- Email: [email protected]
Shelter: Need and response
Book Reviews
227
Certainly there are no resource constraints for such a long-term plan; nor are there financial constraints. “In short, no problem is insoluble in the creation of a balanced and conserving planet save humanity itself.” Here we return to themes elaborated in earlier books. Barbara Ward’s belief was that “the shaping forces of social justice, humane concern and Christian compassion, which Marx dismissed as worthless bourgeois window dressing, represent on the contrary the essential expression of the free spirit. So long as compassion and personal responsibility are active in human souls, freedom can survive and act and reshape human institutions, however encrusted they may seem with human prejudice and human greed. These forces conquered the citadels of self-interest and irresponsibility inside Western society. They must now work to enlarge our vision to include the whole family of man.“’ 1 Our economic and physical interdependence is beyond doubt. Thus, “the scientist and the sage, the man of learning and the poet, the mathematician and the saint all repeat to the human city the same plea and the same warning. We must love each other or we must die.“’ 2 David Satterthwaite
International Institute for Environment and Development, London, UK
JORGE
E. HARDOY
and DAVID
SA~ERTHWArTE
SheEter: Need and Response,
John Wiley and Sons, Chichester, England, 1981. Leafing through the Report on Habitat: UN. Conference on Human Settlements, some five years after the event, brought back those endless nights of 1976 when the soft Vancouver drizzle did little to restore some feeling of summer. Long drafting sessions, stretching into the early hours, in desolate dining rooms of large hotels, converted for the use of delegates, and, afterwards, the gruelling hours of the plenary sessions, as each of the three major documents were picked over and argued through - that is after the speeches and the high-sounding sentiments, Trudeau, Echeverria et al. All the razamataz of Vancouver was a stage in a process that had begun two years eartier with the formulation of the initial brief and the formation of the Habitat Secretariat - a disparate clutch of professionals and academics, under the leadership of Enrique PeXalosa and the intellectual guidance of Duccio Turin. A preparatory committee of 56 nations had been established to help in the preparation of the main conference documents - i”he Declaration of Principles; Recommendations for National Action; Programmes for International Co-operation and by June 1976 had met four times. Throu~out the two years the Secretariat had been commissioning substantive papers on a variety of subjects pertinent to Human Settlements, setting up a network of Habitat contacts in the countries, holding Regional Conferences and convening meetings of international experts. Peiralosa and his team had visited near on a hundred countries, drumming up support and enthusiasm. Heady days. The reason for this nostalgic reach-back is a book by Jorge Hardoy and David Satterthwaite of the Internation~ Institute for Environment and Development, together with four regional teams, each responsible for a selection of countries. Their two-fold purpose is to provide a picture of the current state of human settlements and to assess governmental action in trying to solve some of the problems. The method chosen is to select some of the Recommendations for National Action, approved by the 132 Nations present at the Conference, and to assess the depth and extent of each of seventeen governments’ “ commitment to tackling pressing housing, land and settlement problems”. I’ Five Ideas that Change the World, W.W. Norton and Company, pp. 187-188,
1951. l2 The Home of Man, W.W. Norton and Company (USA), McClelland and Stewart (Canada), Penguin (UK), p. 294, 1976.
