Housing as Right vs Commodity - Lessons learned from Community Initiatives in Housing Provision in Asia-Pacific

As urban populations in the Global South expand at unprecedented speed, the gap between housing as a legal right and housing as a market commodity has never been more consequential. This lecture draws on community-led housing initiatives across the Asia-Pacific region to examine how residents are generating their own solutions -through self-organization, cooperative tenure, and locally adapted construction -in the absence of adequate state support. It interrogates why formal planning systems so often obstruct these initiatives rather than enabling them, and what an "enabling state" approach to housing policy would genuinely require. The lecture offers both a critique of existing frameworks and a practical roadmap for governments willing to reorient toward rights-based urban development.