Housing and work in the same space: the spatial implications of home-based enterprises in India and Indonesia.
Abstract
This paper will examine the effects of HBEs (home-based enterprises) on the home and neighbourhood environment in two Asian countries to see whether they create the spatial crowding assumed by planning regulations. Through a DFID-sponsored research study involving case studies in India and Indonesia (in 1999), we explore how important HBEs are to household economies, and their spatial and quality implications in the dwellings in two contrasting circumstances - where space is very scarce and where it is less so. We find that, in very tight spaces, HBEs can have considerable effects on households' use of domestic space and on the neighbourhood, even though they use very small spaces. In less constrained circumstances, however, their effects can be relatively benign. Through this, we try to inform the debate about whether HBEs should be encouraged by policy instead of being classed as illegal, and
consequently discouraged or controlled. The paper proposes spatial elements of a strategy to facilitate income generation in the home by poor households.
Citation
Paper presented at the 7th Conference of the Asian Planning Schools Association, Hanoi Architectural University (HUA), September, 2003. pp. 20
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