Broken Cities: Inside the Global Housing Crisis

by Deborah Potts

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781786990549
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	05/01/2020
Edition description:	1
Pages:	462
Product dimensions:	5.22(w) x 8.61(h) x 0.87(d)

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).
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).

Table of Contents

List of figures, tables and boxes viii

Foreword x

1 The dilemma of affordable housing and big cities 1

Introduction 1

Five key premises 3

Housing processes across time and space: recognising the links 11

2 Mismatches between incomes and housing costs: a global condition 17

Introduction 17

Learning from southern Africa 20

Urban incomes and hard limits on housing expenditure 30

3 Affordable urban housing and the role of basic standards 42

Housing standards: the necessity of a double-edged sword 42

Informal housing and building standards 55

What standards are appropriate? 67

4 Private-sector urban housing provision: formal and informal 72

Formal-sector, large-scale, for-profit housing 73

Variations in owning versus renting in the private sector 87

Informal-market 'affordable' housing 91

5 Squaring the circle: social housing programmes and affordable rents 100

Introduction 100

Matching the gap between low incomes and market rents 103

6 Squaring the circle: affordable urban homeownership 138

Subsidising homeownership 138

'Recognising' informal and unplanned settlements: 'quiet encroachment' and homeownership 144

Sidestepping informality: the site-and-service approach to homeownership 150

Transferring public housing to homeowners 152

7 Global finance, big cities and unaffordable housing 159

Introduction 159

Commercialising the priorities of public housing authorities 162

Middle-income poaching, downward raiding, regeneration and gentrification 168

The subprime mortgage crisis and the 2008 financial crash: catastrophic feedback loops 183

8 Broken cities: unaffordable housing as the norm? 191

Introduction 191

Policy responses: handouts for the middle classes and attacks on housing subsidies for the poorest 196

Squaring the circle by squeezing the space 201

9 Broken cities, broken households: the demographic impacts of unaffordable housing 215

Introduction 215

Squaring the circle by squeezing the right to family life 216

10 Conclusion 244

Trends in global income, urban demography and ideologies: a perfect storm for housing affordability? 261

Appendix 1 Bloomberg Housing Affordability Index 269

Appendix 2 Total housing cost overburden rate among low-income households in OECD countries 275

Notes 278

Index 309

Editorial Reviews

This is a scholarly text, in terms of the depth of referencing and data analysis. But it is also a publication written for an interested non-expert audience, with multiple examples to illustrate the key points of the argument.” —Environment and Urbanization

“Captivating analysis of the global housing crisis. Based on extensive research on housing, Deborah Potts lays bare the paradoxes of the urban housing crisis – household incomes relative to housing costs.” —George Owusu, University of Ghana

“'An evidence-based, historically informed and incisive analytical voice on one of the crucial issues of twenty-first century urban life. The breadth of insight and scope is remarkable, demonstrating beyond any doubt the value of a comparative perspective on global urbanisation. Superbly well written, accessible and supported with carefully compiled and detailed data, this book is a gift to urban residents, urbanists, scholars, practitioners and politicians. Read it!” —Jennifer Robinson, University College London

From the Publisher