This Quick Guide 1 looks at some of the current trends in urbanization in Asia, including urban-rural migration, the links between urbanization and poverty and the state of formal and informal housing in the context of urbanization.

The guide examines the housing and land policies and programmes highlighting those which have been most effective to date. 

This Quick Guide describes ways of addressing low-income housing. It reviews well - tried methods of improving the housing environments of people living in slums and informal settlements, and providing adequate housing for future generations living in Asia’s cities.

The guide examines considerations needed to improve these settlements, and to produce housing at a city-wide scale.

This Quick Guide examines how formal and informal land markets in Asian cities work, how they have succeeded or failed to make decent, secure, affordable land accessible to the urban poor and how community organizations, support institutions and government agencies are finding innovative ways to improve the poor's access to land for their housing.

This Quick Guide explores several practicable and replicable alternatives to evictions which are being tested, refined and scaled up by governments, community groups and support institutions in Asia.

In almost all cases, poor communities are central creative partners in these processes. The guide rpresents guidelines to help policy makers to build better formal procedures to minimize forced eviction.

This Quick Guide introduces some of the key concepts of formal housing finance and an overview of how both the formal and informal systems of delivering housing finance work especially with regard to the urban poor.

The guide provides insights to innovative ways in affordable housing finance for the urban poor living in Asia’s cities.

This Quick Guide examines how community organizations can be valuable and resourceful partners when it comes to finding viable solutions to their own housing problems.

It looks at how community organizations have developed in Asia, how they function and what tools they use, which are useful for policy makers, in particular in the context of decentralization.

This Quick Guide reviews the characteristics of rental housing markets and how they function. The issue of demand and supply of rental housing are discussed, followed by policy options to regulate, promote and expand rental housing - especially for the urban poor living in Asia’s cities.