Lead author of the WRR housing paper, Robin King, presented the forthcoming paper at a workshop at MIT as the principal speaker on an all-female panel, “Redefining Housing Approaches: Housing Policies Reveal the Political Economy that Underlies Urban Planning.” The other speakers included Professor Cynthia Goytia of the Universidad Torcuato di Tella from Argentina and several speakers from MIT and other Boston-based organizations. The workshop was organized by participants in a program aimed at mid-level officials, and the moderator for the panel was a former official from the city of Sao Paulo. Robin’s presentation addressed three key challenges in the global south, and approaches to addressing them. The challenges are: 1) growth of under-served, substandard housing, often in informal settlements; 2) policy overemphasis on home ownership and inappropriate land policies; and 3) regulations pushing the poor out of the city. Approaches explored to address these challenges are: 1) participatory in situ upgrading of informal settlements rather than relocation, if there are no location-based risks; 2) support for rental markets to increase the stock of affordable, adequate, and secure housing; and 3) conversion of underutilized urban land to affordable, adequate, and secure housing via changes in regulations and innovative financial structures.

Robin King

Director of Knowledge Capture & Collaboration, WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities