Housing Quality Analysis

Review of housing quality

1. INTRODUCTION

Habitable housing and the ‘Quality of life’ that it provides, brings the concept of “QUALITY” in the fore. This quest for quality of life includes in its ambit many areas of family’s life along with interpersonal relationship, interaction within community, and relationship to the environment and to immediate surroundings. It is generally observed that government intervention and market based responses to meet the housing need in urban areas of developing countries has been under tremendous pressure. This failure has forced the government to direct its available resources towards bridging the mismatch between demand and supply of housing. Thus, there has been relatively little research pertaining to the extent to which new housing meets people’s need, aspiration and preference.

A clear understanding about the concept of Quality is necessary to appreciate the relevance of qualitative housing. According to ‘The Oxford English Dictionary’, “Quality is a mental or moral attribute of a thing which can be used while describing the nature, condition or property of that particular thing”. Nelson (2006) observes that quality is the measure of the extent to which a set of infused characteristics fulfils stated, implied or obligatory needs or expectations. Quality depends not only on their users and their expectations, but also on the product being evaluated. It will be pertinent to mention that quality in itself is dynamic in nature and its attributes changes as the product matures and other alternatives are available as a basis of comparison.

Quality of housing, as housing investment is one of the most important decisions for any households. Quality housing is housing that satisfies certain hum...

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... prepare the various parts of the National Building Code (NBC) was set up in 1968 by ‘The Civil Engineering Division Council’ of Indian Standards Institutions. This code was published in 1970. It was decided to revise the code regularly in the light of the additional knowledge being generated through research, innovations and users’ views. The first revision was brought in 1976 and most recently in 2005.

v) Research Institutions: There are several research institutions/organisation working collectively for the cause of building standardization, some of which are Central Building research Institute, Roorkee(CBRI); Central Public Health Engineering Institute, Nagpur; School of Research and Training In Earthquake Engineering, Roorkee; Structural Engineering Research Centre, Roorkee; Regional Research Laboratory, Jorhat; Cement Research Institute of India, Ballabhgarh