Failed top-down policies in housing: The cases of Nairobi and Santo Domingo

In the past, various strategies based on top-down approaches were employed to curb the housing crisis in less developed countries (LDCs), but most failed because they did not engage the community in development projects. During the 1980s, the UN launched the bottom-up approach, which emphasizes the involvement of community-based organizations in shelter projects. This approach promotes enabling strategies in an effort to overcome obstacles encountered under the top-down approach: namely displacement, affordability, cost-recovery, and replicability. This paper explores what LDCs are doing to implement the bottom-up approach, and this is accomplished by examining the cases of Nairobi, Kenya, and Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic. The study analyzes how the governments of both countries have responded to the policies promoted under the two approaches. Data on government policies are analyzed to find out whether the governments of Kenya and the Dominican Republic have provided an enabling environment for other actors. This study reveals that both governments have adopted enabling policies in their National Action Plans which include: facilitating the efforts of all actors in providing shelter; the use of non-conventional building materials; and the upgrading of low-income housing. This research shows that the bottom-up approach is more likely to be successful in overcoming factors that inhibit the provision of low-income housing as compared to the top-down approach.