The author emphasises that the VSB programme, although formally part of anti-poverty and urban inclusion policies, puts primary focus on the clearance of the shantytown. Largely based on ill-informed policy assumptions, stigmatisation, rent-seeking, and opaque implementation practices, the VSB programme interpreted adequate housing in a narrow sense. By showing how social interactions, employment patterns, and access to urban functions have changed because of resettlement, the book provides sound empirical evidence that housing means more than four walls and a roof.
Raffael Beier studied geography at Ruhr University Bochum (RUB), Germany, and at Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, France. Since 2014, he has been working as a research fellow at RUB's Institute of Development Research and Development Policy (IEE), where he is currently coordinating the PhD programme in International Development Studies. In 2019, he defended his PhD thesis in The Hague as part of the joint-PhD programme of the IEE and the International Institute for Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam.