Since the late 1980s, the UN-Habitat has promoted an enabling strategy for its global goal of adequate housing for all. The strategy contends that markets should be the primary housing delivery mechanism and that the public sector’s role is to introduce incentives and facilitate housing actions by other actors, through partnerships of local government, the private sector and non-governmental and community-based organizations (NGOs and CBOs). The strategy accepts the limitations of the market for housing the poor and stresses the need for government to recognize and upgrade informal settlements and to develop innovative approaches to low-income housing (UNCHS, 1991: 12-62; UNCHS, 1997: 37).

Today, most governments in Asia adhere to the enabling strategy, as it has proven to be effective in delivering adequate housing to large sections of the urban population. The strategy was not an isolated initiative, but part of a broader agenda of national and global market liberalization which has brought rapid economic growth in Asia and an expansion of its urban middle class. Without economic growth, the enabling strategy may not have been as effective. Yet, millions of urban poor still remain without adequate housing despite a host of innovations, because rapidly rising land values and policies to optimize land use blunt any attempt to secure land for housing the urban poor. The private sector which used to supply housing only to upper-middle- and high-income families, responded to these trends by moving down-market through smaller units, mass production and simplified finishes (Angel and Chuated, 1987; Mukhija, 2004: 2236), including “shoebox units” of 25 m2 or less. Between 2010 and 2020, 2 growth in the urban population, in the number of households and in affluence is projected to generate demand for 16.5 million additional units with a total market value of US$1 trillion in six major Asian countries.