For an increasing number of people around the world, habitation is not a question of good or bad architecture but of shelter, food, health and economic survival, a question of political empowerment, domination and the control over resources, and ultimately a question of criteria and goals of “development” and “progress”. With their heroic manifestoes, at the beginning of the century the modern movement had set out to transform the world. Architects, the champions of industry and the new mass production technologies were to bring prosperity, happiness and joy to all mankind. With mechanised production of buildings and new modes of transpiration we were to build clean, healthy, well designed, comfortable and aesthetically satisfying new cities. At the center of much of these dreams were the habitation s of the common man. Yet today, at the close of the century after some remarkable “progress” and “development” and despite a profusion of ingenious buildings by a galaxy of brilliant architects, the world, the real world inhabited by a very large section of humanity, has been transformed not into the promised paradise but into a living hell.