Housing production systems and technologies in developing countries: a review of the experiences and possible future trends/prospects

Chile's housing policy is widely regarded as a success. For almost a decade, new construction has been above the level required to provide houses for new families and replace obsolete structures. This raises hopes that within the next decade all families in Chile will occupy dwellings that comply with minimum quality and service standards. This is no small accomplishment for a country just entering the middle ground in the development scale. Moreover, the private sector is taking an increasingly active role in housing production and financing. This too is a significant achievement considering that in the 1970s most housing was built and financed by the government. Further, government assistance is effectively reaching the poor, and most public resources are benefiting low-income households. Confidence in the housing policy is high among the low-income population as expressed in their high level of participation in a housing savings program and by the absence of land invasions. These accomplishments are the result of a long maturation process in the Chilean housing sector. Fifty years of government policy have consolidated the legal, institutional, and entrepreneurial foundations of the current housing production and financing system. Several success factors can be identified: an integrated sector approach (which incorporates the housing needs of all income groups); an efficient subsidy system (the result of a long process of experimentation); and reforms of the general banking system and the social security system (which created strong institutions to intermediate the financial resources accumulated by pension funds and life insurance companies). Even with its accomplishments, Chile's housing sector still faces significant challenges. Improvements are needed to more effectively mobilize the resources devoted to housing. The lack of coordination between housing and urban development policies is becoming a major liability for both efficient housing production and equitable urban growth. Direct government involvement in house construction and home financing enforce uniformity in design and repayment schedules failing to fully meet the diversified demand of the target households and to fully mobilize the repayment capacity of beneficiaries. It is suggested that it may be time for housing policy to move beyond this basic approach introducing more flexibility through greater market participation in low-income housing.

The paper focuses on the recent transformation of the urban housing culture in South Korea through a geographical analysis of Seoulite apartment complexes (ap'at'ŭu tanji). The paper first analyses the changes in housing policy and the housing production system since the late 1970s, which have long been oriented mainly towards the middle and upper-middle classes. Not only have the lower-income classes been excluded from this new apartment culture, it also seems that the housing situation testifies to the partial failure of the so-called filtering process (in which the benefits of development are purported to spread through society from top to bottom). The paper then analyses the post-Asian crisis transformation of the housing environment in the city, where housing redevelopment projects are concentrated in highly speculative areas (Kangnam) and new forms of luxury condominium apartments (such as the Acroville complex) are appearing. At the same time, older apartment complexes are faced with more and more maintenance problems as well as with the constant pressure to reduce management fees. As in many world metropolises, emerging 'gated communities' and increasing social spatial segregations seem to characterise the housing culture and geography of Seoul today.

The housing production system in Japan

Housing production system in the Tokyo urban area

Urban growth is a major threat to biodiversity conservation at the global scale. Its impacts are expected to be especially detrimental when it sprawls into the landscape and reaches sites of high conservation value due to the species and ecosystems they host, such as protected areas. I analyzed the degree of urbanization (i.e., urban cover and growth rate) from 2006 to 2015 in protected sites in the Natura 2000 network, which, according to the Habitats and Birds Directives, harbor species and habitats of high conservation concern in Europe. I used data on the degree of land imperviousness from COPERNICUS to calculate and compare urban covers and growth rates inside and outside Natura 2000. I also analyzed the relationships of urban cover and growth rates with a set of characteristics of Natura sites. Urban cover inside Natura 2000 was 10 times lower than outside (0.4% vs. 4%) throughout the European Union. However, the rates of urban growth were slightly higher inside than outside Natura 2000 (4.8% vs. 3.9%), which indicates an incipient urban sprawl inside the network. In general, Natura sites affected most by urbanization were those surrounded by densely populated areas (i.e., urban clusters) that had a low number of species or habitats of conservation concern, albeit some member states had high urban cover or growth rate or both in protected sites with a large number of species or habitats of high conservation value. Small Natura sites had more urban cover than large sites, but urban growth rates were highest in large Natura sites. Natura 2000 is protected against urbanization to some extent, but there is room for improvement. Member states must enact stricter legal protection and control law enforcement to halt urban sprawl into protected areas under the greatest pressure from urban sprawl (i.e., close to urban clusters). Such actions are particularly needed in Natura sites with high urban cover and growth rates and areas where urbanization is affecting small Natura sites of high conservation value, which are especially vulnerable and concentrated in the Mediterranean region.

