The Misunderstanding to Informal Housing Concept

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ABSTRACT

Informal housing is a world-spread problem. But there are still so many misunderstanding to the concept. To make it clear, the paper will be focused on analyzing the concept and the existing informal housing problems in Tianjin, the third biggest city of China.

Misunderstanding One: The connotation of informal housing
Informal housing connotation is misunderstood as slum, illegal housing or squatter settlements. Actually, informal housing has certain meaning. It is an interdisciplinary problem, which is linked with sociality, economics and urban research. Through comparing with the connotation of the concepts of formal, formality, informal, informal housing, squatter settlements, illegal and illegal housing, and slums, it is to make clear what is informal housing and the reasons why it is quite difficult to make the concept clear special to Chinese.

Misunderstanding Two: There is no informal housing in China.
That is totally untrue that there is no informal housing in China. Informal housing is there, no matter that you like it or not. In the modern history of China, there are different kinds of inform housings with different backgrounds.

Pre-1949 : Due to wars, the informal housing was a kind of slums, or scatterments.
During the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, under Mao's socialism, there were few informal housing, but homeless, which is even worse than informal housing.
In 1976, a great disaster, earthquake drove people living in the informal temporary housings without water, energy, and electricity.
Post-1979 : Because of open-door policy, the defination of formal-informal, considers the informal sector as a 'temporary dysfunction caused by rapid growth and imbalances in the distribution of resources and income'. Different kinds of current forms of informal housing will be discussed as follow: the informal extension of the existing housing, misappropriating greenland housing, home market and informal countryside housing.

Misunderstanding Three: Informal housing is meaningless, useless and worthless.
The informal housing is not a coincidence phenomenon, but logic one. It is that people react to the changing, such as economic development, disaster, urban sprawl or growing birth rate. Since it exists, it must have its special function and meaning. The informal housing is functional because it is a kind of transitional housing under certain financial or social background. It represents the country's deficiency and the people's needs.

Misunderstanding Four: Informal housing is out of control.
One misunderstanding is that that the informal housing must be out of government control just because it is informal one. Actually some kinds of informal housing are under the government control. The central question moves to another point that is whether or not such kind of control is useful or functional.

Misunderstanding Five: Informal housing is not the target of research.
Informal housing concept is an important concept. The reason why it is belittled is because they thought informal housing is not qualified for approval. Researchers do not stop studying on it. Agenda 21 and United Nations Sustainable Development Reports give it clear concept and indicator. The current task is to localize Agenda 21 and sustainable development method. Misunderstanding Six: Informal housing must die. Informal housing is a production of a certain circumstance. That means in different periods, there will be different informal housing styles. It has its function under the certain circumstances. Although it brings us many social or environmental problems, it cannot be shut up immediately. What we should do is going along the sustainable development way.

Conclusion:
Research on housing in developing countries has increased considerably in the last fifteen years, marking a shift in the approach "from studies of homelessness, to studies of lodging". The consideration of informal housing has lead to a better understanding of the processes by which the poor access land and shelter in the developing world, particularly in Tianjin, China. Yet, the nature of informal housing still deserves research attention.

ESF/N-AERUS: International workshop - Leuven and Brussels, Belgium, 23-26 May 2001

N-AERUS: Network-Association of European Researchers on Urbanisation in the South
http://www.naerus.net