Prime
Quality housing key in urban planning
Philly Masereka
What you need to know:
- As in most developing economies, housing is a major and often the largest item in personal expenditure. Despite being an essential element, the condition and quality of housing are of significant importance in understanding the sustainability and adequacy status of a household most especially in urban areas.
The Ugandan government has put so much emphasis on the housing sector. Despite the condition of rural housing being far from satisfactory, the problem is worse in the urban centres.
So many factors justify this, including the very much accelerated rate of urbanisation elicited primarily by rural migration and secondarily by the natural increase within the urban centres themselves, poor facilities within the existing housing stock, failure to renew dilapidated structures as well as poor environmental conditions and inadequate supply of new housing units.
Even though urban housing has numerous advantages, it presents a challenge to several developing urban centres in Uganda.
As in most developing economies, housing is a major and often the largest item in personal expenditure. Despite being an essential element, the condition and quality of housing are of significant importance in understanding the sustainability and adequacy status of a household most especially in urban areas.
The issue of housing quality still remains something crucial, especially where different populations and social classes coexist. Housing provided by both the state and the private sector must incorporate amenities and services that make them fit for human habitation.
Given the low-income status of the majority wanting to live in urban areas, there is a high demand for low-cost housing which has resulted in the development of haphazard residential developments to match both the demand and the income status.
Most of the land in Ugandan urban centres is developed with informal settlements compared to planned settlements and this is justified by the hypothesis that 30 percent of the developments in urban centres in the country are formal while the rest can be referred to as informal.
Housing provides a necessary foundation for physical and social life. It provides shelter, security, recreation, and wealth and thus plays a central role in the health and well-being of its occupants and also supports their employment and educational endeavors. With this high value attributed to its importance, housing needs to be of certain set standards to meet the values and purpose it serves. For any system to work as expected there is always a need for control and balance informed by regulation.
These regulations are intended to provide the strategic framework and policy context for housing development decisions. The rationale for the introduction of these regulations is to achieve the objectives of safety and better health to create improved quality housing for the benefit of the community.
In Uganda, regulations such as the Physical Planning Act (2010) and the National Physical Planning Standards and Guidelines were established to act as development control toolkits to enhance the provision of development that meets the minimum standards for better habitation.
The presence of substandard buildings on poorly subdivided land, limited or no access to utilities, and limited mobility within most urban centres in Uganda is evidence of failure to enforce designated laws and standards. This has led to haphazard development.
In Uganda, the growth of urban centres has exceeded capacities, and planning for such centres has become difficult. Therefore, these centres have developed tenure insecurity, overcrowding, environmental health problems, and limited access to good shelter.
Some of the causes of the informal settlements include; illegal tenure, not following subdivision rules when subdividing land, and landowners not following building codes during construction.
Thus physical planners in Uganda need to assess the effectiveness of physical planning regulations on the provision of quality housing. They should also sensitise communities about the parameters that define housing quality, planning laws, and measures to improve housing quality.
The writer is a physical planner (Urban) - Kasese District Local Government.
