Cities are a built entity of economic, socio-cultural and organizational activities and their size often changes over time and space. In most cases, however, cities are found to be growing due to their social and economic attractivenesses to the people living across different parts of the country. Urban planning concerns with those activities for a decent and sustainable livable environment. Building is an essential component of urban planning and housing policy generally deals with the housing needs and demand of the people living in cities.

Cities have a wide variety of differences in features, and housing needs and objectives are varied. There is also a great diverse in housing problems, depending on the location, size and structure of cities. In developing countries across the world, cities are found growing haphazardly, creating slums and informal housing areas. On the other hand, buildings having traditional, cultural and architectural values and features are decaying due to modern concrete buildings, while the core, traditional part of cities exhibits often decaying or dilapidated houses and housing abandonment. Further, houses and their facility components change not only due to change in demand and need of the people but also are affected by infrastructural development and natural calamities (earthquake, landslides, floods, typhoons, etc). Other problems and issues of housing may include housing shortage, social needs of housing structure, populations at risk most, housing deprivation families, etc.

Those different features, problems and issues can serve as a foundation for housing policy formulations. So, housing policy requires a blending of detailed database, theory, and social, political and ethical considerations. Some of the housing policies and programmes prevalent across the developing world include land pooling and land development, site-and-services, upgrading for rehabilitating and improving existing slums and informal housing, earthquake resistant low cost housing, urban poor friendly housing, self-help building measure for diverting informal to formal settlements, preservation of houses having traditional-cultural values, public-private partnership, etc. Several agencies including government, private, and non-government organizations are involved in formulating housing policies and programmes in developing countries. Research papers dealing with those different aspects and others of housing policies and programmes are welcome.

Affordable housing, public-private partnership, self-help measure, upgrading, slums and squatter settlements, low-cost housing policies, pro-poor urban communities, haphazard urban growth.