The research explores the role of women and tenant participation, considering: i) the gendered nature of tenant participation and ii) the role of tenant participation as a potential avenue of empowerment for women. The case study approach was adopted for this study and fieldwork was conducted in four contrasting local authorities, involving qualitative and quantitative methods to collect data from tenants, housing officers and councillors. The thesis begins by reviewing the role of housing policy under Conservative governments from 1979 to 1997. It identifies the ways in which Conservative policy led to the residualisation of the social housing sector and comments upon the impact of policy on tenants, particularly female tenants, in this tenure. It examines the growth of participation initiatives encouraged by Conservative governments during this period. The study moves on to locate female tenant participation within wider theoretical and political contexts. It addresses the role of housing in women's lives, considering the different value of the home for women and men, and examines the position of women in the public and private spheres in the wider context of citizenship. The concept of participation in relation to the policy-making process is considered, with an analysis of the power dimensions that exist between the various actors involved and the gendered nature of tenant participation. Having demonstrated that differences exist between female and male participation, the study investigates the differences in greater detail, examining how women participate, and establishing criteria for empowerment. The evidence from the fieldwork suggests that tenant participation is indeed a gendered process and, moreover, has the capacity to empower women at several different levels.

This PhD thesis looks at how UK Government policies to deliver more affordable housing in rural areas are being implemented – whether the policies are succeeding, and the social and micro-spatial effects of the policies. The thesis reviews literature which identifies that there is a particular problem with housing affordability in rural areas, and that since the introduction of national planning advice designed to increase affordable housing provision in 1991, delivery in rural England has been consistently and significantly less than the established need. Based on data from five case study local authorities in different regions of England, the thesis concludes that the shortfall in affordable housing provision is not just a technical problem with policy implementation, but in part due to the exercise of three dimensions of power by rural elites interested in the “containment of urban England”. Those rural elites exercise power as follows: 1) The first dimension of power: focusing on decision making, this strand of the thesis argues that decisions made with regard to planning for housing reflect the locus of power in the decision-making process, and that power lies with urban local authorities and anti-development rural elites. 2) The second dimension of power: focusing on non-decision making, this strand argues that the way that planning policy is made facilitates its domination by those urban and anti-development interests, at both the regional and local level. 3) The third dimension of power: focusing on how power is exercised by the shaping of needs/desires by the powerful, this strand of the thesis uses theories of social constructionism and discourse analysis to question whether the failures identified in strands 1) and 2) arise because society as a whole, and the planning system specifically, does not recognise at an ideological level that it is failing.

This thesis investigates the knowledge and governance practices that surround the way government has pursued sustainable communities by trying to balance housing markets in supposedly low demand areas. The government‘s housing market renewal initiative has been characterised by fifteen-year masterplans proposing a mix of housing redevelopment and refurbishment to attract higher income households. Academic research has been drawn upon to argue that this approach is evidence based. However, opponents of the approach dispute the dominant vision of progress, fearing a loss of heritage, home and community. The thesis shows how the housing market research which has justified and directed renewal was informed by previous attempts at slum clearance, and by the centralisation and marketisation of housing policy. The investigation disputes the objectivity of that research, highlighting instead its use to uphold a discursive technology, or black box, which joined up the interests of housing and local government institutions with central government decision making arenas. The co-ordinating qualities of this black box were initially pivotal to securing funding for deprived, depopulated and hard-to-manage areas. However, as renewal schemes progressed, the black box cultivated an increasingly rigid and opaque approach to decision making. This approach satisfied a demand for co-ordination within a distinctive governance regime, which is referred to as a part-linear, part-network regime. The linear component of this regime is made up of central government technologies of control, based on universal ideas of how cities work and linear, statistical attempts at measurement. The network element is made up of alliances of regional, sub-regional and local actors from the public, private and third sectors. Central government seeks to use the part-linear, part-network regime to maintain control, while allowing sub-regional and local actors enough flexibility to co-ordinate the interests of a fragmented local state spanning public and private sectors. The dynamics of the regime have encouraged the development of guarded alliances between organisations working together to pursue public and private funding in a period of macro-economic housing market boom. This has crowded out less well connected interests and narratives, even when these have had an informed and coherent epistemological basis. The subjugation of these arguments runs counter to knowledge-based policy making, which requires earnest consideration of the way issues are understood by different actors. For these conceptual reasons, housing market analysis approaches to policy making risk being ineffective and socially unjust.The thesis uses an exploration of housing market renewal schemes, principally in Liverpool, Merseyside and Whitefield in Lancashire, to test the conceptual argument above. It illustrates the importance of institutional cultures and local networks of opposition to the way that the housing market renewal black box has been imposed. The local state in Liverpool is highly co-ordinated and well connected. Multiple pots of funding are located within a meta-partnership regime, which employs black boxed housing market narratives to demonstrate joined up policy. Despite vociferous opposition, and successful legal challenges, this strong form of organisation has driven through centrally prescribed proposals for the redevelopment of part of the Kensington neighbourhood. The level of organisation in Liverpool contrasts with the less well co-ordinated and less well funded environment in Whitefield. Expert-led proposals for clearance of the Whitefield neighbourhood were challenged at a public inquiry and compromise was negotiated through an enquiry-by-design. Even so, highly organised objectors were unable to break open the housing market renewal black box and therefore could not generate discussion around the viability of alternative problem framings and responses. The cases highlight a conflict between the need for mechanisms of long distance persuasion and control to distribute central funding to shrinking cities, and the capacity to exploit local knowledge and opportunities when designing responses. In both of the cases above, the end of a boom period in the housing market adds a new layer of complexity to the disputes. Schemes are at risk of being undermined by the recession and solutions are needed if a legacy of neighbourhood blight is to be avoided. The thesis concludes with a personal suggestion that more equitable and effective approaches to renewal require deliberation around less capital intensive responses to creating local employment and tackling neighbourhood blight.

