ABSTRACT
One of the most obvious points to note about cities is that they are home to lots of people! Indeed, housing forms the most substantive land use within contemporary cities. Shelter is a basic human need and access to adequate housing is an important human right. Yet a home is much more than merely a physical dwelling within the city, it is also an important commodity to be traded and in addition represents a key factor in shaping the identity and place of people and households within the city. Housing is an important determinant of personal security, comfort, wealth and status and ownership of housing can also be important in structuring access to other scarce resources within the city such as employment opportunities, education and healthcare facilities. However, it is clear that the ability of people to secure a home in the city is highly unequal, with the problems of lack of access to adequate and affordable housing for many urban dwellers most starkly illustrated in the world’s biggest cities in the form of homeless people on the streets. As
more people are drawn into cities, as a result of the economic and other opportunities perceived to be available within them, the ability of cities to meet the housing needs of growing and changing urban populations has become increasingly problematic. No city is free of housing problems, yet their nature and scale is highly varied around the world, from increasing problems of housing affordability in advanced industrial nations to how to deal with the growth of large informal shanty settlements in many large cities of the Global South.
