whole (determinants and consequences of such poor outcomes); the main factors leading to the widespread presence of significantly inferior habitation as [Read More]

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Please see an article written for the Brazilian version of the Next Billion base of the pyramid news and features site entitled “High Quality, Well Located and Vertical Housing for the Brazilian Low Income Segment”.  The original (in Portuguese) – Habitação de Alta Qualidade, Bem Localizada e Verticalizada para a Baixa Renda Brasileira – can be seen by clicking here. Despite seeing debatably advanced growth levels in comparison with its Latin American and “emerging” partners, Brazil´s low income housing sector´s progress still remains [Read More]

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Growing at some 2,000 residents every day without any broadly led housing policy in place – the pressures facing Africa’s fastest growing city are much cause for concern.  It has even got to a stage where new arrivals to the metropolitan region of Lagos are reportedly having difficulty in finding slum accommodation – resorting to live under bridges or other public areas until more “permanent” shelter options become available. The patterns in Lagos are an increasingly common indictment of the realities [Read More]

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Whilst Earth Day is an excellent opportunity to push forward both the green economy and global sustainability agendas, it is never an inappropriate time to raise the issue of affordable housing considering the sheer magnitude of ongoing rural to urban migration patterns.  However, what arguably often does not get alerted to is the apparent lack of cohesive action to move forward effectively.  The massive environmental strain that the uncontrollable growth of slum expansion brings is well known: despite many base of [Read More]

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Should unabated negative urban sprawl be used to describe the ongoing reality of many cities in the developing world, the massively overburdened landscapes of the future epitomised by intensely degraded living environments will almost certainly require new and more derogatory terms to be coined. Albeit ambiguously defined, never before has there been more demand-based opportunity in energy, utilities, transport, sanitation, housing, health, educational facilities and telecommunications throughout the global south.  Yet while the infrastructure sector has become an increasingly recognized component [Read More]

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Further to a previous post on how infrastructure is an essential step to deal with base of the pyramid urban sprawl, a late 2011 Transparency International “Bribe Payers Index” served to support some of the comments made, reporting that public works contracts and construction scored the lowest out all of the prominent sectors in the world.  According to Global Construction 2020 Study (Source: Global Construction 2020, Global Construction Perspectives and Oxford Economics), the industry’s global value is expected to reach $12 trillion [Read More]

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The bullish touts of Pakistan´s largest commercial city becoming the “the next Shanghai” are often difficult to comprehend when examining the realities of Karachi’s massively negative urban base of the pyramid growth.  This trajectory began in the middle of the last century as a consequence of migration from India following partition and exacerbated by practically non-existent urban planning mechanisms, inherent political instability as well as the modernisation of agricultural production (the city’s population has increased 38 times since 1947). Most of [Read More]

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[An article written for the Social Earth online magazine...] By this time tomorrow, based on UN statistics, there will be another 97,068 base of the pyramid housing units needed somewhere on the planet and the poorest cities will have become even further crammed with slums and other forms of insalubrious living conditions. Meanwhile, whilst the issue should be prioritised in terms of ensuring global sustainability, advancement will have also continued to remain on the backburner of policy making accompanied by widespread [Read More]

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Having previously donated a photo from his extensive portfolio, social and humanitarian photo-journalist Luc Forsyth kindly agreed to answer a handful of questions on his experiences of living and working in the compounds (slums) in Kitwe, Zambia.  Please head to Luc’s website by clicking here and follow on Twitter @LucForsyth: (1) With regards to your stay in Kitwe, how would you describe the housing conditions of the majority? Kitwe is the second largest city in Zambia, so there is obviously a lot [Read More]

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One of the major challenges of confronting the ever-widening demand for global base of the pyramid housing is the search for materials that can move beyond conventional brick (ceramic) and cement blocks and have become accustomed to being utilised under cumbersome, inflation-pressured and archaic building methodologies.  It is therefore worth taking a look at some of the products that are or propose to be used as mainstream building materials for the affordable housing construction sector: Concrete Blocks – advantages include excellent [Read More]

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