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This paper aims to examine landlords’ health support systems to tenants to control COVID-19 in selected informal settlement rental housing (ISRH) in Ghana, dwelling on landlords’ views.

The paper used the concurrent imbedded mixed-methods approach and grounded the findings in the socio-ecological theory. The authors collected both qualitative and quantitative data from 242 landlords in 13 informal settlements across Ghana using quotas. The authors undertook semi-structured face-to-face and telephone interviews. The authors conducted content and thematic qualitative data analysis and used simple descriptive statistical data analysis.

The paper discovered that tenants had limited knowledge on the transmission of the pandemic, forcing landlords to regulate their building services usage, ventilation and thermal control, entertainment, common areas and rent advancement for tenants to control the pandemic. Also, tenants found it difficult to comply with the rules on ventilation for fear of criminal attacks, while high social connection and interaction among renters and inadequate enforcement caused the non-adherence by renters to social gathering. Again, landlords had difficulty in contract-tracing visitors suspected to be infected with the virus.

The use of concurrent and imbedded mixed methods to investigate landlords’ viewpoints on their support in health needs of their tenants to regulate COVID-19. The prescriptions from the study provide practical applications to formulate a mix of housing and health policies to formalize the support of landlords to their tenants in ISRH in Ghana.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the roles of landlords in tenant management during COVID-19 pandemic season among informal settlement neighbourhoods in urban Ghana.

This study used a mixed methods research approach and foregrounds the discussions of the results with the social roles theory. Using the quota sampling procedure, this study used 467 semi-structured interviews of tenants from five old informal settlement neighbourhoods in urban Ghana. This study adopted the thematic analytical technique in the results section.

This study uncovered that landlords perform a gate-keeping social relationship role in ensuring tenant safety during the COVID-19 pandemic season through the provision of security, care and support, discipline, hard work, morale building to accountability. However, this study found that most landlords do not provide tenancy agreements to tenants which strained some social relationships in tenant management.

The application of social roles theory in this study provides a cutting-edge approach to the study of welfare of tenants living in informal settlement housing units during periods of pandemic. This study practically provides a participatory approach to analysing and discussing the roles of landlords in tenant management and proffering solutions for formalisation of these roles in housing policies in Ghana.

This paper aims to offer Sitio San Roque, an informal settlement in the Philippines as a case study to explore long-term "forgetful" urban development planning in the Philippines, and the renewed visibility of the urban poor under COVID-19 lockdown. It connects scholarship on informality to issues of housing and political rights in Metro Manila to further investigate how vulnerable communities in the Global South are faring in the pandemic.

This is an exploration of Sitio San Roque, an informal settler community in Metropolitan "Metro" Manila, Philippines. This paper refers to recent journalistic reports pertaining to the community's ongoing evictions and arrests while under Metro Manila's "enhanced community quarantine." Furthermore, it converses with literature from disciplines including health-care policy, urban studies and recent studies on COVID-19 and vulnerable communities to critically discuss the plight of the urban poor in the pandemic-stricken Metro Manila.

The urban poor and members of informal communities such as Sitio San Roque are especially vulnerable to contracting COVID-19 because of precarious livelihoods and housing instability. The creation of informality in Metro Manila can be traced to political tensions, economic agendas and development planning since the time of Marcos' administration and also to global restructuring during the 1990s. However, also important to note is that under Metro Manila's lockdown, informal settlers are further disenfranchised and stigmatized via ongoing demolitions and evictions, as well as by processes of policing and criminalization by the state. The use of military and police personnel as a way to enforce lockdown in the metropolis further impedes on the rights of informal settlers and the urban poor.

Recent scholarship and reports discuss the challenges for informal communities and the urban poor in navigating the COVID-19 pandemic, mainly due to their housing conditions and loss of economic stability. This paper contributes to a critical understanding of these issues by adding the dimensions of political and housing rights. It refers to the case study of members of Sitio San Roque, who have experienced continuous threats of demolitions and arrests by state police for protesting the lack of government aid under lockdown. Both military approaches of governance and housing informality work in tandem to expose the vulnerabilities of the urban poor in Metro Manila's pandemic. Finally, this paper extends on urban studies scholar Gavin Shatkin's concept of “forgetful planning” (2004) by applying his discussions to the current context. Informal settlers have long been “forgotten” by the state's development plans, but are now remembered and deemed more visible in Metro Manila's ECQ.

Informal settlements are consistent areas in Latin America which exhibit distinctive urban and social dynamics. However, despite their size and impact, these settlements have been traditionally overlooked in terms of the contribution that they make to the city and to any place branding strategy. These areas are commonly seen as having nothing more to offer than poverty and constraint. However, literature and research shows their possibilities beyond those traditional limits, and arguably they can actively contribute to branding cities in Latin America. The purpose of this paper is to critically explore the contribution that informal settlements can make to a fairer, more real and authentic branding of cities.

The discussion is based on two ongoing research projects, one in urban planning and the other one in business, together with a first‐hand knowledge and engagement with informal settlements in Bogotá.

