Retrospective on Habitat

Habitat, the United Nations Conference on Human Settlements that was held in Vancouver, Canada, between May 31 and June 11, 1976, brought together an estimated 1,500 officials of 131 countries and six national liberation movements. It was the fifth in a series of UN conferences on world problems, including environment (Stockholm, 1972), population (Bucharest, 1973), food (Rome, 1974), and the status of women (Mexico City, 1975). It is to be followed in 1977 by conferences on water (Mar del Plata, Argentina) and deserts (Nairobi).

In addition to the official conclave in downtown Vancouver, there was an officially sponsored nonofficial conference, the Habitat Forum, attended simultaneously by 2,400 representatives of 160 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The forum convened at Jericho Beach, site of an abandoned Canadian Air Force base consisting of five seaplane hangars scheduled to be torn down, but retrofitted for the occasion.

Habitat was a direct offshoot of the Stockholm conference where it was felt that concern with the natural environment ought to be extended to the built environment. The conference focus was broad—some suggested it was too broad—since it extended beyond housing to embrace environmental and economic development issues.

The official conference had its portion of contretemps and conflict, aside from the expected controversy over conference issues, and its recommendations and other actions may be considered only modest achievements. But on an intellectual level, it is clear the conference was generally successful as a "consciousness-raising" activity, cited as a goal in many reports. Further, the notion of cutting across disciplines to consider the quality of life in both urban and rural settlements, and in both advanced and developing economies, has considerable appeal. As a minimum, the conference consciously recognized and labeled a number of emergent activities and research efforts. And perhaps, beyond that, it will help inform, shape, and direct those activities and efforts to more useful ends.

The road to Vancouver. Habitat was originally scheduled for June 1975 but was postponed for a year. In the interim, the General Assembly passed its November 1975 resolution equating zionism with racism. The Vancouver City Council, alarmed at the possibility of terrorism by the Palestine Liberation Organization, then voted to ask the Canadian government to cancel the meeting, but it reversed itself after the government agreed to pay extra police expenses. Nevertheless, the city council did defeat a motion to go on record as welcoming the conference. Paralleling the Colorado rejection of the Olympic winter games on environmental grounds, there was a lingering and ironic concern that Habitat would be damaging to the local habitat.

The thirty-five-member official U.S. delegation was headed by Carla Hills, secretary of housing and urban development, and Russell Peterson, chairman of the council on environmental quality, and contained a number of nongovernmental members, including several affiliated with environmental and conservation groups. Prior to the conference, the participating nations prepared national reports, on-site demonstration projects, and films on solutions to settlement problems. The U.S. contribution included a film on the urban environment, a slide show on energy conservation, and the 1976 Report on National Growth and Development, the biennial report submitted by the president to Congress. The use of the routine biennial report instead of a report prepared expressly for the conference drew considerable criticism.

Outsiders: The forum and symposium. Participants in Habitat Forum (including such organizations as the League of Women Voters, the Audubon Society, Zero Population Growth, and the Environmental Forum) had a number of complaints. Although only 7 miles from the conference, Jericho Beach was relatively inaccessible, and information about the official conference was hard to obtain. One observer noted that Habitat's rapid pace created problems for any group that did not arrive with specific positions on the conference documents and an organized lobbying strategy. Another added that much of the activity at the forum was too little and too late to have much impact on the work of the main conference.

The Vancouver Symposium was a notable exception. It consisted of twenty-four luminaries whose activities dominated much of the news reports on the conference and whose principal proposals received serious consideration, leading to some changes in the language of resolutions. The leading lights of the group were Barbara Ward (Lady Jackson) and Maurice F. Strong, former head of the UN's environmental program. Barbara Ward addressed the first plenary session of the official conference, the only private individual ever invited to do so by the United Nations. She drew on her book The Home of Man, written expressly for Habitat.

In their leadership role, members of the Vancouver Symposium presented lectures at the forum; in addition to Ward and Strong, the group included intellectual superstars Margaret Mead and Buckminster Fuller, and James Rouse, developer of the new town of Columbia, Maryland. The symposium's policy proposals included a moratorium on the construction of nuclear power generators; government control over land use and the capture of "unearned increment" in the value of land; and clean water for all settlements by 1990.

The insiders: The conference itself. The work of the conference had three phases, (1) a Declaration of Principles, intended as the inspirational message from the conference, (2) Recommendations for National Action, the "centerpiece" since settlement problems were seen as primarily national responsibilities, and (3) a Program of International Cooperation, which would institutionalize and carry forward the work of the conference.

The Declaration of Principles was amended by the "Group of 77" developing countries to reaffirm the identification of zionism with racism and to support other controversial resolutions on the relations between developed and developing countries. The amended declaration was adopted over the opposition of the United States and a number of Western European countries.

The Recommendations for National Action included sixty-four specific proposals organized under such broad themes as settlement policies and planning, land use, and public participation. The symposium recommendation of a nuclear power moratorium was not accepted, but the official document did call for the "rationalization of technologies which are currently known to be hazardous to the environment."

The symposium's other proposals had counterparts in the recommendations. The discussion of "unearned increment" on land values was extended at the suggestion of the U.S. delegation to note that capital gains taxes, land taxes, and betterment charges capture much of the gains in land value. (But not all the gains, a critic noted.) The "unearned increment" argument is an echo of the Henry George single tax proposal, which though hoary retains considerable currency. The "unearned increment"— defined as income to which the owner is not legitimately entitled—arises either because the growth of a community causes an increase in land value, or because government investment in infrastructure increases land values locally—for example, near subway stations or highway interchanges. Both propositions are questionable. The first neglects the point that if land is socially accepted as an investment good, then an annual increase in its value equal to the market rate of interest should occur at equilibrium. Investment goods generally increase in value because demand increases; moreover, windfall losses as well as profits occur in all risky investments, including investment in stocks, paintings, or Broadway shows. The second case involves external benefits that are easier to predict in advance, and hence, a stronger argument can be made for internalizing the benefits of specific government actions. However, some of those benefits arise because of government subsidies in the first place (fares priced below cost, for example), and there may well be neglect of negative externalities (land with poor access to the transportation facility may decline in value).

Potable water recommendations adopted by the conference paralleled those of the symposium, including the 1990 target date "if possible." Other recommendations included improved environmental management, stimulation of self-help housing, and integrated land use and transportation planning.

The proposed Program of International Cooperation made its appearance in the form of a resolution calling for new United Nations machinery concerned exclusively with human settlements. However, no consensus emerged on the detailed steps to be taken next.

The conference had a number of other institutional consequences. A human settlement resources center at the University of British Columbia was the recipient of the audiovisual material produced for the conference (belittled by some as primary propaganda footage). The Kettering Foundation is publishing proceedings of the six U.S. regional conferences held in preparation for the conference, and these should be a useful addition to the literature. The Department of Housing and Urban Development has established a center to serve as a clearinghouse for information on the conference and related post-conference activities.