ABSTRACT
In developing countries the urban house is mainly the end-product of a non-engineered self-help process that lasts for many years and that takes place in an environment of poverty. This process produces low density, physically extended and seismically unsafe cities, in which the total urban cost per person is far from minimum, and where it is becoming increasingly difficult and unnecessarily costly to provide adequate infrastructure and services. As a result, the present housing policy in some developing countries includes the objectives of reducing self-help construction and providing urban housing in low-rise, three to five story, buildings. This policy will, in addition, aid in urban renewal by attenuating the social problems of the slum and helping to protect, in some cases, a valuable architectural heritage. Gallegos (1979).
