Urban renewal or gentrification is very common in Chinese cities in the past two or three decades. An important feature is that they are often state sponsored. He once published an article entitled "State-sponsored gentrification" in Urban Affairs Review or Urban Studies.

1. Rapid population growth and increasing housing demand with no commensurate housing supply especially in urban centres;

2. low earnings, high cost of living and inability of the target-group to pay for housing;

3. non-commercial viability to attract financial supports by investors or financial institutions;

4. non acceptability of the housing typologies/tenure arising from inadequate or incompatible spatial requirements/relationship (disintegration) and design types which often times, are disconnected from the socio-economic realities, needs, affordability and cultural sentiments of the target-group but are rather attractive to the middle and high income class who ordinarily can afford it;

5. policy and political somersault; political patronage rather political will at ensuring accomplishment of the primary goal of low income housing;

6. inappropriate matching of housing demand and supply with the target-users' ( low-income) needs, their affordability, accessibility and acceptability factors

7. weak community involvement/participation in the formulation and implementation of policies, programmes and projects ;

8. weak regulatory framework, institution and control ..................

effects of gentrification in low income countries include:

- lose of cultural attachment among habituated/native inhabitants

- permanent displacement and conflicting interests

- authorities negligence to provide substantial compensation and failure to fill gap in re-establishment/ resettlement attempts,

- lose of hope to gain more from increasing land price and value,

- rising cost of life, housing rent,

- expansion of shanty/slum corridor, joblessness, criminality, social evils,

- preference for migration and losing identity,

There are so many abandoned buildings in the inner cities, some of those buildings they were owned by the colonist and they went back to their countries after apartheid, if the government can buy those buildings and renew them to provide the demand of housing in cities.