DEFINING COMMUNITY BASED GOVERNANCE FOR INFORMAL HOUSING & SETTLEMENTS WITHIN TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO

Abstract

Encouraging and supporting Community Based Governance for Informal Housing and Settlements to achieve a sustainable built environment is essential. However, this will be the greatest challenge facing countries as they become more urbanized. Governance has become difficult to define and measure, much less described as a theory that can be modelled and applied to policy and in making decisions. The difficulty in definition was traced both to the evolving roles of the planner; and ontological and epistemological paradigms that have shaped research. This research defined Community Based Governance as a theory. This was explored using a Grounded Mixed Methods to integrate quantitative and qualitative data. Using intersectionality and structuration, the outcomes were examined. Initial results from Trinidad suggest that the reformulated theory of Community Based Governance has demonstrated failures and unsustainability of the public sector’s squatter regularisation programme where Community Based Governance though essential, is undermined. However, this contradicts the success that the programme claims.