The key findings include, firstly, the fact that housing provision in Malaysia shows no sign of convergence with the Western neo-liberal model. The state continues to control and regulate the market in low cost housing allocation through ORS. Secondly, although low cost housing production shows trends of commodification since the early 1990s, the allocation process remains the sole responsibility of the state and is highly decommodified. Thirdly, most low cost housing buyers prefer the market to manage the allocation for private low cost housing. Finally, ORS implementation shows the state is dominant in housing provision in Malaysia, which is synonymous with the developmental state approach.

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This study presents the argument that if housing provision should be orientated towards long-term goals and solutions, then housing policy must consider surely the cultural requirements of the people in the community. Cultural dimension as it relates to the study focuses on urban housing as a strategic vehicle for exploring the evolution of the housing crisis by concentrating on real people and their approaches to informal processes within the community. The study views the informal processes of the people as part of the solution and not the problem by drawing from their lived experience and offering a culturally-informed framework for the development of future housing policy. It suggests that the government must view the informal settlement not as a slum, but as a “case” to understand the intricacies and complexities in housing provision and delivery. Thus the cultural dimension derived from the colloquial knowledge of the people is demonstrated as an important element in the maintenance and continuity of an existing community by doing an in-depth investigation of the internal survival strategies relating to urban living and the government’s role in the existing housing crisis. The study expands to issues surrounding the sustainability of the built environment by examining the cultural, economic, environmental and its social aspects in developing countries and challenging the existing practices in the built environment, as regards to urban housing. This is an empirical study, which has a qualitative perspective that is cross-disciplinary, connecting social theory with architecture and the built environment. In order to understand the lived experience of the Ajegunle residents from their human efforts relating to urban housing crisis, an “African phenomenology” is formulated. While the phenomenological part is used as both the method (practice) and guiding philosophy driving the study, African philosophy, within African phenomenology, enables the study to describe real solutions and applications which are grounded in the African way of life. Thus the urban housing crisis question in developing countries is addressed using Ajegunle, Lagos, Nigeria, as a case study. The doing of the study involves collecting qualitative data through an intrinsic case study using field notes, interviews, observation and photography, comprising of an inductive analysis, whereby themes are generated from the patterns identified in the case study. Through the analysis, the internal survival strategy, referred to as “cultural technology”, which is part of people’s everyday life and designed to deal with the housing crisis is explored. This separates the social conditions in Ajegunle from a generic understanding of a slum and provides the theoretical underpinnings for the importance and the role of the human element within the approaches developed as a response to the existing urban housing situation. The primary contribution to knowledge is the cultural dimension to housing. The study provides a culturally-informed framework as a basis for decision-making phase for the formulation of housing policies, a platform for urban development and future research. It does not propose an architectural response in terms of design. The existing studies that relate to the housing crisis appear to be mainly quantitative and do not take into consideration the cultural position of the people. In contrast, the cultural dimension to the existing housing crisis in the study allows for the development of a more informed housing policy which can address the housing issues and further make solutions more plausible. Therefore, this study’s contribution has application to governments and professionals in the built environment. A secondary contribution to knowledge is made through the development of an “African phenomenology”. This introduces to academia the “cultural technologies” which are the survival strategies of the population in the case study. The African phenomenology has application beyond the current study as a methodological approach which incorporates the culture of a population into the process of research on the African society.

