**1. Introduction**

Widespread expansion of cities due to rapid population increase has overstretched urban facilities particularly housing. As a result, cityscapes now assume cosmopolitan dimension with old and new settlements side by side, urban and sub-urban habitations as well as city centres and fringes accommodating people of varied background. Despite huge investments by private developers and governments in the cities of developing nations towards production

© 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2018 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

and provision of sustainable housing particularly for the middle- and low-income group, it remains unachievable. Correspondingly, culture inclusive designs manifest from housing transformations as tangible benefits even though it is overlooked. This is often associated with sub-standard developments due to unguided transformation activities by individual residents. Meanwhile, stakeholders particularly development control agencies usually focus on the distortions made to cities' master plan and disregard for planning laws rather than paying attention to considerations given to the reasons behind their actions and the value of the final product, thus concentrating on the phenomenon of interest rather than considering the subject matter adequately from the overall model. This led to researchers' interest in spatial behaviour of inhabitants' space transaction in order to attain growing need for sustainable housing provision.

Further still, cross-cultural research usually discloses a range of attributes that are mostly beyond those found in one research. Meanwhile, some of these attributes are common to specific environment and defines their values and behaviour. Therefore, it is also important to understand contextual environmental behaviours in order to distinguish culture-specific and culture-common concepts (emic [specific to given cultures] and etic [found in all cultures]). Often, culture-specific values are misconstrued as it communicates less to a researcher who does not belong to the culture. His attributions are assumed on the relative meaning of confounding variables. It then becomes difficult to connect with inhabitants' behaviour as they

Understanding Adaptive Mainstream Users' Values in Housing Transformation…

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In addition, it is noteworthy that even though culture-specific concepts are not found in all societies but in specific ones, they sometimes determine to a great extent the existence of settlements. They can exist as additional variants to culture-common concepts or a culture's unique adaptations to the cultural landscape (geography and architecture). Apparently, perception and familiarity with culture-specific values ignite sustainability, as they are ingrained in human mind and tend to reflect as a process in behavioural interactions with space.

Meanwhile, most times it is assumed that a combination of the emic and etic ideals is thought to provide solutions to human behavioural issues in cross-cultural examinations. But appreciably, mainstream values sometimes override the common attributes and become a concern towards developing lasting solutions to environmental issues even in the intangible form. In this situation, it becomes important to adopt indigenous approach in examining exclusive emic concerns. Thus, attempt should be made towards understanding observed behaviours, why people behave as they do and the significance of these behaviours in the built environment. It is only then that these values are well interpreted from the inhabitants' viewpoint. Scholars agree that insiders' view of houses affords more genuine and valid information than the outsiders' view [2]. As a result, it is desirable to understand individuals and the environments they cohabit, and also recognise the components of these environments and their relationships [3]. In the meantime, cultural core has been predicted as central underlying

**3. Housing transformation design activities: specific dimensions, unwritten architectural ideas and building as a cultural product**

the domestic experience rather than the spatial arrangement.

Several studies on house, form, and culture are specific to socio-cultural contexts. This results from the distinctive quality of human cultural traits. Morphologically, housing should distinguish between spaces that are adaptive to accommodating several functions, more so that sometimes activities performed particularly in the modern domestic space settings are irreconcilable. The morphology usually defines the distribution of family activities in a house setting. In this case, analysing the spatial configuration is less significant when compared to analysing the spatial pattern of activities. The later demonstrates the morphology of the domestic experience that also includes activities done not only outside the house but also around the surroundings of the dwellings. Thus, in cultured settings, activity patterns define

relate to their habitation, hence do not appreciate the value that lies therein.

attributes to changes in domestic space.

Meanwhile, architecture indeed has accommodated and as well constrains behaviour, thus the growing interest in architectural design and behavioural sciences. Yet gaps exist between the architects and behavioural scientists in comprehending inhabitants' interactions with space. This is aggravated with the complexity of behaviour as it includes observed activity pattern, cognition, and perception.

But, spatial patterns and cultural determinants significantly describe the indigenous urban architectural character in cultured communities. These features characterise sustainable housing growth where inhabitants transact with their habitation and achieve satisfaction because they are able to realise desired values.

These desired values as expressed and seen in housing characteristics are key determinants for housing efficiency and satisfaction towards the realisation of social inclusion goals as promoted by United Nations (UN) in its sustainable development goals (SDGs). Therefore, this chapter focuses on inquiry of typical ordinary group, showcasing their in-depth expression and attachment to neglected values with information-rich sample cases. Case study research such as this one commonly focuses on people or structure, perspective or world view, geography, activity, and usually time bound. Thus, purposeful sampling with illustrative strategy was adopted for this qualitative research.
