In Tunisia, (North Africa), housing is an issue on the State agenda, as are social inequalities. Both became important in 1990s Tunisia, with social divisions becoming marked as the economy opened up. The present dissertation aims to improve understanding of Tunisian social policy by posing the question of difference, representation and the discursive presence of policy. The study focuses on one aspect of housing provision for the disadvantaged. With respect to multi-occupancy in a downtown area, a coherent problem emerges in planning documents and the media, while other claims and interests disappear from the public domain. The present dissertation attempts to follow how this `disappearance' takes place. Drawing on sociolinguistics and critical discourse analysis, I examine the varying discourses and representations in circulation. The Oukala Project, the clearance of the unsafest multi-occupancy dwellings in the old city or medina of Tunis, depends on a specific construction of the relationship between State and society. I also pay attention to professional cultures and institutional context, crucial to what can be said and what must be left unsaid. A rupture between written word and lifeworld emerges, with the Oukala Project figuring as an ideal and effective solution to a deep rooted problem - within the limits of a neo-patriarchal discursive formation. The representation of issues - and hence their treatment - is thus closely tied to socially created limits placed upon expression and action. In Tunisia, the strongly differentiated linguistic resources available to social agents reinforce these boundaries - and the apparent hegemony of the State. But ultimately, the research also shows the discursive mask of State hegemony to be strongly challenged, by both professionals and the rehoused people. Neo-patriarchy limits expression in the public domain - but challenges can still be expressed through other channels within the system.

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This thesis is concerned with role-related differences in evaluation and their consequences. Many researchers assume that it is possible to evaluate objectively from a single perspective. An exploration of the literature concerning evaluation research and role theory however suggests that: 1. People differ in their evaluations of a given target. (e. g. Glass and Ellet, 1980; Weiss et al, 1973). 2. Differences in evaluation can occur with respect to: (i) the content of evaluations, as evidenced by the indicators of evaluation considered important, (e. g. Broady, 1968; Lynch, 1977). (ii) the level of evaluation (e. g. Wineman, 1982; Zimring and Reizenstein, 1980). 3. These differences are related in part to the roles which people occupy with respect to the target of evaluation (e. g. Sandahl, 1974). 4. Much evaluation literature distinguishes between two major types of roles, often referred to as provider roles and user roles. Two major differences between them are that: (i) providers are more likely to control the product of evaluation, and to make decisions affecting its nature and existence (e. g. Glass and Ellet, 1980; Knight and Campbell, 1980). (ii) users are likely to have more direct experience of the product, and to experience the consequences of providers' decisions (e. g. Weiss et al, 1973; Knight and Campbell, 1980). Exploration of literature concerned with the characteristics of different role-occupants (e. g. Deasy, 1974; Hershberger 1970) suggests that role-titles act as labels which summarize training and/or experiences of role-occupants. The research reported here used a specific context - a local authority housing system - in order to: (i) identify a network of providers and users with a common focus of evaluation. (ii) examine the relationship between role-related characteristics and the indicators of evaluation considered important by (a) housing providers and (b) housing users. (iii) compare the indicators of evaluation used by providers and users when evaluating the same target, and trace the consequences of the differences between them. Data was collected by means of open-ended interviews with housing providers and users. Content analysis and Smallest Space Analysis of this data provided information about the indicators of evaluation spontaneously identified by different role-occupants. This information was considered in the light of role-related characteristics clarified by multidimensional scalogram analysis. The existence of differences in content of evaluation for occupants of different roles was confirmed. A major difference was found to exist between providers' and users' evaluations of the same target of evaluation. Provider roles with respect to the target of evaluation were more varied than were user roles; and evaluations used by providers reflected their professional training and experiences. The evaluations of users were found to be related at a detailed level to the personal experiences and circumstances of users. The concepts of professional role and personal role are introduced to clarify these differences in evaluation. A model of evaluation is presented. The implications of these findings for evaluation research and for the experiences of users are considered. Evaluation researchers should not assume that evaluation from a single perspective is objective; and providers involved at all stages of the design and use of a product need to seek information about the indicators upon which users base their own evaluations.

