Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1991. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 204-208) / Microfiche. / xii, 208 leaves, bound 29 cm

This dissertation is concerned with the implementation process for housing in Nigeria's new capital at Abuja. It explores the inability of the Nigerian government to provide affordable housing for all income groups in the new capital as was originally planned. Based on nominal income, no resident in the city can afford to pay market rents for the housing provided, and less than 15 per cent of wage earners in the civil service (not to mention irregular wage earners in the informal sector) can afford the least expensive houses provided if they were unsubsidized. The purpose of this study is both to elucidate factors contributing to policy performances and the imperfect correspondence between policy goals and outcomes in developing countries, and to raise basic policy issues pertaining to housing provision in the new capital. The main hypothesis tested is that of Van Meter and Van Horn (1975) who maintain that the outcome of public policy is ultimately determined by the disposition of implementing officials. While recognizing that the gap in the provision of housing in the new capital can be related to a host of factors including financial constraints in the face of apparently unlimited demand, the argument is developed that the disjunction is due primarily to the disposition of policy officials in Abuja, which has been to build a high-class, western-type administrative capital. Premised on this belief, the dissertation then argues that policy officials perceive medium- and high-cost housing to be more germane to the image of the new capital than low-cost dwellings affordable by the low-income population. Consequently, tastes and preferences in housing were in favor of the sophisticated western type of house design, material and layout, which meant that housing delivery strategies in the city were not based on the nature of the local demand and available resources. To look for evidence in support of this hypothesis, the dissertation first determines the disposition of officials towards the Abuja project. The findings leave no doubt that Abuja was not to be just a western inspired alternative to the former capital of Lagos, but rather a visionary sort rescue from the latter's intractable problems. It then relates this disposition to the current housing situation in the city, through effects on the planning/implementation process. The conclusion to emerge is that the disposition of policy officials greatly influences implementation outcome regardless of planning intentions, and that the wider framework proposed by Van Meter and Van Horn (1975) is an effective way of focusing research on factors that impinge on policy performance. A related conclusion is that the essentially western model of implementation proposed by Van Meter and Van Horn applies with equal, if not more, validity to the developing world where past explanations for the problems of implementation have tended to focus on such variables as: (1) financial resources; (2) administrative and technical know-how; (3) imported theories and technologies; and (4) indigenous regime or political characteristics. However, the unique politico-administrative context of policy remains a crucial factor. In light of the fact that the key to improved affordability is not sophistication, and that the goal of providing low-cost housing in the new capital would ultimately require non-western standards and styles of delivery, the chief pragmatic implication of the study is that a dispositional change to encourage a more "Nigerian" city is a precondition for a successful housing strategy in the new capital. This means discarding the current imported development practices in the city and replacing them with a more functional orientation based on the nature of the local demand for dwellings. A more "Nigerian" city is one in which the majority of housing and related services are accessible by the average citizen, whether in the civil service or not. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

Thesis. 1976. M.C.P.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning. / Microfiche copy available in Archives and Rotch. / Bibliography: leaves 157-162. / M.C.P.

Paradigms of housing policies in developing countries have undergone significant changes since the 1940s in the post-colonial era. The involvement of international development agencies such as the World Bank and the United Nations with their substantial financial and technical resources have engendered a conventional narrative of the hegemony of paradigms sponsored by these agencies. It is in this light that the “enabling principles” of housing policy emerged as the dominant policy discourse from the 1980s. This housing paradigm -“enabling shelter policies” –was actively promoted by the World Bank and the United Nations, acting through its housing agency the UN-Habitat, for adoption by developing countries to reform their housing sectors from the 1980s. One of the main instruments of the enabling principles was the withdrawal or contraction of the state from direct housing development in preference for private sector-led and community initiatives in housing development. Government involvement in direct development of housing was conceived to be an ineffective policy choice which had little geographic impact and therefore had to give way to a systematised approach to housing delivery. Ghana was one of the first African countries to adopt these principles for the reform of the housing sector in the country. Two decades later, it has been observed that the government was making housing policy choices that contradicted the ethos of the enabling principles. In particular it was observed that the state was re-engaging in direct housing development. In the light of the past conception of these activities as being defective policies, their re-emergence was characteristic of policy “reversionism”. This concept of policy reversionism is adopted from theories of theology and criminal justice (where it is known as recidivism) in which processes of reform or progression are reversed. The question explored by the thesis is why housing policy reversionism was emerging and what were the generating factors. The thesis draws on a critical realist perspective to deconstruct the conventional narratives about the homogenous state and the hegemony of international agencies such as the World Bank and the UN in the advancement of “unproblematic” enabling principles through which the housing sector reforms were designed and implemented. In doing so the thesis established the heterogeneity of the state driven by competition for domination by sectoral, intra-state as well as supra-state interests. In this process, hegemony becomes vulnerable to manipulation as these principles were translated or “indigenised”. Furthermore it is established that this nuanced perspective is further complicated by a dialectical relationship between the contexts of events and prevailing material conditions and the actions taken by policy agents. These complexities layered the housing policy sphere in ways that masked the primary motivations of class interests and political legitimisation underpinning the incidence of reversionism.

The purpose of this study was to document seven selected sets of minimum housing design standards in two specific case locations, New Delhi and Madras, in India, and to evaluate criteria used for establishing these standards. A model of selected criteria from the different frameworks was then developed as part of an overall housing strategy. An integrated concept of housing as an environment, need, process and product was used as the basis of this study which was documented through review of literature and field research in India. The minimum standards were broadly classified as minimum space requirements, recommended building materials and general subdivision requirements. variations and ranges across the sets of standards were then tabulated to indicate the multiplicity of recommendati0ns, an initial premise of this study. Implications, based on broad premises, for future strategies in this field were developed. These suggestions were grouped into three clusters, namely, access to shelter by the abjectly poor, access to shelter by the low income groups in general and the restructuring of extant institutional and implementation frameworks. / Master of Science