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Where does a policy circuit start? The history of the undoing of an experiment in low-income housing: Lilongwe鈥檚 Traditional Housing
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In the early years after Lilongwe became Malawi鈥檚 capital city (the late 1970s/early 1980s), its planned听 low-income residential areas, known as Traditional Housing Areas (THAs) were considered to be听 something of a model for such urban housing in terms of the practices and policies of those times. They were site-and-service schemes; they were very low-cost, reflecting in appropriate ways Malawi鈥檚听 very limited financial capacity; the building standards and types of infrastructure adopted were simple听 and cheap and mainly shaped by public health principles. However, in 1979, Malawi was one of the听 first countries in the world to experience the pressures of the neoliberal turn, before this was manifest听 in actual policies in much of the so-called Global North. The shift in the values and objectives of its听 housing institutions towards more market-oriented schemes meant that housing for higher-income听 groups became prioritised and financing for the THAs dried up by 1982, leading to the predictable听 outcomes of serious overcrowding and dangerous sanitation problems.听听
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