Housing and its Spatial distribution

Structures or buildings developed to shelter people from weather elements

High rise, High density

Low-rise, Low density comprises of

Terraces

Semi-detached houses

Detached houses

Shophouses

Shared facilities such as playgrounds, exercise equipment and swimming pools

Apartments

Informal Housing

Formal Housing

Features

Location

Features

Location

Built by government or private developers

Acces to basic services

Legal right to occupy land

High-quality building materials

  • concrete
  • metal
  • hard wood

No legal right to occupy land

Lack of access to basic services

Self-built squatter settlements

  • zinc sheets
  • recycled lumber

Desirable land

  • near greenery and amenities
  • away from pollution
  • supported with quality infrastructure(roads, piped water, electricity and proper waste disposal)

Locally-Unwanted-Land-Use (L-U-L-U)

  • near landfills
  • sewage treatment plants
  • large polluting industries
  • industrial sites ( to save time and cost by living near their workspace)

Factors affecting the Location of housing

Land prices

Land-Use Planning

Housing Financial Support

Developers

Zoning (restricts types of activities and land-use permitted on specific sites)

  • Restricts the amount of land area is used for housing
  • Other areas use for other activities (educational, recreational, commercial)

Private developers

Government

Tends to consider people’s needs more than profits

Tend to pick sites that are more commercially viable

Higher land prices, more expensive housing

Increase in informal housing to accommodate the rural-urban migrants or the local urban poor

Developers to lower the cost of building houses (might make the developers consider building more houses, preventing housing shortage)