(IIED) and UNFPA Website: www.urbandensity.org and associated publications). Informal settlements established decades ago in peripheral locations have been surrounded by urban development and are now in valuable central locations. In a market economy, low-income residents can only remain in such locations by achieving very high densities. Unfortunately, conventional upgrading cannot comfortably achieve high densities, and most high density options are ill suited to the lifestyles and livelihoods of the low-income residents of informal settlements. Programmes such as CODI’s Baan Mankong have nevertheless achieved high densities while retaining a high level of community control over both the location and form of the upgrading (Boonyabancha, 2009). The Baan Mankong programme has also found ways of identifying well-located urban land for this low-income residential development. This has required very active and innovative government support for low-income housing. It is difficult to imagine how this sort of approach can succeed where governments are actively trying to discourage urban growth and fear that if low-income housing is readily available undesirable rural migrants will be attracted to it. It is possible to envisage how the low-income settlements now emerging on the periphery of rapidly growing cities could be encouraged to locate in safe sites and to develop incrementally towards high, but livable, densities. Settlement on the urban periphery is attracted by infrastructure development, which can in principle be used to steer greenfield development, including that of low-income housing, provided this is done strategically (for a proposed strategy for intermediate cities in Ecuador, building on such an approach, see Angel, [2008]). In principle, it is also possible to support low-income housing development to achieve high density, applying the lessons of successful urban upgrading, but transferring them to high–density, low-rise developments. It is difficult for residents and their organizations to retain control of upgrading when this involves the construction of multi-story buildings (for an example from Sri Lanka, see D’Cruz, McGranahan, and Sumithre, 2009). However, using examples from Karachi, Arif Hasan and colleagues (2010) have illustrated how it is possible, at least in principle, to achieve densities above what local by-laws allow (1,250 persons per hectare), while meeting the needs and priorities of lowand middle-income residents. Their examples are based on small residential plots that can be developed incrementally by the residents themselves, with technical assistance to ensure that the initial construction is sufficiently solid to add more floors as the families expand. Such construction is not generally favoured by urban authorities aspiring to create “world-class” cities, with “investment friendly architecture and iconic architecture” (Hasan, Sadiq, and Ahmed, 2010, p. 1). Nor is it favoured by developers interested in securing profits from large construction contracts. Nevertheless, such approaches can help overcome uncontrolled low-income settlement, without imposing regulations that make it more difficult for poor groups to secure their place in the city. This will be critical in those parts of the world where urbanization is the dominant demographic trend and climate change a leading environmental trend.
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