Since I've searched for information to find out what obstacles and the opportunities for sustainable housing development are, finance factors have been a major issue to developing countries. Therefore low cost, but resilient, building may be the solution.
Producing low-cost housing is a challenge anywhere because demand is much greater than supply. In the US the Federal government has programs such 221(d)4 under which it underwrites the loans for these private projects in needy market areas. In developing countries need is likely to be more widespread.
In the US I think that “an available supply of substandard units suitable for rehabilitation” is close to the term “resilient” you are using. Substandard includes such things as lack of adequate pluming, overcrowding, besides dilapidation, i.e., very broadly defined. The Federal Government takes care of these rehabilitation needs in its Block Grant program by fair-sharing out tax monies to entitlement cities an areas.
Costs and disaster resilience are two different factors; they might be both mutually exclusive. While cost is a common factor in housing, disaster resilience has had different coefficients in different parts of the world - if there are high frequencies of disasters in a geographical area, insurance and context-specific design consideration could rrigger cost variability; this will not be the case if otherwise.
There are some places in the world where natural disasters are not frequent. Thus project owners might not consider resilience as a factor in designing and delivering such projects.
Moreover, there are different forms of disasters; each form requiries different design solutions. Some of such solutions might not change costs significantly. However, of what value is low cost housing if its functional value is poor when confronted disasters? Even without disasters, projects are likely to loose their satisfaction values if their costs of maintenance are too high. For this reason, wise and prudent clients often consider cost as a secondary factor, while long term functionality (e.g. maintenance, disaster resilience et al) and performance across differnt conditions are usually their primary considerations.
Thank you for your response, Lall. It is true that providing affordable houses is huge challenge to any country. Moreover, the need for decent affordable housing is particularly acute in developing regions. Cities face with steady rise in dwelling demands as urbanization increases driven by population growth and migrations from rural. As a consequence, urban growth in Asia, Africa and Latin America is struggling with slums, low quality buildings without basic infrastructure and sanitary provision, and with negligible regard of formal planning and building regulations. Since the number of developing countries appears much bigger proportion, their impact on environment will be more severse which need a solution.
Dear Oluwole, thank you for sharing your opinion. Even though, the sustainability of housing is closely related to economics and to some extent environment and social. It’s required consideration to choose between various sustainable elements to achieve sustainable housing that is affordable while quality of life social sustainability is also essential.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Biological Science
- Bioecology
- Systems Ecology
- Landscape Ecology
- Connectivity