ABSTRACT
A human settlements approach is a key conceptual instrument for the process, and indeed it has been said that national planning through strategies for settlements is a means of humanizing and socializing the whole development process. The celebratory synthesis made by the head of the Human Settlements Program at the United Nations Environmental Program in 1976 is a most obvious testimony of the extent to which a human settlements approach to development was under intense promotion by the late 1970s. The emergence of human settlements as a revised approach to city making became inherent to the deconstruction of modernism and the disciplinary refoundation of urbanism and architecture. The focus on architecture in the developing world was reflected in contributions not only on self-built urban housing projects and the richness of vernacular artefacts but also on the demythologizing of colonial architecture and on expressions of regional modernism.