Informal settlements can contribute positively to branding cities. Trying to “hide” these areas from visitors' views is not only impossible because of their size, but also not desirable because of how they can enrich a branding strategy. However, there are also major downsides which need to be taken into consideration.

The value resides in the attempt to link two themes that traditionally have been nearly opposite (informal settlements and branding cities), and the elaboration on the outcome of this relationship.

This paper aims to highlight the localised shelter solutions to fulfil adequate and disaster resilient housing needs of urban informal settlers of Honiara, the capital city of Solomon Islands, in a way that is sensitive to their unique challenges, values and aspirations, is gender- and disability-inclusive, and considers housing from the complete lifecycle of a disaster (pre-, during- and post-).

Qualitative data was gathered through empirical research through five community workshops at five hotspot settlements, two stakeholder workshops and a stakeholder interview. Semi-structured questions as well as photographs of housing and settlement were used for data collection. With an emphasis on self-recovery, the identified shelter needs were then matched with the roles and responsibilities of the Government to support a process of “assisted” self-preparedness and recovery.

The output of the research was the Solomon Islands Shelter Guide. This paper draws from the Guide to present some of the findings. One of the key findings was an emphasis on shelter self-preparedness and self-recovery. However, in order for them to do that, they needed a combination of assistance – technical knowledge, materials and financial support – which is tailored to their settlement’s specific needs and based on hazard damage assessment. While the Guide provides one form of the assistance (i.e. technical), this paper is a call for action from the Solomon Islands Government and shelter responders to fulfil the rest of the community needs for shelter adequacy.

The paper contributes to existing scholarship on shelter after disasters by adding “assisted” in front of self-recovery, in line with the limited access to resources by the most vulnerable to recover, despite housing being” a human right and definition of adequate housing (UN-Habitat, 2015, 2021), which includes freedom of choice, entitlements and meeting minimum adequacy criteria.

There are many implications of this research. Since the publication of the Shelter Guide, there is excitement among most humanitarian and development agencies, government authorities and the local communities in Honiara. The Guide forms the first step in contributing to identified needs and strengthening community capacities to self-build, self-recover or self-retrofit one’s house based on their own choice of materials, design, social and economic circumstance. However, it provides one of the three elements identified as needs by the communities, as i) technical guidance, and a kit-of parts for multi-hazard safe housing, ii) financial and economic assistance and iii) a political voice or being supported and heard by the government. The research team are working with the same five urban informal communities in 2022–2023 to develop and operationalise local disaster plans (in partnership with local non-government organisations), capacity-building activities and translation of the Shelter Guide into technical posters (for local builders) and graphic novel in local pidgin language, as part of the Climate Resilient Honiara project (funded by the United Nations framework convention on climate change (UNFCCC) Adaptation fund and administered by UN-Habitat). In the longer term it would be worth evaluating the practical implications of the Guide or to examine whether the proposed socio-technical and governance guidance will find roots in the local culture.

While the Guide adhered to internationally agreed concepts of self-recovery, incremental shelter and core space, it contributes to existing scholarship on shelter after disasters by adding “assisted” in front of self-recovery, in line with housing as a human right and adequate housing (UN-Habitat, 2015, 2021), including freedom of choice, entitlements and meet minimum adequacy criteria, all of which require materials and financial assistance by the relevant in-country authorities.

The purpose of this study is to inform policy and contribute to the existing literature on low-income housing.

In this study, a case study approach was adopted, and data were collected through secondary data collection that is literature survey and through empirical data collection by conducting face to face interviews and survey of key stakeholders, citizens, and government authorities, and in some cases supplemented by on site photography. The data collected from the field was analysed using quantitative and qualitative techniques. The questionnaires were coded for scientific analysis of data. The information was presented in a structured way that permits for in-depth analysis of the data.

In this study, many paradoxes were noted defying common sense, but nonetheless, they require a solution. It has been concluded that, while efforts to improve settlements and anticipate future ones are becoming more common, the desire for eradication persists in many towns in Botswana.

The major limitation of this study is that it was done during the period of COVID-19 induced movement restrictions. As a result, the preferred face to face interviews with key informants were not possible.

This research informed policy on low-income housing in Botswana. The Government of Botswana can use the findings of this study to formulate policies which help in alleviating challenges currently faced in practice when implementing low-income housing projects. The concept of low-income housing has been adopted by many developing countries including in Africa. As such, results of this study can also be applicable in other developing countries where they can be used as a starting point for evaluating the success of policies and the practice of low-income housing.

This work made original contribution to knowledge by putting the plight of housing the urban poor in Botswana will in perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the root causes of disaster vulnerability in Jakarta, to highlight the strategies and implications of official policies, and to consider alternatives for vulnerability mitigation. The February 2007 floods which struck Jakarta emphasized the extreme vulnerability of informal poor communities and the inefficiency of the disaster management policy set up by the Indonesian government.

Detailed field investigations were undertaken before, during and after the February 2007 flood event in several informal districts of Jakarta to collect secondary data and conduct interviews with the population and some stakeholders of the disaster management scene.

