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The paper tries to compare the qualitative difference between professional and pragmatic design solutions in self-built houses. Self-built houses are defined here as permanently constructed houses in urban context, generally used as the primary shelter of the users belonging to middle income group, and most likely to be constructed under own informal management and own investment. The study starts with the question why pragmatic solutions seem to be more effective than professional decisions in self-built houses, even though state regulations try to engage architects in housing decisions. This study adopts ethnographic method to find the implicit reasons behind pragmatic decisions during initial as well as different stages of transformations in the houses, and suggests how professional decisions might become more effective when it is molded with the subjective values of users. It also suggests that knowing these values can be one basic way to bring architects closer to these users, and let architects play social as well as professional role in a field which has not been explored much by architectural practitioners throughout architectural history.

Many people living in and around Mumbai face space scarcity within homes, an issue exacerbated for families with members having differing and conflicting spatial requirements. By investigating how families live in existing residential environments, planners and designers can enable families to cope better with space scarcity.

A case study approach is used to examine four small home settings in and around Mumbai, followed by a thematic analysis of the data collected.

This study contributes a framework for studying small homes in and around Mumbai wherein they are characterized by five categories of information: internal zoning pattern, expansion pattern, spatial specialization and stratification pattern, outdoor space appropriation pattern and household adjustment pattern. Analysis through this framework gives insight into how small home settings are used by residents.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study offering in-depth comparative analysis of small home typologies in India.

Using two nationally representative samples from 1988 and 1995, this study demonstrates that housing quality in urban China differs across time, housing types, and socioeconomic variables. But some key variables such as Communist Party membership, education, and the total family income are consistent predictors of housing quality across time and housing types. This study indicates that housing quality situations are very complex at the national level. The author concludes that more research into the quality of urban housing is needed, so that the outcomes of housing reform can be better assessed.

The purpose of this paper is to present an extensive household survey amongst four rural communities on Mt. Elgon Kenya. The area is the chosen area for the author’s overall PhD research. In order to offer the inhabitants of Mt. Elgon suitable housing support, the purpose of this paper is to assess the gap between existing housing capacities and compare those to desired housing capacities.

The research combined a survey method with an interview setting. The survey helps the interviewer to structure and register given answers. The interview allows the inhabitant to ask questions or make suggestions.

The research finds that the two communities with financial restraints are unable to articulate improved housing (within their existing capacities) without external help. For the two communities with less financial restraints, the research finds that they struggle to maintain, extend or replicate housing solutions without external help.

The size (200 households), type (purpose, design and approach) and locality of the research are uncommon frameworks to understand inhabitants’ needs toward their built environment. The value, therefore, not only lies in the design of the evaluation framework, but also in the findings that indicate that this is a successful way to conduct this type of research in a vulnerable context. Hopefully providing other researchers in the built environment with an applicable framework.

This study explores the historical development of a deprived class in Messina, a Southern Italian city. By means of 85 in-depth interviews and the analysis of the most important phases of the reconstruction following a disastrous earthquake which took place in 1908, the authors investigate the forces that, over the course of a century, shaped the formation process of an “underclass” living in shanties and deprived project areas within the city. The authors’ hypothesis is that the “economy of disaster” and the “shock economy” are not a specific feature of the current period. On the contrary, the elements characterizing the contemporary disaster-related speculative processes were largely active at the very beginning of the past century. This chapter, then, explores the long-lasting social consequences of speculative approaches to the management of disasters, and reflects on the forms of resistance of subaltern populations to an organization of life that started in the aftermath of a remote earthquake, and still affects their living conditions and ways of reproduction.

The construction industry is widely recognized as one of the most hazardous sectors in the world. Despite extensive research on safety management, a critical issue remains that insufficient attention is devoted to safety practices in rural areas. Notably, accidents frequently occur during the construction of rural self-built houses (RSH) in China. Safety management tends to be overlooked due to the perceived simplicity of the construction process. Furthermore, it is essential to acknowledge that China currently lacks comprehensive laws and regulations governing safety management in RSH construction. This paper aims to analyze the behavior of key stakeholders (including households, workmen, rural village committee and the government) and propose recommendations to mitigate safety risks associated with RSH construction.

This paper applies evolutionary game theory to analyze the symbiotic evolution among households, workmen and rural village committee, in situations with or without government participation. Additionally, numerical simulation is utilized to examine the outcomes of various strategies implemented by the government.

Without government participation, households, workmen, and rural village committee tend to prioritize maximizing apparent benefits, often overlooking the potential safety risks. Numerical simulations reveal that while government involvement can guide these parties towards safer decisions, achieving the desired outcomes necessitates the adoption of reasonable and effective strategies. Thus, the government needs to offer targeted subsidies to these stakeholders.

