'Zur Wohnungsfrage' im 21. Jahrhundert: Marktversagen, hilflose Politik und die globale Ausbreitung von Slums

In large cities in the developing world, only a privileged minority of the population has access to land and housing through the commercial market. Mushrooming ‘irregular’ settlements are filling the gap but are beset by deficiencies and insecurity. This article argues that the failure of formal markets is systemic and structural, and that attempts to open them up to the poor have fallen short of overcoming these inherent limitations. In order to mitigate the widening gap between gated communities and ghettos, government intervention needs to rediscover the ‘enabling approach’ and become much smarter than the present mix of negligent tolerance, brutal eviction, market-fundamentalist privatisation, and populist titling.