For the first time in history, humans are predominantly urban. Cities occupy less than
2 percent of the Earth’s land surface, but house almost half of the human population and
use 75 percent of the resources we take from the Earth.
This paper attempts to describe the need and demand of housing in Pakistan,
different housing policies adopted in their political and economic scenario of the country.
Then, the reasons of the failure of the housing policies are analyzed. When the housing
policies of the formal sector failed, the informal sector stepped in to provide housing for
the urban poor. This paper also reviews the informal housing strategies. The experiments
of combining formal and informal housing strategies are also described.