The first scholarly collection of writings on real estate focused on the African continent It provides benchmarks for different actors including policy makers, regulators, academics, investment promoting agencies, real estate investment analyst, financiers, amongst different African countries

The United Nations Millennium development declaration of 2000 has brought informal settlements, or 'slums' as they are often referred to, squarely onto national and international development agendas. One of the Millennium Development Goals is to significantly improve, by 2020, the lives of 100 million slum dwellers globally. Country governments have responded varyingly to this challenge. A group of colleagues in the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa recognised this challenge, and embarked on a two-year collaborative research project on informal settlement policy, funded by the National Research Foundation (NRF). This project sought to bring international experience into the changing policy environment in South Africa, and included four workshops in Johannesburg involving local, provincial and national government, policy makers, NGOs and international scholars. This title comprises a selection of the November 2004 workshop papers and was made possible by generous funding from CORDAID. Informal settlements focuses on the complex challenges faced by those living in informal settlements as well as by local and national authorities around the world seeking to alleviate this situation. It draws on examples from South Africa, Swaziland, Angola, Zambia, Kenya, Rwanda, Ghana, Ethiopia, Cambodia, Thailand and Brazil. This title will be indispensable to those working in NGOs, development agencies and local, provincial and national government in the field of land policy, housing and urban management. Students and academics in Development Studies, Urban and Development Planning, Town and Regional Planning, Housing, Land Management, Urban Sociology, Urban Geography, Geography, Town & Regional Planning, Public Policy and Public Management should equally find this text useful.

The first scholarly collection of writings on real estate focused on the African continent It provides benchmarks for different actors including policy makers, regulators, academics, investment promoting agencies, real estate investment analyst, financiers, amongst different African countries