The Limitations of Planned Land Development for Low-income Housing in Third World Cities

Abstract

The analysis of planning as an agency, in isolation from the politico-administrative, economic and social structures in which the process takes place, is particularly inappropriate in Third World cities with their grossly inadequate public and unevenly distributed private resources. Neither of the states examined here, embedded in an Islamic and a capitalist economy respectively, succeeded in including genuinely poor households in their schemes, even during periods of governments in command of resources and proclaiming that as their avowed intention. Despite the very different tenets of the societies examined, concern over the form of development, the mechanisms to achieve it and vested interests resulted in the exclusion of the poor.