Broken Cities. Deborah Potts

      

      About the author

      Deborah Potts is an Emeritus Reader in Human Geography at King’s College London. She has written and researched extensively on issues around urbanization, migration, livelihoods and housing, with a particular focus on urban Africa. Her previous books include African Urban Economies: Viability, Vitality or Vitiation? (2006) and Circular Migration in Zimbabwe and Contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa (2010).

      Broken Cities

      Inside the Global Housing Crisis

      Deborah Potts

      Broken Cities: Inside the Global Housing Crisis was first published in 2020 by Zed Books Ltd, The Foundry, 17 Oval Way, London SE11 5RR, UK.

       www.zedbooks.net

      Copyright © Deborah Potts 2020

      The right of Deborah Potts to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

      Typeset in Akzidenz Grotesk and Haarlemmer by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon

       Cover design by Kika Sroka-Miller

       Cover photo © David Rose; Panos Pictures

      Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of Zed Books Ltd.

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      ISBN 978-1-78699-055-6 hb

       ISBN 978-1-78699-054-9 pb

       ISBN 978-1-78699-056-3 pdf

       ISBN 978-1-78699-057-0 epub

       ISBN 978-1-78699-058-7 mobi

      Contents

List of figures, tables and boxes

Foreword

1 The dilemma of affordable housing and big cities

Introduction

Five key premises

Housing processes across time and space: recognising the links

2 Mismatches between incomes and housing costs: a global condition

Introduction

Learning from southern Africa

Urban incomes and hard limits on housing expenditure

3 Affordable urban housing and the role of basic standards

Housing standards: the necessity of a double-edged sword

Informal housing and building standards

What standards are appropriate?

4 Private-sector urban housing provision: formal and informal

Formal-sector, large-scale, for-profit housing

       Variations in owning versus renting in the private sector

       Informal-market ‘affordable’ housing

       5 Squaring the circle: social housing programmes and affordable rents

       Introduction

       Matching the gap between low incomes and market rents

       6 Squaring the circle: affordable urban homeownership

       Subsidising homeownership

       ‘Recognising’ informal and unplanned settlements: ‘quiet encroachment’ and homeownership

       Sidestepping informality: the site-and-service approach to homeownership

       Transferring public housing to homeowners

       7 Global finance, big cities and unaffordable housing

       Introduction

       Commercialising the priorities of public housing authorities

       Middle-income poaching, downward raiding, regeneration and gentrification

       The subprime mortgage crisis and the 2008 financial crash: catastrophic feedback loops

       8 Broken cities: unaffordable housing as the norm?

       Introduction

       Policy responses: handouts for the middle classes and attacks on housing subsidies for the poorest

       Squaring the circle by squeezing the space

       9 Broken cities, broken households: the demographic impacts of unaffordable housing

       Introduction

       Squaring the circle by squeezing the right to family life