This book outlines the last fifty years of Swedish housing policy and land use planning, including the achievements as well as the failures in providing affordable and high quality housing for the whole population.

This title was first published in 2000. The privatization of former social state housing through recent public-private partnerships is becoming increasingly prevalent in Third World as well as in Western countries. In most Third World countries, this shift has had profound effects upon the patterns of access of shelter. Drawing on studies of South Asian and other Third World contexts, as well as original in-depth empirical research from Amritsar, a city in North-West India, this book offers an analysis of the withdrawal of state housing provision. It develops and applies a unique model based on social status to analyze the new routes of access to housing and land by the urban poor. Its conclusions argue that these new privatization policies largely rely upon already existing informal and self-help settlements which continue to attract the poor and to be the largest housing providers in many cities, thus providing a ready-made safety net for such policies. The inter-linkages between the private state and the public market make up a highly diversified and complex picture of shelter arrangements being accessed by the poor which is reflected in the social differentiation and increasingly stratified housing market. The book argues that these partnership policies therefore have long-term implications upon social patterns of inclusion and exclusion which must be addressed.

Contributed articles presented at the Indo-Swedish Symposium on "Affordable Housing, Planning, and Perspectives" held in February 1993 at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences.

Festschrift in honour of Gabriele Dietrich of Tamil Nadu Theological Seminary, social activist and feminist; contributed articles on diverse aspects predominantly on social status of women and feminism in India.