Considering that during the construction phase, stakeholders are the main administrators accountable for safety management. However, there exists insufficient research examining the impact of stakeholder behavior on RSH construction safety. This study aims to analyze the behavior of stakeholders about how to reduce the safety risks in building RSH. Thus, the authors intend to contribute to knowledge in this area by establishing evolutionary game model. Firstly, this study carried out a theoretical by using tripartite evolutionary game to reveal the reasons for the high safety risk during building RSH. Practically, this research points out the important role of households, workmen and rural village committee in improving safety management in rural areas. Besides, some suggestions are proposed to the government about how to reduce construction safety risks in rural areas.

While a substantial amount of study of informal settlements has been undertaken, they remain largely unstudied in terms of urban form. In this analysis, the purpose of this paper is to set forth a conceptual framework, which considers the context in which informality takes place, the settlement itself, the houses contained therein, the dwellers of those houses and the process through which a settlement is designed and transformed over time.

This is a literature review.

This framework aims to be sufficiently flexible to be deployed across diverse national settings. Its formulation is important because informal settlements are a permanent fixture of the global urban landscape, and are increasing in scale.

Any sustainable strategies to improve informal settlements depend on a better understanding of their urban space, as well as of the producers of this space – the residents themselves. Finally, professional designers may be able to learn from this contemporary urban vernacular grammar – perhaps the only one left in the era of sanitized, contrived and prosaic urban design.

By using an integrated theoretical analysis model and a practice analysis model, this study constructed an evaluation indicator system for public participation in post-disaster housing reconstruction.

This study investigated and summarised the public participation of earthquake victims in house building in Dujiangyan. A total of 16 analysis elements were proposed, including the subject and object for evaluation. A mixed qualitative and quantitative evaluation model was established.

The implementation results indicated that this evaluation index system was objective oriented and had public policy attributes. The index can effectively reflect the diverse needs of disaster victims, address multiple social aspects and evaluate and rate public participation.

This paper proposed a mixed research method that integrates analysis processes, such as theories and practical investigation, which are the pillars of public participation evaluation. The evaluation indicators had quantitative characteristics.

The purpose of this paper is to study the efforts of the 2003 Bam earthquake survivors and their strategy for coping with home loss. Regarding the key role of the sense of place within the recovery process following the disaster, this paper considers the characteristics of lost settings located in a desert area while searching for the factors that made an impact on householders' perception of newly built houses.

On the basis of the field survey, a group of 186 households were selected by the probability sampling method. Accordingly, the random selection of residents was organized within the three defined zones of the city that had experienced different degrees of building damages. Data were collected using a face‐to‐face communication approach with the target group of owners of self‐built houses.

The findings indicate that households tend to arrange the new settings on the basis of their perceptions of home place as well as the experience of loss during the quake. It also confirms that owners' participation in housing reconstruction process within setting arrangement has a significant positive impact on their attitude toward newly built homes.

Due to the widespread incidence of natural disasters and in the light of the key role of home place in the existence of human beings and their recovery process, the opportunity for local participation in new housing is highlighted as a means to overcome the challenges faced.

The purpose of this paper is to aim at exploring the relationship between community building and the changes occurred in the context of a post-disaster self-built ecovillage (EcoVillaggio Autocostruito (EVA)), spontaneously born after the L’Aquila earthquake in 2009. The community eventually dissolved in 2014, following a series of changes in the organization, that resulted in an increasingly centralized decision-making process, and in individual and community relationships, that were fueled by conflicts and contrasts.

Through a self-ethnography method, the paper provides the insider perspective of the lead author who was a part of EVA since the beginning. Self-ethnography allowed developing a narrative of EVA across its life course.

Findings reveal that the community into EVA was initially pursuing community-building goals through self-construction, sustainability, mutuality and reciprocity relationships out of market. However, several events occurred and changed community goals, organization and decision making. Eventually, individual goals and vertical decision making emerged among the community members, leading to the death of EVA.

The paper just considered those main events that marked the collective and individual life of the lead author since the beginning until the end of the ecovillage. Others events, equally important, were not considered due to word length. In addition, self-ethnography is still considered by some authors as a subjective method.

The paper is one of the few exploring community experiences into post-disaster ecovillages. Moreover, there are no papers investigating post-disaster ecovillages through a self-ethnography approach. Therefore, the paper offers an innovative and original perspective on the under-investigated topic of post-disaster ecovillages and employs a promising research method in disaster studies.