Building Regulations Assessment in Terms of Affordability Values Towards Sustainable Housing Supplying in Palestine
Achieving a sustainable housing supply of affordable housing is a strategic aim for the sustainable development of each country. This study highlights the relationship between local building regulations and the sustainable supply of affordable housing in Palestine. To do so, the paper assesses the building regulations in terms of achieving affordability in housing design. Thus, an assessment framework was developed based on learning from traditional design which proved to cover three values of affordability: collectivity, sharing, and diversity, as well as several factors of changes related to each of these values.
The research data were collected through a survey of the opinions of 30 experts in the field of designing and building affordable housing in three main Palestinian cities: Nablus, Ramallah, and Jenin. The results showed that the need for values of affordability increases at the urban level compared to the single-building level. The paper’s main finding is to establish an approach for a sustainable supply of affordable housing based on collectivity, sharing, and diversity. This approach can be a high-potential step for achieving sustainable development in Palestine. Therefore, several affordability-encouraging suggestions were made for improving the building regulations in Palestine based on the results of the paper.
This study has discussed one factor in encouraging affordable housing, which is updating the building regulations. Other factors that increase the Sustainable housing supplying are also recommended to be studied such as housing finance, city planning, and architectural design. As encouraging affordable housing can provide many economic, social, and environmental benefits to the Palestinians. It can also help in improving public health and safety, energy conservation, environmental protection, and public cost savings. As a result, it is recommended to make further studies that support the sustainable development of the housing environment in Palestine.
