The Housing Challenge: Avoiding the Ozymandias Syndrome

This report is based on summaries and background papers of a meeting held in Bellagio, Italy in October 2014. There, experts undertaking large-scale, multi-billion dollar housing projects met with academics to discuss housing challenges in low-income countries, with an emphasis on sub-Saharan Africa.

The recognition of different priorities, such as providing basic infrastructure and services in order to reduce negative health impacts and crime, providing economic opportunities and increasing employment, is an important first step in identifying how large-scale housing investments can better address urban challenges and enhance living conditions in countries such as Kenya, Angola and Ethiopia.

The document is structured along five questions related to affordable housing that policymakers are encouraged to reflect upon. And it uses case studies in conjunction with photo series and graphs to illustrate the main discussion points. It asks:

1.       Is the social contract for urban development with cities or housing suppliers?

2.       Are urban regulations a central cause of the housing affordability problem?

3.       Which kinds of urban and related financial regulations are essential?

4.       How can the existing urban capital stock help address housing affordability?

5.       How can subsidies help?

The resulting recommendations and outcomes of the meeting include a call for better data and more research, the inclusion of community groups and more space for stakeholder meetings, careful consideration of regulations and subsidies, and framing of discussions along urban rather than housing conditions. Although none of these might seem particularly new for urban planning in general, this is nonetheless an important statement to come from organizations managing large-scale housing investments. This is especially so because the recommendations are embedded in a strong call for an urban contract with changing current investment schemes and housing construction practices. The aims of these are to stop wasting massive amounts of resources, make cities more inclusive, liveable and productive, and make housing more affordable. Also, the book states that cities should not be scarred “with pockets of rapidly dilapidated and segregated housing”. Inspiration is sought from the experience of successful alternative practices, such as the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights. One of the annexes also provides further information on housing programmes in different countries.

For readers who wonder about the title, it was chosen based on a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley that serves as a haunting reminder of what is at stake if failures of large housing investments continue to be repeated.

Book note prepared by Julia Wesely