In the last two decades, the housing system in Hong Kong has witnessed a slow but steady transition from a tenure dominated by public rental housing to one dominated by private home ownership. This was largely the result of a strong motivation to own property and a government policy promoting owner-occupation. However, the late 80's and the early 90's have seen one of the most speculative and buoyant housing markets of the world with house price inflation creating major problems of affordability for the middle classes. A sector of the middle class is seen as marginalized by the housing system. They have no access to public rental housing, few choices in private-renting and are unable to afford home ownership. Concomitant with this, the society also saw a significant sector within the middle class which made enormous capital gains through property transactions and home ownership, developing a life style closely associated with certain modern private housing estates. This thesis seeks to examine factors underlying this contrasting housing picture. Using the rational model as a point of departure, Part I of this thesis explains the limitations of rationality in coming to terms with the social genesis of home ownership. In particular, the constraints and possibilities of existing perspectives on home ownership are explored. As an additional dimension, the thesis suggests the adoption of a cultural perspective which emphasizes three important dimensions unique to the Hong Kong housing scene, that is, the history of housing and individual housing experiences, the Chinese family, and the contemporary middle class consumption culture. In addition, one of the key arguments introduced in this part is that a research methodology based on individual housing histories, one which seeks to unravel the deeply-embedded social relationships of housing, is more robust and fills an important gap in methodology and provides a more rounded discussion on the relationship between home ownership and social change. Part II of the thesis represents the empirical arm. In particular, evidence from case studies demonstrated that middle class home owners in Hong Kong generally suffer from extreme deprivation in housing in their upbringing, hence predisposing them to a keen search for housing improvements in later life. The emphasis of the Chinese family on family property and their strong attachment to mutual-aids has also created a system of intra-family banking to support home financing amongst family members. Absolute scarcity in housing as well as a burgeoning middle class home ownership culture has also enabled many middle class households to reap substantial capital gains throughout the 80's. However, evidence also suggested that such gains were highly fragmented, depending on the time of marketentry and the accessibility to housing finance. The conclusion of the thesis calls for a reexamination of the role of state amongst small, congested and high growth countries in promoting ownership and argues that extremities in geographical constraints could severely limit both the range of housing policy and the role of the state.

Not only is housing a major activity, in which the building industry plays a significant role in the life cycle of the housing stock, but today, society is becoming aware of its dependency on scarce resources particularly "energy constraints", rising construction costs and a growing dissatisfaction with housing standards. It was against this background that this study was carried out. This work :- (i) traces the growth of G.B.'s housing stock from 1800 to the present time and discusses briefly those historical and current influences which have shaped its condition, state and housing standards, (ii) ." . included an extensive field impression survey to identify how dwellings aged or decayed and failed and how long did a differing construction form survive. (iii) discusses the fiscal life in the public sector Which, may be taken as sixty years and questions how long a dwelling lasts. What constitutes unfitness, and housing standards are also briefly reviewed. (iv) examines, what causes a dwelling to fail; modes of failure, significance of failure patterns whether attributed to twilight areas, physical ageing, economic, functional or social obsolescence or technical failures or due to other shortcomings, e.g, in legislation, design, manufacture, tenure, construction form or maintainance standards. (v) considers the difficulties of differing decay rates, mismatch of component/material life to a dwelling life and their significance on survivorship are explored. Likewise the problem of an ageing housing stock and early failure of newer forms of construction are con- sidered with Government policy favouring rehabilitation in preference to clearance. (vi) highlights the significance of the dwelling stock state for the future and considers the mean stock age, replacement and clearance years with the implication of changing legislative and preference standards with a stock which cannot be replaced in one's life time. (vii) involved developing a methodology of both appraising the housing stock's physical status and setting up likely future levels of build and clearance to highlight the problem of mismatched clearance to replacement year ratios and the need to consider how will society (xii)

