ABSTRACT
An institutional learning system consists of the totality of conditions that shape the interactions of learning agents in such a way as to enhance, or inhibit and distort, performance of the collective learning tasks of discovery, invention, production, and monitoring. This chapter argues that the creation of effective institutional learning systems is necessary to improved shelter and settlement policy and, especially, to the implementation of the new vision of policy. Over the past 25 years, there have been periodic shifts in ideas in good currency about shelter and settlement policy in Third World countries, with significant effects on policy and practice in Third World governments, international aid agencies, and academic communities. From the vision of policy, certain fundamental issues follow fundamental difficulties more like paradoxes and dilemmas than technical problems. They can be grouped in terms of the interactions of central and local governments, public and private sectors, formal and informal systems.