Focusing on the design of large-scale housing schemes, this doctoral dissertation examines the extent to which the architecture of dwelling was affected by the oil-led geopolitics of the Cold War, and influenced by the modernist logic of architectural design and urban planning in Iran’s period of high-modernisation (1945-1979), as Eskandar Mokhtari termed it. This study questions the influence of the country’s geopolitical position during the Cold War, and its impact on the architecture of dwelling. It shows how a series of experimental housing solutions, initiated by leading Iranian architects mostly educated in the West (Europe and North America) became a physical expression of both the state’s modernisation demands and people’s everyday needs. Finally, it illustrates how the design mechanisms employed by these architects enabled for a continual and constant change and transformation in their proposed housing schemes, and empowered the users of space to designate and establish a set of relations with their living environment. While this study could be seen as a contribution to the discourse of urban modernisation in Iran, mainly by focusing on the agency of the dweller in the transformation through time of public housing districts in the country, it also aims to address some current issues related to the design and production of public housing. It seems that in the process of housing development, architects and decision-makers with different backgrounds employ two distinct approaches that mostly cannot be resulted in a convergent solution. While this gap between visions and realities of public housing policies and designs might be seen as a universal as well as a common phenomenon, this issue resulted in many critiques on the development of public housing and built environments, in Iran. Iranian architects criticised the government for its top-down housing policies overemphasising the application of industrialised methods for the production of houses, but neglect the importance of people’s socio-cultural practices as well as vernacular patterns of inhabitation for housing design. On the contrary, decision-makers describe housing solutions provided by architects mostly as visionary and inefficient. Accordingly, investigating overlaps between these divergent approaches is of vital importance, as it would foster and promote a dialogue among multiple stakeholders involved in the process of housing development, and illustrate the roles that architects can perform therein. In Iran’s period of high-modernisation, the architecture of dwelling was widely seen as a place to fulfil the state’s ambitious goals of modernisation projects, and simultaneously to resist universalising tendencies. The Iranian Finance and Planning Organisation prepared five distinct Development Plans, where housing for middle and low-income families held a prominent place. Indeed, these Plans projected the national and international socio-political and economic condition of the time that resulted from rural-urban migrations and the demographic changes being seen in Iran. Accordingly, each Plan led to the construction of a series of large-scale housing projects in urban areas. Among these projects, Kuy-e Chaharsad-Dastgah (1946-50), Kuy-e Narmak (1951-58), Kuy-e Kan (1958-64), Kuy-e Ecbatana (1972-92), and Shushtar-Nou (1975-85) were designed and developed as experimental models by leading Iranian architects, to promote and foster a synthesis of Western living standards and Iran’s vernacular patterns of inhabitation. By investigating these models initiated in three different stages of modernisation in Iran, this dissertation, first, unfolds the processes that created/led to collaboration and negotiation among visions and realities of stakeholders (particularly architects and policy/decision-makers) involved in the production of houses and provision of housing solutions. Then, it shows how the mechanisms employed for the design of these housing schemes enabled for a continual and constant change and transformation. Finally, this study argues that each of these housing models is embedded with a form of inhabitable voids that could be seen and read as heterotopia, as Michel Foucault defined. In other words, incorporating some local archetypes into the design process of these projects implies and creates a certain type of place that the ‘other’ space would flourish. Accordingly, these heterotopic voids might include a creative potential/characteristic to be perceived as an omnipresent tool from the disciplinary toolbox of architecture that would cater for providing certain forms of relationships among people and with their living environment.

