Empowerment via progressive participation: Jordanian experience of the low income housing production

This research will explore the conceptual and theoretical background of the concept of community participation in the low-income housing projects. It will discuss different views and approaches through which some schools of thought have attempted to advocate or reject establishment of some form of local-level organisation for economic development in general, and low-income housing schemes in particular. The overall focus, here, is to observe how, within the process of changing ideas and shifting economic priorities, the issue of attracting popular support and mobilising community level participation has emerged; what significance it has attained; and on what grounds it has come to be seen as an out dated or useful means for increasing productivity. In this regard, the present works will argue that the reforms and strategies dealing with enabling the government institutions and official capacity need to go a long way before their effects, if any, can benefit the overall economy of the concerned societies, and to trickle-down to benefit the low-income groups. Accordingly, the community will benefit more if it gets organised, and cooperates to create a suitable environment for its members in which their basic needs might have some realistic chances of being met. This work will later suggests that a real process of public participation at its most effective form is where the social awareness and communal bonds of a target group can be raised and strengthened enough so that they can pursue their own collective objectives in accessing to the basic resources. The cases reviewed in this work, endeavour to show that establishment of the locally active organisations is a right step in this direction, and without it no centrally directed reform package can aspire to reach and to serve the low-income groups adequately.