This study is concerned to explore the vulnerability of working-class housing in South Africa to ideological manipulation, be it of economic and/or political derivation. More descriptively, by delineating the ideological role of early forms of workers' housing in the development of capitalist South Africa, this two-part enquiry aims to reveal the instrumental potential of working-class housing in the spheres of labour control and social management, and to bring to the fore the manner in which ideology can operate through design. Two early innovations in the realm of working-class housing, the establishment of which dates back to the later nineteenth century and the birth of South Africa's first industrial community, form the focus in the opening study. Part I seeks to expound, by investigating the contrasting approach to the housing of black and white mineworkers at the Kimberley diamond fields, the true deliberations which lay behind the creation of the parallel institutions of the closed compound, on the one hand, and the garden suburb of Kenilworth on the other. The former is shown to have provided the mineowners with a directly coercive means of coming to terms with black migrant labour, and the latter to have furnished them with a means of surmounting, by 'acquiescence' rather than through the exercise of force, the growing power of white labour. Both innovations came to serve as practicable models in the spheres of labour control and social management to other large employers of labour in South Africa, such as the State Railways, and to urban management in general. Part II negotiates railway housing provision during the first half of this century against the backdrop of the 'poor white' crisis, a social dilemma of major proportions caused by pervasive rural impoverishment and the subsequent drift into the urban areas of unskilled and mostly illiterate Afrikaners. Poor white relief in time developed into a chief objective of Government, with the Railways forming the vanguard of its so-called 'civilised labour' policy after 1924 in giving preference to white workers over black in unskilled and skilled jobs regardless of the greater expense. The State Railways in due course became the largest single employer of Afrikaners in the urban areas. One result of the Railways' 'rehabilitative function' in easing the adjustment to the urban way of life of newly proletarianised Afrikaners will be shown to have been the portable railway model village. It will also be illustrated how it was to design, among other things, that the Railway Administration looked in an attempt to integrate its white employees into the social fabric of towns - the cultural strongholds of English-speaking whites - when the custom of housing railway families on the opposite side of the railway line to the town gave rise to the association thereof with 'living on the wrong side of the tracks'.

South Africa is plagued with a staggering housing backlog (estimated at approximately 2.1 million units at present) due, in part, to the poor planning principles advocated by the Apartheid regime. Concerted efforts were made by the newly elected government since 1994 to provide houses for the urban poor who were previously disadvantaged. As such, a subsidised housing scheme in South Africa was introduced as a method to provide adequate housing to citizens who could not afford to do so themselves. However, despite the construction of approximately 3 million dwellings over the past 19 years, the backlog today is larger than the initial backlog experienced in 1994. Two questions were therefore raised in this research: 1) Whether the current approach to subsidised housing provision is sustainable, given the socio-economic conditions present in South African cities and 2) Which planning principles could be applied with regards to subsidised housing in order to ensure the development of sustainable human settlements. In order to address these issues, research regarding sustainable human settlements, and the South African context in terms of housing provision, was done in the form of a literature review and empirical study. The literature reviewed shed light on (a) urban models, (b) the elements of sustainable human settlements, (c) policies and legislation relating to subsidised housing provision in South Africa and (d) the criticisms against the South African policies and the current method of subsidised housing provision in South Africa. Information gained during the literature review phase was used to compile a set of criteria by which housing provision for the urban poor could be evaluated. This evaluation took the form of an empirical study which consisted of structured questionnaires and interviews, and a comparative analysis of international and local pilot studies. The following subsidised housing projects were scrutinised to establish best practices that may be applied to the South African context: * Bairro Carioca and Taroni Condiminiums in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, * Haram City in October 6 City, Egypt, * Cosmo City, South Africa, * Community Residential Units in Potchefstroom, South Africa, and * Reconstruction and Development Program Units in Potchefstroom, South Africa. Through the critical evaluation of the above mentioned projects, it became clear that the typical South African method of subsidised housing provision, in which beneficiaries receive a loose standing dwelling house on a single erf, is in fact unsustainable, and that this approach is not facilitating the formation of sustainable human settlements. Alternative methods of housing delivery that can be implemented in the South African context were identified and led to the formulation of planning related recommendations in terms of sustainable subsidised housing provision, focussing on (1) increased densities, (2) improved location and (3) providing a range of household types. Mention was also made of non-planning related recommendations such as (4) alternative services delivery, (5) including different forms of tenure and (6) increasing financial responsibility. / MArt et Scien (Urban and Regional Planning), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