This article reviews Zimbabwe's public sector urban low‐income housing production system, in over one hundred years of urbanisation marked by changes in governments, political economies, ideologies and urban systems. By examining important features in organisation, construction, costing, finance and allocation, the study reveals that in essence. Zimbabwe's public sector housing production system has not changed significantly since the early years of urbanisation. The consistency and resilience of the more important features, both in the colonial and post‐colonial eras, overshadow what changes there have been.

Productivity improvement of manufactured housing (MH) production systems has been a great concern to manufacturers and production managers. Studies show that a typical manufactured housing plant fails to produce at desired capacity and production rate because of several shortcomings. The evaluation of the production system efficiency in the factory is essential for meeting the growing demand of customers with respect to design and size of the housing product. It is imperative to explore alternative layout designs that would be more efficient and productive. A decision support system (DSS) is proposed to assist the user in selecting an efficient layout design matching specified requirements and business constraints. The DSS framework covers interrelated factors of: (1) the market demand; (2) MH organization; (3) MH production process; and (4) MH production planning and facility design. Existing MH factories can utilize simulation and optimization components of the DSS in streamlining their activities and locating then solving potential bottlenecks. Additionally, the DSS can be used in selecting optimal production system layout for new plant design.

Apartment houses in Japan now face many serious problems. Japanese society is aging, resulting in 1 or 2 elderly people now living in houses built for larger households consisting of 3 or more people. This has distorted the structure of the population residing in apartments, so they do not function as district communities. To ensure the future effective utilization of our housing stock, we must tackle one fundamental challenge, namely developing methods of flexibly upgrading the existing housing stock to respond to change of the makeup of the population of regional societies and to changing life styles. Housing production and supply systems that enable residents to personally plan and decide specifications must be introduced to establish infill upgrading as an effectively functioning part of the future housing market.

Housing production and housing systems: a statistical analysis

The European Commission considers research infrastructures as key elements for the advancement of knowledge, structure the scientific community, facilitate open, interconnected, and data-driven science, and to attract young people to science. Through its Horizon 2020 framework program, the Commission funds research infrastructure projects that are composed of Transnational Access (TNA), Networking Activities (NA), and Joint Research Activities (JRA), each with a budget of approximately 1.5 million euros. PIGWEB is such a research infrastructure project that started on March 1st, 2021 with the aim to strengthen the pig research community by providing and facilitating access to research infrastructures, reinforce a culture of cooperation between the research community and industrial and societal stakeholders, and improve and integrate the services provided by the research infrastructures. The project gathers 16 partners from nine European countries. Transnational access is provided through 22 installations, allowing external parties to carry out their experiments in PIGWEB installations, funded by the project. The installations include various experimental pig housing facilities and production systems, slaughterhouses and associated equipment, respiration chambers, experimental feed mills, and laboratories to carry out studies on pig nutrition, metabolism, physiology, behavior, and emissions. Networking activities include the mapping of research infrastructure and the identification of future needs. It also focuses on best practices for protocols, standards, and ethics in experimental pig research and on ontologies and Open Data and Open Science. The use of animals in research is challenged by society, especially in Europe. However, most animal scientists are not at ease to communicate with society about their research. The project provided training to scientists to communicate more and better with societal stakeholders and to engage in a constructive dialogue. Joint research activities are carried out to identify and test non- and minimally invasive proxies of efficiency, health, stress, and environmental impact. New methods, tools, and technologies have been developed to measure traits that are difficult to measure, related to welfare, behavior, and body composition. The newly developed and available research methods are combined in a research toolbox and are being tested to carry out integrated phenotyping of pigs.

