Housing in Southeast Asian Capital Cities

The author presents some of the wider debates on housing and development while focusing on the major Southeast Asian capital cities: Jakarta, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Metro Manila. All of these have expanded enormously in terms of population and size, all have enormous problems ranging from provision of clean water and sustainable housing for the poor to dealing with the constant inflow of urban migrants. Despite this, most city governments remain worryingly ineffectual or uncommited to solving urgent problems of their expanding cities.