Overall investigation of affordable residential housing in China

Affordable housing is a key item identified in the world for the development of the 21^st Century. The object of this paper is to get series of design concepts of affordable residential houses, using intensive steel solutions, in key geographical areas of China. Detailed Social-Geographical-Economic conditions, residential housing situation, including housing market as well as some traditional housing concept, and intensive steel residential building solutions in China are fully investigated. Based on these investigations, the affordable house suitable for China can be defined as a green humanized multi-storey house system comprised of medium-small-type dwellings whose cost is not higher than that of traditional reinforced concrete buildings. This definition could be the guiding ideology of the future residential housing design.