228
Book Reviews
This is really two books: the first, descriptive, long and lightweight; the second, short, dense, analytical and, at times, didactic. The first part, divided into four sections and taking up some two-thirds of the 275 pages, is concerned with a description of each of the countries under the following headings: National Settlement Policies; Land; Shelter, Infrastructure and Services; three of the six topics used at the Vancouver Conference. Each description is preceded by a brief backgrouild section that describes the physical set-up, including the climate, for all 17 countries. Interestingly, this information plays little or no part in the text that follows; and more curious still is the complete absence of any political context. The second part, Section V, is a comparative analysis of the performance of the countries, under the same headings as before. The authors have made a rod for their own backs in selecting such widely differing states as Nepal on the one hand and Mexico on the other. However, an inter~stil~~ attempt is made at tlnding areas of con~nlo[lality and a well-argued chapter opens this part of the book. Four parameters are considered, viz: Colonial Influences; World Economic Forces; Settlement Trends; and Current Settlement Problems. Heartening is the ability to discuss world economic forces without once referring to Metropolitan Satellite Theory. Depressing is a total nescience of the New International Economic Order - it is as if the 7th Special Session of the General Assembly had never occurred. To take issue with a follow-up study of this kind may appear churlish; however, there are some issues that ought not to get through on the nod. First, Hardoy et al. fall into the age-old trap of assuming that the Conference was aimed specifically at developing countries. Quite early on in the book, when referring to the Recommendations for National Action, they say “If implemented these would require very considerable changes in devetopment strategy for virtually all Third World Governments.” I would venture to suggest that any signatory to the Recorr~nlendations would need to make some fairly fllndainelltal changes if they intended to itl~pIenlent them. Some of the recommendations, particularly those on Iand, to which the USA subscribed, would cause a sharp intake of breath among US officials in the present administration, if anyone tried to put them into operation. Interestingly, throughout the Preparatory Committee Sessions, three of the countries that played an influential - one might almost say instrumental - role in the formulation of the documents were Sweden, Canada and Australia. Indeed, I recall quite distinctly encountering a member of the ~~ustralian delegation who had tears running down his cheeks on learning that the USA had voted against the Declaration of Principles at the Conference. Secondly, there is a kind of naive6 about matters political that one would find almost endearing were this not a serious study. The only attempt at grasping this particular nettle is encapsulated in three and a half pages entitled “Settlement Policies and Political Models”, but even this ends up merely describing changes in the administrative structure of sojne countries in order to carry out human settlenle~lts policy. This inability or unwillingness to encompass the political dimension is most glaring in the last chapter, “Conclusions and Recommendations.” I found this the least satisfying part of the book, offering gratuitous advice outside of any real context. 1 am put in mind of Duccio Turin’s comment when faced with a manifesto by some pale-faced and serious-eyed students, “I agree” he murmured, “But so what?” Finally, one has the distinct impression that the main purpose of the first two-thirds is a j~Istificatioi1 for the last third. In other words, the analysis of 17 Third World countries exists only as back-up material for the pr~)lr~otion of pre-conceived theories of development. Perhaps this is an unworthy comment, but try as one might, there is difficulty in shaking off the notion entirely. Although the book is liberally peppered with fairly banal aphorisms -. “If government ideology changes every few years, a consistent settlements policy is not likely to be implemented”, or policy, like the whole development effort, will inevitably be conbetter still, “Settlement strained by economic difficulties” ~- it is on the whole well-written and could be immensely rewarding to the conscientious reader. The authors have gone further than any I know in interpreting the Recommendations and assessing their relevance to specific situations. Every now and then, however, some of the syntax can mislead, as for instance “One of a national settlement policy’s goals is to put into place the type and spread of public investment and guidance
of private investment that precedes the emergence of an urban-industrial elite sufficiently strong to ensure that all government policies become biased in its favour”. Since, with the exception of very few, most countries already have an urban-industrial Blite, is there no hope at all?
School of Architecture, Hull Coliege of Higher Education, UK, formerly Senior Staff Member, United Nations, Habitat Secretariat (1974-76), New York.