Area-based approaches are increasingly deployed as a means of delivering fuel poverty programmes as they are thought to target fuel poor households more efficiently than traditional, 'untargeted' approaches. This thesis compares the efficacy of targeted and untargeted approaches in the context of government-funded, residential energy efficiency programmes in Northern Ireland, drawing on applied spatial analysis and geographic information systems (GIS) techniques. A high-resolution, multi-dimensional fuel poverty indicator is developed to identify areas of severe fuel poverty. This indicator is used to assess the targeting efficiency of past affordable warmth policies, and tested using empirical data (household surveys) in order to compare the efficiency of area-based targeting and a traditional untargeted approach. The results indicate that fuel poverty is not effectively tackled under traditional policy approaches. Many fuel poor households do not qualify for improvement measures, and the solutions delivered do not sufficiently address the scale of the problem. Empirical analysis of survey data indicates high rates of fuel poverty (90%) in areas predicted to have issues of severe fuel poverty. Targeting affordable warmth projects using a proactive, area-based approach may therefore yield improved outcomes. Further research is needed to determine the feasibility of delivering effective, whole-house solutions using an area-based model. Fuel poverty levels, and the type of solutions required, are also affected by the broader landscape of fuel provision systems, e.g. location on or off the gas network. The GIS indicator emerges as a valid decision support tool which could be more widely applied within affordable warmth policy-making, although some feasibility studies are recommended. Taken together, this thesis highlights the potential of revitalized, proactive and systematic affordable warmth policies as a means of developing effective and sustainable solutions to complex energy disparities in the residential sector.

This study sets out to investigate the transformation of house types in relation to changes of urban built forms. From the title it is clear that this study includes two major arguments. One concerns housing transformation where the focal point is change. The other is typo-morphology, which concerns the approach of the study to that change and the issues of type, typology and morphology. The study looks at long term processes of change in housing types in Tehran in chronological order to see how new house types are introduced or designed and built and how traditional types have been transformed to become modern: why, how and by what means they evolve and adapt to new needs and different circumstances. It addresses the transformation of house types, as one dominant type of dwelling replaces another. Of course there are cultural factors at work here, and the influences of architectural fashion. But there are also questions of increases in density, rising land prices, the impact of growing car ownership, planning policy and legislation. Ultimately this study tries to answer a core question: Was there something necessary about the evolutionary process of housing in Tehran or given the present block sizes in Tehran, could there be anything different from the current norms for built forms? Using morphological analysis, more specifically plan analysis, the relationship between type of house and built form of the fabric is explored and examined. The analysis is carried out at residential level and at the scale of buildings, plots and blocks. The emphasis is on the built forms and external envelopes of houses, more than the details of internal planning. The particular focus of this study is the relationship of plot size and shape with house type and the various ways of aggregating plots to create different urban built forms. The analysis is focused therefore on questions of plot size and shape; pedestrian and vehicular access; natural lighting; and the provision of open space around dwellings. The relationship between type of house and built form is explored and examined using morphological analysis and by reference to the ‘archetypal building’ proposed by Steadman (2001). The sample areas are selected from three boroughs of Tehran corresponding to important periods in its morphological transformation. The analysis tries to bridge between three main themes shaping three chapters: planning, geography and architecture (typo-morphology). Three phases of analysis are conducted at different scales. The first phase is the impact of planning and legislation. The second phase is the analysis of plot size and built form, first at the macro-scale of the three selected representative boroughs and then in smaller areas within those boroughs for a more micro-scale analysis. The third phase is the abstract analysis, which is the enumeration of geometrical/configurational possibilities by sketching out the theoretical possibilities that plots could have. There then follows a comparison of these with the actual plans observed in different areas. The study seeks to provide data and develop an understanding of the influences of plot shape and dimension in different parts of the city. It helps to understand the patterns of distribution of different plots and house types in different periods of the city’s expansion. Finally, comparing and synthesizing the results of analyses indicates other actual examples and scenarios that could have happened, thereby showing how houses in Tehran could have changed differently in other directions, and the fact that that is still a possibility.