From Local Action To Global Networks Housing The Urban Poor

Over the past two decades it has become widely recognized that housing issues have to be placed in a broader framework acknowledging that civil society in the form of Community Based Organizations (CBOs) and their allies are increasingly networking and emerging as strong players that cannot easily be overlooked. Some of these networks have crossed local and national boundaries and have jumped political scales. This implies that housing issues have to be looked at from new angles: they can no longer simply be addressed through localized projects, but rather at multiple scales. The current debate is largely limited to statements about the relevance of individual organizations for local housing processes and tends to overlook the innovativeness in terms of re-scaling those processes and of influencing institutional change at various levels by transcending national boundaries. There is a significant lack of a systemic understanding of such globally operating grassroots networks and how they function in the housing process. This book brings together different perspectives on multi-scalar approaches within the housing field and on grassroots’ engagement with formal agencies including local government, higher levels of government and international agencies. By moving away from romanticizing local self-initiatives, it focuses on understanding the emerging potential once local initiatives are interlinked and scaled-up to transnational networks.

Over the past two decades it has become widely recognized that housing issues have to be placed in a broader framework acknowledging that civil society in the form of Community Based Organizations (CBOs) and their allies are increasingly networking and emerging as strong players that cannot easily be overlooked. Some of these networks have crossed local and national boundaries and have jumped political scales. This implies that housing issues have to be looked at from new angles: they can no longer simply be addressed through localized projects, but rather at multiple scales. The current debate is largely limited to statements about the relevance of individual organizations for local housing processes and tends to overlook the innovativeness in terms of re-scaling those processes and of influencing institutional change at various levels by transcending national boundaries. There is a significant lack of a systemic understanding of such globally operating grassroots networks and how they function in the housing process. This book brings together different perspectives on multi-scalar approaches within the housing field and on grassroots’ engagement with formal agencies including local government, higher levels of government and international agencies. By moving away from romanticizing local self-initiatives, it focuses on understanding the emerging potential once local initiatives are interlinked and scaled-up to transnational networks.

Urban areas in the Global South now house most of the world’s urban population and are projected to house almost all its increase between now and 2030. There is a growing recognition that the scale of urban poverty has been overlooked – and that it is increasing both in numbers and in the proportion of the world’s poor population that live and work in urban areas. This is the first book to review the effectiveness of different approaches to reducing urban poverty in the Global South. It describes and discusses the different ways in which national and local governments, international agencies and civil society organizations are seeking to reduce urban poverty. Different approaches are explored, for instance; market approaches, welfare, rights-based approaches and technical/professional support. The book also considers the roles of clientelism and of social movements. Case studies illustrate different approaches and explore their effectiveness. Reducing Urban Poverty in the Global South also analyses the poverty reduction strategies developed by organized low-income groups especially those living in informal settlements. It explains how they and the federations or networks they have formed have demonstrated new approaches that have challenged adverse political relations and negotiated more effective support. Local and national governments and international agencies can become far more effective at addressing urban poverty at scale by, as is proposed in this book, working with and supporting the urban poor and their organizations. This book will be an invaluable resource for researchers and postgraduate students in urban development, poverty reduction, urban geography, and for practitioners and organisations working in urban development programmes in the Global South.

Annotation This volume is the most recent addition to the examination of urban poverty by the Human Settlements Program at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). It makes the case for redirecting support to local organizations and processes. The core of the book is case studies of innovative government organizations (in Thailand, Mexico, Philippines and Nicaragua) and community-driven processes (in India, South Africa, Pakistan and Brazil) that show new ways to address urban poverty. Each case study is prepared by specialists from these countries. They show that poverty reduction in urban areas is as much about building competent, accountable local organizations as about attempting to improve incomes. It involves strengthening and supporting the organizations formed by the poor or homeless to be able to develop their own solutions and able to negotiate better deals with the organizations delivering infrastructure, services, credit and land for housing. The understanding of urbanpoverty that the book presents goes beyond conventional, official definitions based only on income or consumption levels to include considerations of housing conditions, tenure, infrastructure and service provision, the rule of law, and civil and political rights, including 'voice' and the right to influence policy and practice on the ground. It offers powerful conclusions for national and local governments, NGOs and international agencies on how to tackle the complex and growing problem of urban poverty.

First Published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

It examines the range of strategies, including the most recent experiments in local community - private sector partnership, that have been used to try and improve housing conditions for the very poor and why they have so often failed. It also reviews the state of existing policy-oriented research with a view to understanding the possible future of these settlements.