Much is discussed about the characteristics, efficiency, and externalities of indoor housing and pasture-based beef production systems, but little is known about how these features influence public attitudes towards beef production. This study aimed to explore Chilean citizens’ attitudes towards beef production systems and their underlying reasons. Citizens (n = 1,084) were recruited to participate in a survey and given information about one beef production system: indoor housing, continuous grazing or regenerative grazing. Participants had more favourable attitudes (from 1 = most negative attitudes to 5 = most positive attitudes) towards pasture-based systems (regenerative grazing = 2.94; continuous grazing = 2.83) than towards indoor housing (1.94), mainly due to concerns with animal welfare and environmental impacts. Productivity was not as important as the other sustainability aspects for participants as they were not willing to do that trade-off. Support for beef production may benefit if production systems adopt characteristics that are perceived by the public as positive for the environment and animal welfare.

Comparison of Japanese and American detached housing construction and production systems

Introduction Expanded rapidly in recent decades, cities and large towns have become. The spread of cities in developing countries is more acute. Meanwhile, the rapid growth of urbanization in the world, there is a balance in all areas but mainly in major cities and capitals (Nazarian, 2008, 151) Iran is not an exception in the last fifty years and more quickly to cities and urban population growth and increasing urbanization has Uneven growth of urban population growth and urbanization, and this is not just a result of natural population growth but also land reform, rural to urban migration, social change economicRevenue from oil and focus on policies that have an impact on the capital and provincial centers. Balanced or unbalanced urban growth can check them out a little (population) or the quality (importance of their role) with a formula down In groups 1, 2, 3, 4, and ... We classify the socalled urban hierarchy is known. Much less variation between urban classes in order to reduce their number is less Otherwise the urban hierarchy of regular and irregular urban hierarchy that reflects the urban poor and urban planning is ugly The causes of urban problems, including the problem of housing, land speculation, features of environmental pollution, unemployment and social and cultural issues and service problems ... Are Because of the impact of irregular urban hierarchy that takes In this paper the economic situation in the urban hierarchy effects on employment and economic structure of the province of Kermanshah turn And employment-related indicators, it is indicative of the economic quality(Citwan,2009:116). Many scholars and the development of economic science, the employment index measured by pulse rate, health or economic stagnation and misery can be considered In this view, unemployment, recession, inflation and poverty Article info Abstract Article history:

정부에서는 국가정책 아젠다인 '저탄소 녹색성장'을 실현시키기 위한 노력들을 전산업부문에 걸쳐 진행하고 있다. 건설산업 부문도 예외가 아니어서 에너지 및 온실가스 배출저감을 위한 기술개발이 활발히 이루어지고 있으며 특히, 건축물은 국가 총에너지소비의 20% 이상을 차지하고 있어 주거건물의 에너지 효율화 및 이산화탄소 배출량 저감은 국가적으로 시급한 과제라 할 수 있다. 또한 최근 사회적으로 이슈화되고 있는 주택전세난으로 서민들의 고통이 가중되고 있어, 시장수요에 능동적으로 신속하게 대응할 수 있는 주택생산시스템이 요구되고 있다. 이에 본 연구에서는 친환경적이고 시공 효율성을 극대화시킬 수 있는 시스템을 구축하기 위해 국내 유닛 모듈러 주택생산체계를 조사 분석하여 문제점을 찾아내고 이에 대한 개선안을 제시함으로써 유닛 모듈러 주택의 활성화 기반을 위한 제시하고자 한다. The government has made a lot of efforts to realize 'low-carbon green growth', one of the national policy agendas, throughout the whole industries. The construction sector is not an exception, and technological developments are active to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emission. In particular, buildings occupy more than 20% of the total national energy consumptions. Thus, it can be said that increasing energy efficiency of the residential buildings and reducing CO2 emission are the urgent national agenda. Moreover, as ordinary people find it more and more difficult to get a lease on housing, which has become an important social issue recently, a housing production system that can actively respond to market demands is in urgent need. To build an eco-friendly system that can maximize efficiency in construction, this study attempts to examine and analyze the modular housing production system in the county and to find its problems. By suggesting the ways to improve the system, it aims to prepare for the base to revitalize the unit modular housing production system.