The transformation of multi‐storey dwellings by self‐help: workers’ city,Helwan, Egypt

Self‐help extensions to government‐built housing are now accepted as a valuable addition to the housing stock in many third world countries. This paper describes self‐help extensions being made to five‐storey walk‐up flats in Helwan, Egypt, to provide more living space for households which have grown too large for the two rooms initially provided. It is argued that the cooperative effort and standard of construction are resulting in an acceptable new environment. Government response should be to encourage and guide such extensions wherever they occur.     

Adaptation of local building materials — a key to rapid housing development in Nigeria

There are some experts who are dealing with research on locally made materials for building in the Ministry of Housing and Works in Nigeria. It has been discovered in the Ministry that lateriate clays can be fired and used for building even two‐storey buildings depending on the firing and the pressure (Ogunbamwo, 1975). The Ministry has constructed a block of bungalows of low‐cost housing units with mud at Ikoyi, off Kingsway Road. No one will know that these houses are mud houses if not at closer inspection. Unfortunately, no effort has been made to continue or improve on this laudable adventure in Nigeria.     

“Housing for all” at the era of financialization; can (post-disaster) cities become truly socially resilient and egalitarian?

This paper examines the realism of the resilience ambition and process of the U.S. housing system, shedding light on its heterogeneity as well as the financialization currently acting as the driving force in real estate production. The resilience ambition leading to enhanced justice and egalitarianism is understood as the provision and maintenance of post-disaster housing for all within an institutionally diverse landscape of housing policy makers and implementers. Particular emphasis is given to the post-Katrina institutional transformations resulting from multifarious interactions between multilevel institutional structures and a diverse landscape of low-income housing policy implementers – referred as social resilience cells (SRCs) in this paper. The nature and level of these transformations determine the degree to which resilience in its heterogeneous form has been incubated in New Orleans. The paper concludes with a discussion on the macro conditions and bottom-linked governance structures under which all SRCs could be better bolstered in a post-financialization, radicalised neowelfare U.S., and which in turn create possibilities for materialising the resilience ambition.     

居住小区交通噪声概率分布特征及其评价

在连续35天监测的基础上，分析了道路交通流量的概率分布特征，发现道路交通流量在时间上呈对数正态分布。该分布导致小区交通噪声在时间上具有明显的正态分布特征，其中小区临街交通噪声在空间上也呈正态分布。将上述概率分布特征应用到小区道路交通噪声评价中，使得评价结果不仅具有一般的大小意义，还具有概率分布意义。     

中国城市化与城镇居民住房

随着住房制度改革的不断深入,我国城镇居民人均居住面积有所提高,居住水平有所改善。但是,中国城市化发展的特点很容易造成城镇居民居住水平提高的假象。本文分析了造成这些假象的原因。     

住宅产业循环经济

论述了住宅产业发展循环经济、进行产业化的重要意义,介绍了住宅产业循环经济的发展现状和问题,并提出完善立法,推广全装修住宅、钢结构住宅;开发低成本回收技术,以及抓好示范、推广工作等实现途径和措施。     

生态住宅的可持续发展

阐述了生态住宅在住宅功能、节约资源与能源及满足人的生理、心理和情感需要等方面所应具有的适应性,对生态住宅的发展进行了探索。     

Assessing the Ecological and Social Benefits of Private Land Conservation in Colorado

Abstract: Conservation of private land through conservation easements, development agreements, and clustered housing has increased greatly as have criticisms of the laws, public programs, and incentives that motivate landowners to use them. Rapid land‐use change at the urban–rural interface in Larimer County, Colorado, has given rise to programs that provide a variety of land‐conservation options for landowners. As of January 2005, roughly 60% of Larimer County was publicly owned, and 3% or 16,200 ha was privately owned with some form of protection. We used document analysis, a landowner survey, targeted interviews, and a landscape‐level spatial analysis to analyze the patterns, quantities, and qualities of private land conservation. We created a jurisdiction‐specific typology of desired benefits from local government‐planning documents to help evaluate conservation parcels. Most easements and other conservation documents used general terms and did not describe the site‐specific values of the land being conserved. Landowners were able to describe some benefits not included in parcel‐specific documents, and our spatial analysis revealed parcel‐specific and cumulative conservation benefits such as the amount of buffering, infill, connectivity, protected agricultural land, riparian protection, and other benefits not referenced by either documents or landowners. Conservation benefits provided by a parcel varied depending on its geographic location, the specific institution such as a land trust or open space program that a landowner worked with, and the conservation mechanism used, such as voluntary easement or residential clustering requirements. The methods we used provide a template for jurisdictions wishing to undertake a similar analysis. Our findings may assist other jurisdictions and institutions interested in improving how land‐conservation benefits are described; justify and inform future investments in private land conservation; assist local governments and other institutions with the assessment of program effectiveness; and be useful for conservation planners who wish to become more involved in on‐the‐ground implementation of conservation actions.     

Rural residents and choice of building earthquake-resistant house: results of a choice experiment study

Rural settlements, especially in developing countries, are disproportionally vulnerable to natural hazards due to both biophysical and social vulnerability. Building hazard-resistant houses requires a thorough understanding of hazards and institutional and financial resources. However, it is equally important for planners and policymakers to know how rural residents make the tradeoff between various housing attributes when provided with the resources such as low-interest housing construction loans. In this study, we use a choice experiment (CE) to examine rural households' preference for earthquake resistance when building houses. A total of 300 households from randomly selected villages in central districts of Guilan Province in Iran were recruited for a CE study in which they had to choose between a number of houses that differed in terms of the required construction loan, resistance to earthquakes, size, and exterior and interior designs. Our results show that the average resident preferred larger houses with better exterior and interior designs to more earthquake-resistant houses, and is willing to spend more on these attributes than earthquake safety. These results indicate that rural households are willing to receive loans to improve their houses but that this does not translate into more earthquake-resistant houses.     

Post-Sidr public housing assistance in Bangladesh: a case study

Housing is not only a structure, but also a process tied up with social, cultural, psychological and economic attributes. Following Cyclone Sidr, the Government of Bangladesh has been using ‘build back better’ as a colloquial slogan to push forward the idea of resilience in post-disaster interventions, especially with regard to rebuilding houses. This paper examines how and whether the idea is reflected through the government's post-Sidr housing project at Gabtola. It problematizes the slogan from the accounts of community participation, local practicalities, culture, weather and potential future risks. Based on eight months of ethnographic fieldwork at Gabtola, this research found that the basic attributes of the ‘build back better’ slogan are absent with regard to the housing scheme's cost efficiency, management, livelihoods, public health aspects and tolerance against a super-cyclone. These findings will provide valuable insights into the problems associated with the implementation of post-cyclone public housing programmes in Bangladesh. Such insights can assist public authorities and other relevant organizations and donor agencies in revising and improving their post-disaster housing programmes in the wake of future disasters.