Housing Policy Wellbeing And Social Development In Asia

This book investigates how housing policy changes in Asia since the late 1990s have impacted on housing affordability, security, livability, culture and social development. Using case study examples from countries/cities including China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam, the contributors contextualize housing policy development in terms of both global and local socio-economic and political changes. They then investigate how policy changes have shaped and re-shaped the housing wellbeing of the local people and the social development within these places, which they argue should constitute the core purpose of housing policy. This book will open up a new dimension for understanding housing and social development in Asia and a new conceptual perspective with which to examine housing which, by nature, is culture-sensitive and people-oriented. It will be of interest to students, scholars and professionals in the areas of housing studies, urban and social development and the public and social policy of Asia.

Social Policy in East and South East Asia provides the first systematic comparison of the policy sectors of income maintenance, health, housing and education in Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan. It focuses particularly on the provision and financing arrangements of these four Asian newly industrialized economies and their outcomes in terms of adequacy, efficiency and equity, drawing on extensive primary research carried out by the author. Locating the importance of Asian social policies in the wake of the recent financial crisis in the region, this work provides a comprehensive analysis of the different types of welfare state in contemporary Asia.

Housing policy has been central to the economic success stories of the major East Asian economies as well as a pillar of social and welfare provision. This book explores not only the development of their distinctive approach, but also the challenges posed in recent years, and currently, by rapid socio-economic and demographic change.

Recent rapid housing market expansion in China is presenting new challenges for policy makers, planners, business people, and citizens. Now that housing in middle-income China is driven by consumer choices and is no longer dominated by state policy decisions, housing policy issues in Chinese cities are becoming increasingly similar to those encountered in other global housing markets. With soaring prices and imbalances in housing supply favoring high income groups and housing demand driven by rising inequality in household incomes, many middle and lower-income households face worsening choices in terms of the quality and location of their housing as well as greater financial difficulties, which together can have negative implications for standards of public health. This book examines the impact of these changes on the general population, as well as on aspiring homeowners and developers. The contributors look at the effect on the widening of wealth gaps, slower economic growth, and threats to political and social stability. Though focusing on China, the editors also present discussions of specific policy design challenges encountered in Australia, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, the Nordic countries, Singapore, Taiwan, the UK, and the US. This book would be of interest to housing policy makers, as well as academics who are studying the social and political effects of the Chinese housing market.

Considering Asian cities ranging from Taipei, Hong Kong and Bangkok to Hanoi, Nanjing and Seoul, this collection discusses the socio-political processes of how neoliberalization entwines with local political economies and legacies of ‘developmental’ or ‘socialist’ statism to produce urban contestations centered on housing. The book takes housing as a key entry point, given its prime position in the making of social and economic policies as well as the political legitimacy of Asian states. It examines urban policies related to housing in Asian economies in order to explore their continuing alterations and mutations, as they come into conflict and coalesce with neoliberal policies. In discussing the experience of each city, it takes into consideration the variegated relations between the state, the market and the society, and explores how the global pressure of neoliberalization has manifested in each country and has influenced the shaping of national housing questions.

A detailed examination of the “Korean development model” from its urban dimension, evaluating its sociopolitical contexts and implications for international development cooperation. There is an increasing tendency to use the development experience of Asian countries as a reference point for other countries in the Global South. Korea’s condensed urbanization and industrialization, accompanied by the expansion of new cities and industrial complexes across the country, have become one such model, even if the fruits of such development may not have been equitably shared across geographies and generations. The chapters in this book critically reassess the Korean urban development experience from regional policy to new town development, demonstrating how these policy experiences were deeply rooted in Korea’s socioeconomic environment and discussing what can be learned from them when applying them in other developmental contexts. This book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers in the field of urban studies and developmental studies in general, and in Korea’s (urban) development experience in particular. Chapters 1, 2, 4, and 12 of this book are freely available as downloadable Open Access PDFs at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

The changing nature and significance of housing provision within welfare states is considered in this timely book. With housing playing an increasingly important role in welfare provision, the new welfare state emerging in different parts of the world is being developed in the context of individual asset accumulation and the private ownership of housing. Housing and the New Welfare State shows that housing is becoming critical to asset-based welfare not only in Western Europe but also in the six East Asian housing systems that are a major focus of the book. Chapters by leading East Asian scholars provide analysis of housing policies in Singapore, Hong Kong, Korea, Japan, China and Taiwan. Also examined are the 'four worlds' of welfare and housing; the causes and consequences of the shift from tenants to home owners in the old welfare states of Britain and other parts of Western Europe; and the growth of the property-owning welfare state as a theme running through contemporary policy in both East Asia and Europe.

This book explores residential satisfaction and housing policy trends in developing nations by using subsidised low-income housing examples in South Africa, Ghana and Nigeria as case studies. While there has been much documentation on the formation of residential satisfaction and the evolution of housing policy in developed nations, relatively little has been written about these topics in developing nations. This book provides readers with two major practical insights: The first is focused on the theoretical underpinning of residential satisfaction and the formation of residential satisfaction in subsidised low-income housing through the development of a conceptual framework, while the second is focused on housing policy evolution and its trends in South Africa. In this section of the book, comparative overviews of public housing in two West African countries are provided with an emphasis on the philosophical basis for its development in these countries. The central aim of the book is to provide readers with ideas on residential satisfaction formation and housing policy trends in South Africa.