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Nature Gallery (Global Trends [Population Growth])

Human Habitation
Human beings ingeniously adapt their dwellings to fit the environment, finding suitable material to protect them from the weather. Houses exist in almost every locale, from the warm climates of Côte d’Ivoire in West Africa to the cold temperatures and frozen soils of Siberia and Greenland. Humans manage to construct comfortable dwellings on low-lying islands, such as Kiribati in the Pacific Ocean, or on the slopes of mountainous Switzerland and Nepal. Rainforests and barren deserts, too, are home to millions.
Materials used to build these shelters are almost as varied as their locations, ranging from mud, wood, rocks, leaves, and stone to modern synthetic materials such as concrete and steel or even materials made from recycled plastic and newspaper. Whether a simple dwelling or an elaborate mansion, a house is an essential element of human life.

The physical characteristics of a house depend on the area's climate, the surrounding terrain, available building materials, technological know-how, land tenure and ownership, and cultural factors, such as the social status, personal taste, and financial resources of the owners.

In rural and developing regions, many people make their own houses out of material in the immediate area. People in urban and developed areas often have greater wealth and are not limited to materials found nearby. Glass, steel, and steel-reinforced concrete are standard in urban home construction, although such material, especially concrete, is becoming more prevalent in rural areas of developing countries.

Owners value the appearance and arrangement of their homes. Residents living in Willemstad, the capital of the Netherlands Antilles, paint their dwellings with pastel colours for aesthetic reasons. Peoples in other parts of the world choose the shape, size, and finishing touches for their homes based on cultural traditions. Some Muslims paint pictures on their houses to symbolize that they have made the trip to Mecca.

Depending on climate and available fuels, homes may be artificially heated or cooled. In modern industrialized areas, running water and interior toilets are common. Most people in developing countries do not have access to such amenities.

Housing in Rural and Developing Regions
In most rural areas of developing countries, the house tends to be a single room for all activities. It is often close to the village meeting house or religious structure. The shape of such a house may be repeated through an entire village. For example, round or cylindrical mud dwellings with conical roofs of thatch are customary in Lesotho, Guinea, and central and southern Sudan. Numerous mud dwellings in northwestern Syria are beehive-shaped.

The longhouses of Malaysia and Indonesia, on the other hand, are exceptionally large dwellings. Some longhouses in Borneo are 180 metres (591 feet) in length and house up to 50 families.

Buildings in developing countries are constructed from all sorts of materials at hand. In many parts of the world, especially Africa and Middle East, mud is a typical building material, often mixed with grass, straw, branches, sod, or stone. The Bobo people of rural Burkina Faso live in mud-and-grass dwellings. Shibām, a city in Yemen, features tall mud dwellings, some still standing from the 1400s, which may be considered the world's first skyscrapers. Mud bricks are employed in Iran and in numerous towns of Pakistan, such as Peshawar.

Housing made of adobe, which is material consisting of sun-dried bricks of mud and straw, occurs in several countries, including Guatemala, Peru, and Togo.

Thatch is used as roofing in many places, including Benin, Nigeria, Mali, and Hungary. People in southern Chad and many other regions use straw thatch for roofs. Open-sided dwellings in Samoa often have roofs made of sugar cane leaves. Bamboo and wood form the walls of many rural houses in tropical and subtropical regions, including the Solomon Islands, Bangladesh, and Panama. Even huge reeds are used in the construction of dwellings, such as those fashioned by the Uru on South America's Lake Titicaca.

Human adaptability is particularly evident where dwellings are constructed over water or carved into rock. In villages of the Cappadocia region of Turkey, such as Göreme, caves have been carved out of soft volcanic rock. Many of these caves have housed people for centuries. In other regions, where frequent flooding is a danger, houses are raised off the ground on stilts. Some of these dwellings may be permanently placed offshore. This is common in countries such as Papua New Guinea, Cambodia, Thailand, and Myanmar (Burma). In some coastal areas, housing is scarce and expensive; many people live on boats. Some Chinese, for example, live on houseboats in the harbours of Hong Kong.

