Use of shipping container housing concept as a low cost housing solution for resettlement projects in urban areas

Abstract

Today, one-third of the world’s urban population live in slums and shanties., while prioritizing adequate housing as their basic need. They face a lack of basic needs such as clean air, water, sanitation and healthy foods. Rapid urbanization leads to increased demand for condominiums and focused on slum-free cities to get maximum utilization of high potential prime lands. As a solution, shipping container housing (SCH) concept has been successfully practiced in many countries in all over the world to promote low cost housing (LCH) for resettlement projects. Therefore, this research intends to explore the use of SCH concept as a LCH for permanent resettlement projects in urban areas of Sri Lanka. A comprehensive literature synthesis emphasizes the suitability of SCH concept as a LCH solution and it proved that approximately 60% of construction cost can be saved by using this SCH concept over the traditional construction methods. Selected case study for this research was “low income permanent resettlement programme in Colombo city”. Finally, the study revealed that use of SCH concept as a LCH solution for resettlement projects in Colombo will not be a feasible solution due to the specific retarding factors from the low income groups, specific characteristics of shipping container boxes and climatic conditions of Sri Lanka. Moreover, this study was very useful for the governing authorities to identify the leading alter factors between the theoretical concept and practical implementation of low income permanent resettlement projects in Sri Lanka.