South Africa is plagued with a staggering housing backlog (estimated at approximately 2.1 million units at present) due, in part, to the poor planning principles advocated by the Apartheid regime. Concerted efforts were made by the newly elected government since 1994 to provide houses for the urban poor who were previously disadvantaged. As such, a subsidised housing scheme in South Africa was introduced as a method to provide adequate housing to citizens who could not afford to do so themselves. However, despite the construction of approximately 3 million dwellings over the past 19 years, the backlog today is larger than the initial backlog experienced in 1994. Two questions were therefore raised in this research: 1) Whether the current approach to subsidised housing provision is sustainable, given the socio-economic conditions present in South African cities and 2) Which planning principles could be applied with regards to subsidised housing in order to ensure the development of sustainable human settlements. In order to address these issues, research regarding sustainable human settlements, and the South African context in terms of housing provision, was done in the form of a literature review and empirical study. The literature reviewed shed light on (a) urban models, (b) the elements of sustainable human settlements, (c) policies and legislation relating to subsidised housing provision in South Africa and (d) the criticisms against the South African policies and the current method of subsidised housing provision in South Africa. Information gained during the literature review phase was used to compile a set of criteria by which housing provision for the urban poor could be evaluated. This evaluation took the form of an empirical study which consisted of structured questionnaires and interviews, and a comparative analysis of international and local pilot studies. The following subsidised housing projects were scrutinised to establish best practices that may be applied to the South African context: * Bairro Carioca and Taroni Condiminiums in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, * Haram City in October 6 City, Egypt, * Cosmo City, South Africa, * Community Residential Units in Potchefstroom, South Africa, and * Reconstruction and Development Program Units in Potchefstroom, South Africa. Through the critical evaluation of the above mentioned projects, it became clear that the typical South African method of subsidised housing provision, in which beneficiaries receive a loose standing dwelling house on a single erf, is in fact unsustainable, and that this approach is not facilitating the formation of sustainable human settlements. Alternative methods of housing delivery that can be implemented in the South African context were identified and led to the formulation of planning related recommendations in terms of sustainable subsidised housing provision, focussing on (1) increased densities, (2) improved location and (3) providing a range of household types. Mention was also made of non-planning related recommendations such as (4) alternative services delivery, (5) including different forms of tenure and (6) increasing financial responsibility. / MArt et Scien (Urban and Regional Planning), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

A presente dissertação tem como objetivo demonstrar como a ideologia da austeridade fiscal se converte em agenda institucional, em especial sua interface com a política habitacional. Para isto, foi utilizada como objeto de análise a PPPHabitacional do estado de São Paulo, a partir da qual tratou-se de compreender como a utilização desse instrumento jurídico implicou na transformação dos modos de provisão e estrutura administrativa do Estado, ao mesmo tempo em que demonstramos seus impactos na produção do espaço urbano. Entendida como parte de um projeto neoliberal, cujo objetivo é implantar uma racionalidade e um modelo de governança assentado em discursos, práticas e dispositivos que seguem o princípio universal da concorrência, a primeira PPP destinada à Habitação de Interesse Social do Brasil pretende inserir uma agenda para a política habitacional conforme orientações predicadas pelo Banco Mundial e por instituições market-oriented; isto é, combinar austeridade fiscal com a inserção da lógica dos mercados em áreas até então de responsabilidade exclusiva do Estado. Nesse processo, observamos o obscurecimento de questões sensíveis em relação às ações empreendidas anteriormente pelo Estado no âmbito da provisão habitacional. Fica clara também a naturalização de discursos de ineficiência ou incapacidade de atuação do Estado, e a consequente apresentação de uma solução \"inevitável\", por meio da inserção dos mercados na provisão de serviços públicos. A partir da análise dos empreendimentos construídos ou em construção, buscou-se compreender como a política se opera no território e como se desenham as novas relações sociais de produção do espaço, com vistas a identificar os limites e avanços da PPP Habitacional. / This work aims to present means in which the fiscal austerity ideology is converted into an institutional agenda, especially its interface with a housing policy. For this purpose, the Housing PPP of the State of São Paulo was analysed, and researched to realise how this legal instrument implied in the transformation of the modes of provision and administrative structure of the state, at the same time showing its impacts when producing urban space. Understood as part of a neoliberal project, in which the main goal is to establish a rationality and a model of governance based on discourses, practices and devices that fit the universal public of the competition, the 1st PPP destined to Social Interest Housing of Brazil aims to create an agenda towards better housing policies, according to orientation from the World Bank and market-oriented companies, i.e. join fiscal austerity with the law of the markets in areas of governance, that, until then, were the sole responsibility of the State. In this case, we were able to observe the omission of sensible matters related to previously implemented State actions when discussing housing provision, as well as the naturalization of inefficiency and inability discourses and the \"inevitable\" solution of inserting marketing cases in the public service provision. From the analysis of the built or under construction enterprises, it was sought to understand how politics operate in the territory, and how they design the new social technologies of space production with focus to an understanding the advancements and limits of PPP Housing.