"This book describes how more than 50 million people in the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) region have come to live in informal settlements and examines the main characteristics of the phenomenon."--Publisher's description.

Beginning in the 1950s, an explosion in rural-urban migration dramatically increased the population of cities throughout Peru, leading to an acute housing shortage and the proliferation of self-built shelters clustered in barriadas, or squatter settlements. Improvised Cities examines the history of aided self-help housing, or technical assistance to self-builders, which took on a variety of forms in Peru from 1954 to 1986. While the postwar period saw a number of trial projects in aided self-help housing throughout the developing world, Peru was the site of significant experiments in this field and pioneering in its efforts to enact a large-scale policy of land tenure regularization in improvised, unauthorized cities. Gyger focuses on three interrelated themes: the circumstances that made Peru a fertile site for innovation in low-cost housing under a succession of very different political regimes; the influences on, and movements within, architectural culture that prompted architects to consider self-help housing as an alternative mode of practice; and the context in which international development agencies came to embrace these projects as part of their larger goals during the Cold War and beyond.

Nederland is één van de meest dichtbevolkte landen ter wereld. Dan moet je verstandig omgaan met de beschikbare ruimte. Waar gaan we werken, waar wonen en waar vakantie houden? Wat bebouwen en wat blijft ongerept? Nergens ter wereld wordt daar zo grondig over nagedacht als in Nederland. Internationaal geldt Nederland als gidsland op het gebied van de ruimtelijke ordening. Vanwege deze positie, en om aan de vraag vanuit het Engelstalige onderwijs te voorzien, verschijnt nu deze geheel herziene, Engelstalige editie van het standaardwerk Ruimtelijke ordening.

This book investigates self-build housing for low and middle-income groups in urbanized areas in three different continents: South America (Brazil and Ecuador), Europe (the Netherlands, Albany, and Turkey) and Africa (Ethiopia, Egypt and Burkina Faso). Although the levels of social and economic prosperity and the related housing and urban context across these three continents are vastly different, there is a recurring central field of tension of governmental regulation vis- -vis societal self-regulation. The following question will be at the center of the book: How is the capacity for self-regulation in practices of self-build housing and facilities related to formal domains of governance and regulation and how can this relationship be optimized to create more socially sustainable forms of urbanization?

Using a broad international comparative perspective spanning multiple countries across South America, Europe and Africa, contributors explore resident-led self-building for low and middle income groups in urban areas. Although social, economic and urban prosperity differs across these contexts, there exists a recurring, cross-continental, tension between formal governance and self-regulation. Contributors examine the multi-faceted regulation dilemmas of self-building under the conditions of modernization and consider alternative methods of institutionalization, place-making and urban design, reconceptualizing the moral and managerial ownership of the city. Innovative in scope, this book provides an array of globalized solutions for navigating regulatory tensions in order to optimize sustainable development for the future

The objective of this book is to better understand the nature of urban governance regarding the provision of basic urban services in rapidly growing mid-sized towns and cities in developing countries. Set within the context of understanding urban planning and management within the wider city setting, the study focuses on the provision of the basic urban services of housing, water and sanitation especially within informal settlements. Using the case study of the mid-sized city of Jayapura, Papua, Indonesia, the publication explores: (i) the types, processes, and stakeholders that constitute formal urban governance in the provision of basic urban services; (ii) understanding how stakeholders gain and benefit from ‘on the ground’ formal service arrangements, and why; and (iii) for those who do not directly benefit from the formal arrangements, how individuals, groups and communities organize and access governance to meet their basic urban needs. The methods employed to better understand the nature of urban governance and its relationship to the provision of basic urban services comprised primary (face-to-face household surveys interviewing 448 respondents, ground mapping at a plot size level in four informal settlements, and semi-structured interviews with 12 stakeholders) and secondary data regarding urban governance, planning and management. The study reveals that urban governance arrangements in fast growing mid-sized cities have emerged both formally and informally to cope with basic urban service needs across a range of settlement types and socio-cultural groups. The major modes of governance arrangements in the informal settlements consist of traditional, formal and informal, and hybrid governance which co-evolve as their boundaries overlap and intersect through time at varying levels of ‘equilibrium’. The ‘governance equilibrium’ represents a ‘balance’ at a specific point and place in time in how stakeholders utilize and share resources, and access various contributions.