Broken Cities: Inside the Global Housing Crisis

From Britain’s ‘Generation Rent’ to Hong Kong’s notorious ‘cage homes’, societies around the world are facing a housing crisis of unprecedented proportions. The social consequences have been profound, with a lack of affordable housing resulting in overcrowding, homelessness, broken families and, in many countries, a sharp decline in fertility. In Broken Cities, Deborah Potts offers a provocative new perspective on the global housing crisis arguing that the problem lies mainly with demand rather than supply. Potts shows how market-set rates of pay and incomes for vast numbers of households in the world’s largest cities in the global South and North are simply too low to rent or buy any housing that is legal, planned and decent. As the influence of free market economics has increased, the situation has worsened. Potts argues that the crisis needs radical solutions. With the world becoming increasingly urbanized, this book provides a timely and urgent account of one of the most pressing social challenges of the 21st century. Exploring the effects of the housing crisis across the global North and South, Broken Cities is a warning of the greater crises to come if these issues are not addressed.

Table of Contents:
Foreword 1. The Dilemma of Affordable Housing and Big Cities 2. Mismatches between Incomes and Housing Costs: A Global Condition 3. Affordable Urban Housing and the Role of Basic Standards 4. Private Sector Urban Housing Provision: Formal And Informal 5. Squaring the Circle: Social Housing Programmes and Affordable Rents 6. Squaring the Circle: Affordable Urban Homeownership 7. Global Finance, Big Cities and Unaffordable Housing 8. Broken Cities: Unaffordable Housing as the Norm? 9. Broken Cities, Broken Households: The Demographic Impacts of Unaffordable Housing Conclusion Appendix

About the Author :
Deborah Potts is an Emeritus Reader in Human Geography at King’s College London. She has written and researched extensively on issues around urbanization, migration, livelihoods and housing, with a particular focus on urban Africa. Her previous books include African Urban Economies: Viability, Vitality or Vitiation? (2006) and Circular Migration in Zimbabwe and Contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa (2010). Deborah Potts is an Emeritus Reader in Human Geography at King’s College London. She has written and researched extensively on issues around urbanization, migration, livelihoods and housing, with a particular focus on urban Africa. Her previous books include African Urban Economies: Viability, Vitality or Vitiation? (2006) and Circular Migration in Zimbabwe and Contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa (2010).

Review :
An ambitious and devastating book… this is a critical text, without easy comparison, providing a highly readable and remarkably detailed insight into the global housing crisis. It is critical reading for scholars across urban, housing and ‘development’ studies, planning and geography, offering a rallying manifesto for housing activists the world over. We can only hope our political leadership engage with its provocation’. Captivating analysis of the global housing crisis. Based on extensive research on housing, Deborah Potts lays bare the paradoxes of the urban housing crisis – household incomes relative to housing costs. An evidence-based, historically informed and incisive analytical voice on one of the crucial issues of twenty-first century urban life. The breadth of insight and scope is remarkable, demonstrating beyond any doubt the value of a comparative perspective on global urbanisation. Superbly well written, accessible and supported with carefully compiled and detailed data, this book is a gift to urban residents, urbanists, scholars, practitioners and politicians. Read it! One of the particular strengths of this book is its breadth of comparative reference. Potts insists that analyses of housing in the Global South and the Global North can be conducted within a common conceptual framework... The result is a series of thought-provoking analogies among housing policies that are usually studied in isolation by specialists in different regions of the world. Any housing expert will come away from this book with new insights and new ideas. A particular strength of the book is its global reach... the book’s main point is to draw parallels between housing problems across the world, with a close eye on contextual detail and differences, but always searching for structural similarities across local histories and politics. Taken together, Broken Cities is a highly readable and informative book that makes an important contribution to the debate on one of the defining features of current urbanization. It will be of key interest to urban and housing scholars and may also serve well as a teaching resource for courses in geography, planning, housing studies and related fields. Broken Cities talks to housing need in the global North and South. While not intended to be published to coincide with COVID-19, the pandemic highlights the significance of housing quality for wellbeing. This is a scholarly text, in terms of the depth of referencing and data analysis. But it is also a publication written for an interested non-expert audience, with multiple examples to illustrate the key points of the argument... What is evident from this volume is that housing is essential to health and wellbeing. Governments are challenged to rethink housing options, and to recognize the centrality of housing to development A particular strength of the book is its global reach. Potts convincingly argues that there are common underlying forces that determine housing outcomes under capitalism in both the global South and the global North. ... Taken together, Broken Cities is a highly readable and informative book that makes an important contribution to the debate on one of the defining features of current urbanization. One of the particular strengths of this book is its breadth of comparative reference. ... a series of thought-provoking analogies among housing policies that are usually studied in isolation by specialists in different regions of the world. Any housing expert will come away from this book with new insights and new ideas. This is essential reading ... The book enhances the comparative gesture in urban studies as well as the ‘planetary turn’ in gentrification studies.