The challenge of urban deprivation and exclusion in the urban South has given rise to varied and shifting policies and ideas. Two sets of ideas have gained great currency in recent years in international policy and academic circles. The Legal Empowerment of the Poor approach, rooted in neoliberal thinking, focuses on the legal rights of the urban poor as the means ...

The challenge of urban deprivation and exclusion in the urban South has given rise to varied and shifting policies and ideas. Two sets of ideas have gained great currency in recent years in international policy and academic circles. The Legal Empowerment of the Poor approach, rooted in neoliberal thinking, focuses on the legal rights of the urban poor as the means ...

This is a study of everyday life and the quality of living in a poor neighbourhood of Chitungwiza, an independent Zimbabwean town about thirty kilometres south of Harare city centre. In the official view, this is a home-ownership neighbourhood. However, there are usually many families living in multi-habitation on each property, and lodgers outnumber owners. Within...

This policy note suggests a participative approach to housing design and delivery as a strategy for generating adequate housing. It further contends that this approach would help  create convivial urban neighbourhoods in African cities by empowering grassroots networks to participate in the decisions of urban design and housing management.

This book brings together two bodies of research on urban Africa that have tended to be separate: Studies of urban land use and housing, and studies of work and livelihoods. Africa’s future will be to an increasing extent urban. Nevertheless, the inherited legal, institutional and financial arrangements for managing urban development are inadequate. The recent deca...