Adaptive or structural transformation? The case of the Harare, Zimbabwe, housing system

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Abstract
Experience in socialist societies suggests that the housing process has played a prominent role in achieving the objectives of social transformation. Public ownership of land and urban residential property, control over the distribution of residential space, public land, collective group delivery systems and convergence of housing standards have been major outcomes. The matter is taken up in this paper in reference to the evolving structure of the housing system of Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe. Expectations may have been for the housing system of a newly independent African state, strongly espousing principles of socialist transformation to be progressively restructured in ways which might best serve the long term interests of such a transformation. Research findings presented in the paper show the contrary. Though race has been officially eliminated as a primary reference in the social formation, the housing system of Harare, in keeping with its ongoing underlying capitalist economic focus, has remained rooted in and is being extended on the basis of private ownership. Structurally the qualities and evolving spatial form of the system too display characteristics of sharp, ongoing economic differentiation. In these ways the contemporary housing process does not appear to be contributing structurally to the achievement of a desired socialist transformation in Zimbabwe.