MARGARET WOLFSON Changing Approaches to Population Probbems, Development Centre of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in cooperation with The World Bank, Paris, 1978,193 pp.;ROBERT CASSEN and MARGARET WOLFSON ed., P&n&g for Growing Populations, (C.&an Ohlin ~troduct~on) Develop ment Centre of the Organi~tion for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECR), Paris, 1978, 227 pp.r 3
In his 1970 Reith Lectures on “Change and Industrial Society”, Donald A. Schon established the idea of “‘public learning” which he describes as “a special way of acquiring new capacity ~OF behaviour in which government fearns for the society as a whole.” Margaret Wolfson’s study of population policies since the UN Conference at Bucharest presents a fascinating account of a recent instance of public learning of this kind. And the collection of essays edited by Robert Cassen and Margaret Wolfson under the title PZanningfor Growing Populations supplements this account by studies of the consequences of the new approach for the planning of food supplies, health, housing, education and employment. The example of public learning which forms the subject of the frrst of these studies is the shift in governmental thinking on population policies which occurred in the short space of four years between the World Population Conference at Bucharest in 1974 and a follow-up meeting organised by OECD and The World Bank in 1978. As Professor Louis Sabourin puts it in his preface: L‘~, , Whereas at Bucharest the issue of pop~a~on ~crrsus development split international opinion into two bitterIy opposed ideological camps, four years later, when representatives from developing countries and donor agencies discussed these same issues at the OECD in Paris, the dual approach of population and development had become the accepted wisdom, and was felt to require no further restatement.“’ 4 How did this come about? Margaret Wolfson answers this question by drawing attention to a gradual change in countries’ perception of the nature of the population problem: “As development policy has moved away from the earlier confidence in economic growth . . . thinking about population as a factor in the development process has been evolving also. In particular, as social progress has come to be considered as being equally if not more desirable than economic growth, it was natural that the ‘population problem’ should cease to be thought of as primarily a matter of numbers. “A noticeable development since Bucharest has been the increasing emphasis on the implications of high fertility at the micro-level for the individual and the family . . . The result is that governments still want to spread the practice of family planning, but there is now a new and subtle change in the motivation _ . . Developing country governments today are increasingly taking the view that family planning is necessary not only in the interests of controlling national population growth, but also to enable the individual to exercise the right of choice as to the -I3 This review is reprinted from Public Administration and Dtwelopment, 1981 and is reproduced here by kind permission of the Editor. l4 Reviewer’s italics.
Vol. 1, No. 1, January/March
227
Certainly there are no resource constraints for such a long-term plan; nor are there financial constraints. “In short, no problem is insoluble in the creation of a balanced and conserving planet save humanity itself.” Here we return to themes elaborated in earlier books. Barbara Ward’s belief was that “the shaping forces of social justice, humane concern and Christian compassion, which Marx dismissed as worthless bourgeois window dressing, represent on the contrary the essential expression of the free spirit. So long as compassion and personal responsibility are active in human souls, freedom can survive and act and reshape human institutions, however encrusted they may seem with human prejudice and human greed. These forces conquered the citadels of self-interest and irresponsibility inside Western society. They must now work to enlarge our vision to include the whole family of man.“’ 1 Our economic and physical interdependence is beyond doubt. Thus, “the scientist and the sage, the man of learning and the poet, the mathematician and the saint all repeat to the human city the same plea and the same warning. We must love each other or we must die.“’ 2 David Satterthwaite
International Institute for Environment and Development, London, UK
JORGE
E. HARDOY
and DAVID
SA~ERTHWArTE
SheEter: Need and Response,
