Policy-based initiatives on promoting China's affordable housing: Challenges and opportunities

The construction industry's commitment to achieving carbon neutrality has underscored the urgency of promoting green and low-carbon sustainable affordable housing. However, the development process has encountered several challenges, including conflicts between the central and local governments arising from differences in value preferences,...

Inclusionary Housing: An Evaluation of a New Public Rental Housing Governance Instrument in China

Inclusionary housing (IH) is a regulatory instrument adopted by local governments in many countries to produce affordable housing by capturing resources created through the marketplace. In order to assess whether it is efficient, scholarly attention has been widely focused on its evaluation. However, there is a lack of studies evaluating IH from...

New Housing Concepts: Modular, Circular, Biobased, Reproducible, and Affordable

For a moment, it seemed that the architect had disappeared from the construction supply chain for sustainable and affordable housing provided by Dutch housing associations. Large contractors were making direct agreements with housing associations and wanted to scale up production with their housing factories. However, with the ‘So You Think You...

Reinterpreting Existenzminimum in Contemporary Affordable Housing Solutions

During the housing crisis of the 1920s, the German concept Existenzminimum (minimum dwelling) was developed and applied to the construction of public social housing. It was considered a design laboratory, where research, design, and experimentation would focus on a unique goal: create a space-efficient affordable housing typology, based on...

A Case Study on Technical and Social Aspects of Earth Houses in Rural India

With rapid industrialisation and the increase in popularity of concrete and brick constructions, a decline in earth houses has been observed especially in the rural areas of India. A survey was carried out in five regions of India to understand the technical and social factors favouring/limiting the construction and everyday use of earth houses....

A case study on technical and social aspects of earth houses in rural India

Earth houses are considered sustainable and affordable as compared to houses built with concrete or fired clay bricks. Moreover, it preserves the vernacular social and spatial traditions (cultural identity) of the community. With rapid industrialization and the increase in popularity of concrete and brick constructions, a decline in earth houses...

Pathways of Dutch and German Social Renting

The pathways that Dutch and German housing policies took in the past decades resulted in two different rental markets. The Dutch policies have delivered the largest social rental sector in the Western world, while Germany has produced one of the largest private rental sectors in Europe. The latter implies that officially no social rental sector...

The circular economy approach in a flexible housing project: A proposal for affordable housing solution in Malaysia

The demand for housing and affordable housing specifically will always become challenges for the government of the day. The solutions at the moment between conventional construction and IBS facing quality and costing problems respectively. In this article, it proposes the introduction of circular economy in a flexible housing project. To...