Strategizing for housing : an investigation of the production and regulation of low-income housing in the suburgs of Beirut

The current consensus in housing policy recognizes the importance of learning from rather than about informal settlements. To serve this end, this dissertation presents a novel methodology for investigating land and housing markets. The methodology consists of investigating time-evolving relationships between attributes of the social agents who intervene on a market (e.g. social standing, religious affiliation, gender), rules-institutions systems (formal and informal institutions), and the macro political-economic context (e.g. price of land, demographic growth). The method was applied to a case study that tracked three groups of actors: developers, public agents, and homeowners, over a fifty-year period (1950-2000) in Hayy el Sellom, a neighborhood located in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon. The case study relied on in-depth interviews of developers, public agents, and residents, a structured survey of homeowners, research of public archives (e.g. construction and urban regulations, building permits, lot subdivisions), and time series analysis of aerial photographs. The case study demonstrated that the proposed method can unpack the category of the "informal market" by revealing a web of co-existing formal (market and public institutions) and informal (e.g. social, geographic, political associations) institutions whose interplay determined market characteristics (e.g. openness, flexibility, security) and resulted in unequal opportunities for housing and capital accumulation by residents and developers, respectively. Second, the case study unraveled dialectical actor-institution relationships in which one's ability to intervene in the housing market depended on one's ability to tap existing institutions that sustain exchanges and build new ones. Third, the

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2004

Author dc:creator

• Fawaz, Mona M., 1972-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Bishwapriya Sanyal.

• Urban Studies and Planning.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/28789
• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Identifier URI

http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/28789

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/28789