ABSTRACT
The United Nations Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000 notes that the greatest failure of developing countries in the housing sector has been their inability to stimulate an adequate supply of affordable and serviced land in cities (UNCHS 1989). This and similar arguments form part of a considerable debate that centres on whether the urban poor have less access to land today than in the past (see Doebele, this volume). This debate has already produced some significant questions, some of which are addressed by other authors in this volume and elsewhere (see Ward et al. 1993). For example, does it cost more today to acquire a plot of land than it did 20 years ago? If so, what has contributed to such a rise in cost? It is a theme running through this book that the answers to these questions stem to a large degree from the ideological perspective one adopts as the frame of reference.1 Moreover, it is argued that the chosen frame of reference will dictate the data collected.
