Courtyard Houses A Housing Typology Pdf File
Namibia is experiencing a housing crisis. Strategies currently employed to reduce the backlog are proving ineffective. Increasing demand escalates prices, meanwhile the country’s rapid urbanization maintains a steady influx of low wage earners from rural areas seeking better opportunities in urban areas. The newcomers are greeted by too few rental offers, at too high a cost, resulting in the majority of rural-urban migrants living in shacks on the outskirts of cities.Housing policies in Namibia favor single story detached housing sitting on a minimum 300 sqm plot of land, requiring a great deal of land to be levelled and serviced at high cost, but benefiting few. Additionally, zoning practices keep residential and commercial uses separate, resulting in an urban sprawl which forces people to either live hours of commute from jobs and job opportunities, or to rent informal shacks in the underused gardens of those living closer to urban centres. Within these informal settlements however, the highly entrepreneurial residents have created a second, informal job market, so that one finds several businesses at every junction.
Housing Typology Definition
Our design seeks to provide a model for provision of housing that reverses the trend of unaffordable and unsustainable development, by reducing the costs involved in the construction of housing and providing a structure for future growth and activity within the new neighborhoods.
