URBAN HOUSING IN BARBADOS, WEST INDIES
Thinking concerning Third World housing has changed considerably over the past 20 years. The focus of this paper is urban housing in Barbados, where the evolution of the self-help vernacular architectural system during the early colonial era involved the combination of West African and southern English folk house types. It was the plantation-dominated land tenure system which, in combination with the local vernacular, gave rise to a distinctive form of movable chattel housing. Insecurity of tenure has served to impose a strict upper limit on the housing improvement efforts of a population long since convinced of the virtues of progressive self-help, of the sort advocated by J. F. C. Turner and other housing commentators. The present-day geographical and social outcomes of these historical forces are witnessed by marked variations in urban housing quality in Barbados, a feature illustrated by results drawn from the first ever comprehensive socio-geographical analysis of housing conditions in the Bridgetown metropolitan