How do building regulations increase the cost and limit supply of affordable housing? Insights from a case study in Ahmedabad, India
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Date
2016
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AESOP
Abstract
Much of the discussion on affordable housing in cities of developing countries has focused around the constraints in urban land markets that raise the cost of serviced urban land, making housing unaffordable. It is well known that urban land is being used inefficiently, resulting in the high cost of both urban land and the built space. However, land is only one of the supply‐side constraints, and unreasonable building regulations pose absurdly high costs on society by preventing the formal housing market from producing affordable housing that low‐income groups can actually afford. The cost of building formal sector housing increases due to building regulations that set standards for formal sector development. Building regulations establish minimum standards such as FAR, building height, setbacks and margins, open spaces, parking, elevators, and other requirements which directly increase the construction cost, and prevent land from being developed intensely by limiting the quantity of habitable floor space that can be built. Building standards directly determine how much it costs to build the cheapest formal sector housing and thus directly influence the quantity of affordable housing that is built within the formal housing market, and the rest is then pushed into the informal housing market. People who cannot access expensive and limited supply of formal sector housing are then forced to find housing in the informal sector which causes proliferation of slums.
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Proceedings of the IV World Planning Schools Congress, July 3-8th, 2016 : Global crisis, planning and challenges to spatial justice in the north and in the south
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All Rights Reserved