A conceptual framework for evaluating public housing for resilience to rapid population growth

The concept of resilience is increasingly being used in discourses on cities. However, there is paucity of` studies on the evaluation of public housing for resilience to urban population growth, especially in a developing country like Nigeria. This paper explored the concept of resilience on housing, and proposed a conceptual framework for the evaluation of public housing towards achieving resilience to the impacts of rapid population growth in cities. The methodology adopted includemapping the multidisciplinary data sources; reviewing the literature and categorizing the selected data; identifying and naming the concepts; deconstructing and categorizing the concepts and systematicintegration of the concepts to form the framework. The basic concepts identified in the literature for studying housing for city resilience in the face of rapid population growth were the vulnerability, adaptability and systems thinking theories. Based on these construct of theories, the study developed the conceptual framework around four key components. These components were (i) the impacts of rapid population growth on the social, economic and environmental fabrics of the city, (ii) the strategies or interventions that the actors can adoptthrough design and development characteristics, and building adaptive capacities towards the impacts, (iii)the effect of this strategies and interventions on the design and development of public housing and (iv) the systemic approach towards optimising the capacity of public housing schemes to absorb the adverse impacts of rapid population growth. This study contends that theoretical approach is important in understanding the development of housing that would promote city resilience in the face of growing negative impacts of rapid urbanisation in developing countries. It suggests the adoption of the proposed conceptual framework as guidelines to architects and other housing development professionals, as an evaluation parameter for resilience research and solving housing delivery problems in cities of developing countries.