Human factors are dominant in explaining the magnitude of the 2007 flooding episode. Urbanization is partially responsible for the extent of the flooding by waterproofing the soils. Yet floods do not strike the inhabitants of formal and informal settlements in the same way. People from the poor illegal areas are the most affected. Their behaviour and coping strategies during the crisis are not due to a low perception of risk, but rather to some daily and non‐hazard‐related constraints which are not taken into account by the government.

To prevent increasing vulnerability among these communities, it is essential to refocus disaster management strategies on a daily pattern and to integrate them within a global development framework, to de‐marginalize them in terms of access to resources (public services, economic values), and to favoir empowerment.

It is imperative to focus on poverty reduction and to develop economic projects aimed at treating the causes of vulnerability.

As the Syrian civil war winds down, the massive reconstruction of the devastated cities has become a recurring subject of political and scientific discussions. A crucial question pervades all these debates: is the current legal framework adequate for confronting the reconstruction challenges in an effective way? With the purpose of understanding and informing the question, this study aims to analyze the most important legal instrument for the Syrian urban reconstruction, Law 10/2018.

A functional analysis of the legal text and of its effective implementation is provided. Following a doctrinal legal approach, internal inconsistencies are highlighted, as well as possible “legal gaps” that might allow and favor instances of disrespect of the rule of law and regulatory capture.

The main hypotheses discussed are, first, from a descriptive-analytical perspective, that the neoliberal trend in the Syrian political economy underpins the legal framework for the Syrian reconstruction. Second, from a design perspective, that, while offering a strong mechanism for disciplining the Syrian urban planning, Law 10/2018 does not warrant a scenario of respect of the rule of law and seems too easy prey for regulatory capture.

While the most recent and prominent legal instrument aimed to frame Syrian post-war reconstruction, Law 10/2018, has been subject to multiple policy analyzes and critiques, these have focused almost exclusively on its presumed warchitecture dimension, lacking contextual depth and, most worryingly, ignoring any kind of doctrinal legal analysis. Setting the Law 10/2018 in its legal context is something that has not been done yet, even if, according to their own ontology, legal provisions have to be understood within the context of the legal system they are inserted in. This paper delves into the subject, analyzing the legal text, its juridical context and the way it has been interpreted by the administrative decision-maker while looking at instances where the axiological goals constitutionally proclaimed and legally enshrined might be prevented by the very regulatory configuration.

The recent shift in the Philippine Government’s emphasis from response to a more proactive approach came with the recognition that different stakeholders play important roles in the governance of disaster risk. The purpose of this paper is to look beyond the question as to whether all stakeholders are involved in disaster risk management planning and examines the extent by which the narratives of risk of actors at the margins shape how risk is framed in municipal DRM planning in Antique, Philippines.

This paper is based on a field study carried out in San Jose de Buenavista, Antique Province, Philippines. Data were gathered through key informant interviews and focus group discussions as well as a review of archival records and documents.

The narratives of CSOs and communities, which revolve around livelihoods and community life are conspicuously absent from the plans whereas that of government actors occupy a central position in the risk discourse. The study highlights the power-saturated process of defining and addressing risk to disasters, where knowledge is intimately linked to power as some voices shape plans and policies, whereas, others are excluded because their knowledge is socially constructed as less reliable and therefore irrelevant.

There is a dearth of studies that examine disaster risk as social constructions in the context of planning in the Philippines and in other disaster-prone countries.

Poor living conditions in informal settlements may be attributed mostly, though not exclusively, to the lack of basic services. Informal settlements, which also go by the name of squatter camps, are volatile by nature. Even within relatively fixed settlement boundaries, change in urban fabric continually manifests through altering dwelling configurations. Deemed unstable and unsafe by formal criteria, these environments disclose schizophrenic characteristics: beyond the dirt, grime and smog, exist relatively functional societies capable of survival and self-regulation.

Public and private sector investment within informal settlements is restricted as a result of their illegal status. Inhabitants have no incentive to invest their own resources where they have no formal tenure over the land. Due to a rather backward approach to informality in South Africa, innovation in dealing with these settlements has been limited. Despite the fact that the rhetoric has sometimes changed from eradication to upgrading, little has been done with regards to alternative forms of settlement development that has relevance in terms of improving the lives of informal settlement dwellers.

With rising anger in poverty-stricken areas and on the peripheries of cities, what is needed is improved service delivery through immediate solutions. This article suggests a service delivery core, an architectural catalyst, rooted to the ‘energy’ of the public realm, stimulating growth of infrastructure networks. This catalyst core aims to instigate the amelioration of the surrounding environment.

The concept presented is that of a dynamic service core – universal in principle – while also being contextually-driven by responding to a specific environment and needs of a specific community. A generic architectural solution is thus presented to providing basic services and infrastructure within informal settlements, with focussed consideration for the unique situation of an informal settlement in Mamelodi, Tshwane (Pretoria), South Africa. It is important to realise that there is no final product, but rather an organic architecture that adapts in a process of continuous and progressive change.