Housing provision and improvement programmes for low income populations in the developing world. A review of approaches and their significance in the European context

The paper deals with the issue of affordable housing provision for low income populations in the developing countries and its significance in the European context. My goal is to discuss this topic through the analysis of different approaches to household provision and improvement with special focus on the involvement of communities in various upgrading procedures. Separate sections of the paper refer to the most important approaches developed in the 20th and 21st centuries. These include: site and service, slum upgrading, incremental housing and communityled upgrading which are analysed through the prism of several examples coming from various parts of the world. The discussion of the strategies formulated in the developing world is linked with the new approaches towards housing provision that are presently promoted or are spontaneously emerging in various cities of Central Europe. These include the issues of container-houses construction in Poland and the creation of informal settlements by Roma populations in Polish and Slovakian cities.