Groups such as the Bedouins of the Middle East lead nomadic lives. Their homes, often tents, can be easily disassembled and transported. Many people in Mongolia, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Russia use a large, circular domed tent called a ger, or yurt. In the past, the conical tepee of the North American Plains peoples was efficient housing for those who had to move camp to hunt.

Palaces and Mansions
In stark contrast to the marginal living conditions of many people in the world, magnificent palaces and mansions have been constructed for the exceedingly wealthy. For hundreds of years, royalty and the aristocracy have demonstrated their power and position by creating lavish living quarters. The 1,300-room Palace of Versailles in France, built in the late 17th century for King Louis XIV, is surrounded by a beautiful 100-hectare (247-acre) park and formal gardens. The palace of the Sultan of Brunei covers 20 hectares (49 acres) and has 1,788 rooms. Wealthy citizens have built numerous mansions, such as Devon House in Kingston, Jamaica, constructed in 1881 by the Caribbean’s first black millionaire.

Housing Policies
There are yet no global housing policies apart from a handful of them proposed by the United Nations (UN). Government policies have therefore continued to have a huge bearing on the type of housing in most countries. For example, Germany, France, the Netherlands, and other western European nations provide low- or no-interest housing loans. The development of new towns is also encouraged or subsidized. For example, more than ten towns have been built on the outskirts of Paris.

The former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and eastern European nations pioneered the production and installation of massive prefabricated blocks of flats in urban areas. Housing units, usually of pre-cast concrete, were manufactured in factories and then shipped to the housing site, where they were assembled into large, multi-family complexes, such as the high-rise blocks found in many towns and cities in Belarus.

The USSR was also a pioneer in developing new towns, which were frequently located around massive industrial or power-generating facilities. One example is Bratsk, near the Bratsk hydroelectric power station in Siberia. In other cities, including Tallinn, Estonia, historical houses and buildings have been restored and preserved.

In the United States, 70 per cent of the population lives in single-family houses, most of which have been built by small, private housing developers on separate plots. Housing in the US varies significantly in type, age, value, and quality. The quality of US housing is relatively high. For example, more than 98 per cent of year-round housing units have running water and toilets.

Housing in developing countries is typically still low in quality and lacking in space as compared to developed nations. Government efforts to upgrade housing conditions are evolving slowly. In the 1950s many cities, including Manila in the Philippines and Baghdad in Iraq, instituted slum demolition on a large scale. In the 1960s new planned cities, such as Brazil's capital, Brasília, became common. These strategies often proved ineffective; demolition was not usually accompanied by replacement housing, and the new towns sometimes became islands in a sea of slums.

In the 1970s some developing nations turned to self-help housing. Governments gave families plots of land and building materials to construct or improve their own shelters. Such "sites and services" programmes have been implemented on a large scale in India and several South American countries. Numerous organizations assist housing development and the upgrading of housing standards. These include the UN Centre for Human Settlements (UNCHS) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD).

Future Trends
Housing in developing nations and poor parts of developed countries continues to be of insufficient quality and does not meet the needs of the population. Poverty, such as that in the slums of Mexico City, is common worldwide. Vacant, abandoned central-city housing exists alongside structures that are usable but overcrowded and buildings that are structurally reclaimable but functionally obsolete. In developing countries, housing demand is still largely unmet, as more people move to the overcrowded cities. Shanty towns built by these migrants on the outskirts of many cities often have no electricity, running water, or sewage systems.

Housing is a critical component in the social and economic fabric of all nations. No country is yet satisfied that adequate housing has been delivered to the various economic groups that make up its population. Thus, most nations, in one form or another, continue to claim housing as a problem.

Challenges of environmental standards to provide environmentally sound and healthy housing remain a focal point for many nations. The UN’s policy of housing for all by the year 2000 seems unrealistic.