John Wiley and Sons, Chichester, England, 1981. Leafing through the Report on Habitat: UN. Conference on Human Settlements, some five years after the event, brought back those endless nights of 1976 when the soft Vancouver drizzle did little to restore some feeling of summer. Long drafting sessions, stretching into the early hours, in desolate dining rooms of large hotels, converted for the use of delegates, and, afterwards, the gruelling hours of the plenary sessions, as each of the three major documents were picked over and argued through - that is after the speeches and the high-sounding sentiments, Trudeau, Echeverria et al. All the razamataz of Vancouver was a stage in a process that had begun two years eartier with the formulation of the initial brief and the formation of the Habitat Secretariat - a disparate clutch of professionals and academics, under the leadership of Enrique PeXalosa and the intellectual guidance of Duccio Turin. A preparatory committee of 56 nations had been established to help in the preparation of the main conference documents - i”he Declaration of Principles; Recommendations for National Action; Programmes for International Co-operation and by June 1976 had met four times. Throu~out the two years the Secretariat had been commissioning substantive papers on a variety of subjects pertinent to Human Settlements, setting up a network of Habitat contacts in the countries, holding Regional Conferences and convening meetings of international experts. Peiralosa and his team had visited near on a hundred countries, drumming up support and enthusiasm. Heady days. The reason for this nostalgic reach-back is a book by Jorge Hardoy and David Satterthwaite of the Internation~ Institute for Environment and Development, together with four regional teams, each responsible for a selection of countries. Their two-fold purpose is to provide a picture of the current state of human settlements and to assess governmental action in trying to solve some of the problems. The method chosen is to select some of the Recommendations for National Action, approved by the 132 Nations present at the Conference, and to assess the depth and extent of each of seventeen governments’ “ commitment to tackling pressing housing, land and settlement problems”. I’ Five Ideas that Change the World, W.W. Norton and Company, pp. 187-188,
1951. l2 The Home of Man, W.W. Norton and Company (USA), McClelland and Stewart (Canada), Penguin (UK), p. 294, 1976.
228
Book Reviews
This is really two books: the first, descriptive, long and lightweight; the second, short, dense, analytical and, at times, didactic. The first part, divided into four sections and taking up some two-thirds of the 275 pages, is concerned with a description of each of the countries under the following headings: National Settlement Policies; Land; Shelter, Infrastructure and Services; three of the six topics used at the Vancouver Conference. Each description is preceded by a brief backgrouild section that describes the physical set-up, including the climate, for all 17 countries. Interestingly, this information plays little or no part in the text that follows; and more curious still is the complete absence of any political context. The second part, Section V, is a comparative analysis of the performance of the countries, under the same headings as before. The authors have made a rod for their own backs in selecting such widely differing states as Nepal on the one hand and Mexico on the other. However, an inter~stil~~ attempt is made at tlnding areas of con~nlo[lality and a well-argued chapter opens this part of the book. Four parameters are considered, viz: Colonial Influences; World Economic Forces; Settlement Trends; and Current Settlement Problems. Heartening is the ability to discuss world economic forces without once referring to Metropolitan Satellite Theory. Depressing is a total nescience of the New International Economic Order - it is as if the 7th Special Session of the General Assembly had never occurred. To take issue with a follow-up study of this kind may appear churlish; however, there are some issues that ought not to get through on the nod. First, Hardoy et al. fall into the age-old trap of assuming that the Conference was aimed specifically at developing countries. Quite early on in the book, when referring to the Recommendations for National Action, they say “If implemented these would require very considerable changes in devetopment strategy for virtually all Third World Governments.” I would venture to suggest that any signatory to the Recorr~nlendations would need to make some fairly fllndainelltal changes if they intended to itl~pIenlent them. Some of the recommendations, particularly those on Iand, to which the USA subscribed, would cause a sharp intake of breath among US officials in the present administration, if anyone tried to put them into operation. Interestingly, throughout the Preparatory Committee Sessions, three of the countries that played an influential - one might almost say instrumental - role in the formulation of the documents were Sweden, Canada and Australia. Indeed, I recall quite distinctly encountering a member of the ~~ustralian delegation who had tears running down his cheeks on learning that the USA had voted against the Declaration of Principles at the Conference. Secondly, there is a kind of naive6 about matters political that one would find almost endearing were this not a serious study. The only attempt at grasping this particular nettle is encapsulated in three and a half pages entitled “Settlement Policies and Political Models”, but even this ends up merely describing changes in the administrative structure of sojne countries in order to carry out human settlenle~lts policy. This inability or unwillingness to encompass the political dimension is most glaring in the last chapter, “Conclusions and Recommendations.” I found this the least satisfying part of the book, offering gratuitous advice outside of any real context. 