Full Description
From Britain's 'Generation Rent' to Hong Kong's notorious 'cage homes', societies around the world are facing a housing crisis of unprecedented proportions. The social consequences have been profound, with a lack of affordable housing resulting in overcrowding, homelessness, broken families and, in many countries, a sharp decline in fertility.
In Broken Cities, Deborah Potts offers a provocative new perspective on the global housing crisis arguing that the problem lies mainly with demand rather than supply. Potts shows how market-set rates of pay and incomes for vast numbers of households in the world's largest cities in the global South and North are simply too low to rent or buy any housing that is legal, planned and decent. As the influence of free market economics has increased, the situation has worsened. Potts argues that the crisis needs radical solutions.
With the world becoming increasingly urbanized, this book provides a timely and urgent account of one of the most pressing social challenges of the 21st century. Exploring the effects of the housing crisis across the global North and South, Broken Cities is a warning of the greater crises to come if these issues are not addressed.
Contents
Foreword
1. The Dilemma of Affordable Housing and Big Cities
2. Mismatches between Incomes and Housing Costs: A Global Condition
3. Affordable Urban Housing and the Role of Basic Standards
4. Private Sector Urban Housing Provision: Formal And Informal
5. Squaring the Circle: Social Housing Programmes and Affordable Rents
6. Squaring the Circle: Affordable Urban Homeownership
7. Global Finance, Big Cities and Unaffordable Housing
8. Broken Cities: Unaffordable Housing as the Norm?
9. Broken Cities, Broken Households: The Demographic Impacts of Unaffordable Housing
Conclusion
Appendix
