International Housing Policy for the Urban Poor and the Informal City in the Global South: A Non-diachronic Review

This paper conducts a review of the main housing policies for informal settlements and the poor in the so-called Global South promoted by the main international agencies (such as the World Bank and UN-Habitat) since the 1950s. The international literature on the topic usually recognises successive ‘seasons’ of these policies (aided self-help and enablement). While this periodisation is certainly useful, a more comprehensive analysis can be provided by complementing it with an in-depth, non-diachronic scrutiny of the ingredients that compose the different policies proposed and implemented in these ‘seasons’. In this paper, these policies are therefore dissected according to substantive components (physical goods, regulations, financing), procedural features (top-down versus bottom-up approach; project-by-project versus comprehensive approach) and beneficiaries (tenants versus homeowners; existing settlements versus new settlements). On the basis of this analysis, we can identify the main evolutionary trajectories of these policies over six decades. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.