1 am put in mind of Duccio Turin’s comment when faced with a manifesto by some pale-faced and serious-eyed students, “I agree” he murmured, “But so what?” Finally, one has the distinct impression that the main purpose of the first two-thirds is a j~Istificatioi1 for the last third. In other words, the analysis of 17 Third World countries exists only as back-up material for the pr~)lr~otion of pre-conceived theories of development. Perhaps this is an unworthy comment, but try as one might, there is difficulty in shaking off the notion entirely. Although the book is liberally peppered with fairly banal aphorisms -. “If government ideology changes every few years, a consistent settlements policy is not likely to be implemented”, or policy, like the whole development effort, will inevitably be conbetter still, “Settlement strained by economic difficulties” ~- it is on the whole well-written and could be immensely rewarding to the conscientious reader. The authors have gone further than any I know in interpreting the Recommendations and assessing their relevance to specific situations. Every now and then, however, some of the syntax can mislead, as for instance “One of a national settlement policy’s goals is to put into place the type and spread of public investment and guidance
of private investment that precedes the emergence of an urban-industrial elite sufficiently strong to ensure that all government policies become biased in its favour”. Since, with the exception of very few, most countries already have an urban-industrial Blite, is there no hope at all?
School of Architecture, Hull Coliege of Higher Education, UK, formerly Senior Staff Member, United Nations, Habitat Secretariat (1974-76), New York.
MARGARET WOLFSON Changing Approaches to Population Probbems, Development Centre of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in cooperation with The World Bank, Paris, 1978,193 pp.;ROBERT CASSEN and MARGARET WOLFSON ed., P&n&g for Growing Populations, (C.&an Ohlin ~troduct~on) Develop ment Centre of the Organi~tion for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECR), Paris, 1978, 227 pp.r 3
In his 1970 Reith Lectures on “Change and Industrial Society”, Donald A. Schon established the idea of “‘public learning” which he describes as “a special way of acquiring new capacity ~OF behaviour in which government fearns for the society as a whole.” Margaret Wolfson’s study of population policies since the UN Conference at Bucharest presents a fascinating account of a recent instance of public learning of this kind. And the collection of essays edited by Robert Cassen and Margaret Wolfson under the title PZanningfor Growing Populations supplements this account by studies of the consequences of the new approach for the planning of food supplies, health, housing, education and employment. The example of public learning which forms the subject of the frrst of these studies is the shift in governmental thinking on population policies which occurred in the short space of four years between the World Population Conference at Bucharest in 1974 and a follow-up meeting organised by OECD and The World Bank in 1978. As Professor Louis Sabourin puts it in his preface: L‘~, , Whereas at Bucharest the issue of pop~a~on ~crrsus development split international opinion into two bitterIy opposed ideological camps, four years later, when representatives from developing countries and donor agencies discussed these same issues at the OECD in Paris, the dual approach of population and development had become the accepted wisdom, and was felt to require no further restatement.“’ 4 How did this come about? Margaret Wolfson answers this question by drawing attention to a gradual change in countries’ perception of the nature of the population problem: “As development policy has moved away from the earlier confidence in economic growth . . . thinking about population as a factor in the development process has been evolving also. In particular, as social progress has come to be considered as being equally if not more desirable than economic growth, it was natural that the ‘population problem’ should cease to be thought of as primarily a matter of numbers. “A noticeable development since Bucharest has been the increasing emphasis on the implications of high fertility at the micro-level for the individual and the family . . . The result is that governments still want to spread the practice of family planning, but there is now a new and subtle change in the motivation _ . . Developing country governments today are increasingly taking the view that family planning is necessary not only in the interests of controlling national population growth, but also to enable the individual to exercise the right of choice as to the -I3 This review is reprinted from Public Administration and Dtwelopment, 1981 and is reproduced here by kind permission of the Editor. l4 Reviewer’s italics.
Vol. 1, No. 1, January/March