Self-provided housing is a major form of housing supply in nearly all the developed countries of W. Europe, N. America and Australasia. In many, like France or Germany, it accounted for the major part of housing output during the 1980s. Contrary to many opinions self-provision is not associated with backwardness, peripherality, or lack of market development. Rather, self-provided housing is often a major element in the expansion of European metropoles and sometimes reaches the heights of 'post-fordist' industrial organisation and product development. Self-provision lowers the money cost of housing and usually ensures higher quality, and in this way enlarges the housing choices of middle-income nuclear families. Materials and land costs remain substantial barriers to self-provision, and the more disadvantaged groups are usually unable to participate. However, the presence of a large self-provided sector can indirectly improve their housing position. Housing cycles will be calmed, spatial polarisation will be less severe, and there will be less competition from the more advantaged in rental markets. A significant self-provision sector can also have important effects on the housebuilding industry, both through direct competition and by presenting a different market environment. The net result is likely to be a decline in speculative behaviour and a concentration on longer-term efficiency. Finally, there are various 'models' for a successful self-provided housing sector, where the necessary social support is organised in different ways by different agencies. These will affect the level and distribution of self-provision. Given the importance of self-provided housing in all these ways, it merits considerably further research than has been the case so far.
This article provides a frame for evaluation of natural resource interventions, which necessarily involves both human and natural systems. Two-system evaluands require us to adapt evaluation methods for comparison and attribution and to address differences in time and space occurring across the systems as well as potentially very different values among stakeholders. While twosystem evaluands can be challenging, it does not follow that evaluation in these settings is necessarily more difficult than evaluations located solely in human systems settings. This article suggests that if we are concerned about use and influence, then our responses to challenging evaluation settings should not automatically favor additional rigor; they should prioritize salience and legitimacy through joint knowledge production processes with decision makers and stakeholders.
Evaluation is at the cusp of two urgent challenges: indigenous evaluation and sustainability. How we respond to these challenges can dramatically affect the future of evaluation. A sustainability‐ready evaluation will be transformative. It will be an evaluation that recognizes that human and natural systems are coupled, and that evaluation portfolios are now and will increasingly be affected by our connections to natural system forces including climate. Sustainability‐ready evaluation will be an evaluation that reaches well past the intervention to important public policy goals and to key sustainability challenges. Evaluating coupled human and natural systems will be challenging. Fortunately, technical barriers do not prevent us from starting to infuse sustainability into evaluation; the barriers are social and associated with the worldview and vision of evaluation. To facilitate the development of sustainability‐ready evaluation, this paper provides an initial checklist and references to useful resources. Absent transformations to become sustainability‐ready evaluation will lack relevance for many of the current and future key issues of our times. Fields lacking relevance are themselves not sustainable.
Rapid Impact Evaluation offers the potential to evaluate impacts in both ex ante and ex post settings, providing utility for developmental and formative evaluation as well as the usual summative settings. Rapid Impact Evaluation triangulates judgments of three separate groups of experts to assess the incremental change in effects attributable to the program. Three methodological innovations are central to the method: the scenario-based counterfactual, a simplified approach to measuring change in effects, and an interest-based approach to stakeholder engagement. In evaluations to date, Rapid Impact Evaluation has proved to be a cost effective and nimble approach to assessing impacts and does not intrude on design or implementation of the program. By applying recent thinking on use-seeking research emphasizing joint knowledge processes over knowledge products, Rapid Impact Evaluation promotes salience, legitimacy, and credibility with decision makers and key stakeholders. Applications show Rapid Impact Evaluation to be fit for purpose.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.