ABSTRACT
From 31 May to 11 June 1976, the United Nations (UN) conference on human settlements (the ‘Habitat Conference’) took place in Vancouver, Canada. This provided an opportunity for the UN and individual member countries to take stock of developing problems and policies in the broad field of provision of housing and living environments for the world’s population. Eight Middle East countries have made their statements, prepared prior to the Habitat conference, available in published form, so that an analysis of their problems and policies may be made. The countries considered are Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. This chapter considers each country’s statement in turn and draws conclusions about the direction and effectiveness of national housing policies as far as they can be understood from the evidence of these national reports. A major policy of industrialised decentralisation is a persistent theme of the Iran report on human settlements.
