Mass Housing In Europe

Based on empirical research from 29 major postwar housing estates in 15 European cities, this collection explores mass housing experiments, examining the problems, policy responses and residents' everyday experiences in the estates in the context of change and regeneration.

Estates on the Edge recounts the decline and rescue of low income government-sponsored housing estates across Northern Europe giving a vivid account of the intense physical, social and organisational problems facing social landlords in five countries. These countries have 5,500,000 social housing units in around 5,000 large, dense, modern flatted estates, about one in three of their social rented stock. These estates house increasingly poor people in declining, mainly outer areas, cut off from urban centres. Many have experienced chaotic decline and sometimes serious disorder. Some have also undergone dramatic transformation and upgrading. The book traces this process of decline and rescue.

Originally published in 1993, this book traces how governments in France, Germany, Britain, Denmark and Ireland became involved in replacing industrial revolution urban slums with mass high-rise, high-density concrete estates. As the book considers each country’s housing history and traditions, and analyses the contrasting structures and systems, it finds convergence of problems in the growing tensions of their most disadvantaged communities. The book underlines the continuing drift towards deeper polarization, an issue which has become ever more important in the multi-lingual, ethnically diverse urban societies of the 21st Century. The book’s detailed coverage of the historical, political and social changes relating to housing within the various countries make it an important text for students and practitioners concerned with housing, urban affairs, social policy and administration.

This open access book explores the formation and socio-spatial trajectories of large housing estates in Europe. Are these estates clustered or scattered? Which social groups originally had access to residential space in housing estates? What is the size, scale and geography of housing estates, their architectural and built environment composition, services and neighbourhood amenities, and metropolitan connectivity? How do housing estates contribute to the urban mosaic of neighborhoods by ethnic and socio-economic status? What types of policies and planning initiatives have been implemented in order to prevent the social downgrading of housing estates? The collection of chapters in this book addresses these questions from a new perspective previously unexplored in scholarly literature. The social aspects of housing estates are thoroughly investigated (including socio-demographic and economic characteristics of current and past inhabitants; ethnicity and segregation patterns; population dynamics; etc.), and the physical composition of housing estates is described in significant detail (including building materials; building form; architectural and landscape design; built environment characteristics; etc.). This book is timely because the recent global economic crisis and Europe’s immigration crisis demand a thorough investigation of the role large housing estates play in poverty and ethnic concentration. Through case studies of housing estates in 14 European centers, the book also identifies policy measures that have been used to address challenges in housing estates throughout Europe.

Many European cities have a shortage of good quality, affordable housing, but this problem has become less prominent in policy than it should be. This timely book aims to redress that balance. After an introductory chapter, expert contributors provide contemporary comparative accounts of housing renewal policy and practice in nine European countries in its physical, economic, social, community and cultural aspects. Shared concerns over energy conservation, social protection and inclusion, and the roles and responsibilities of the public and private sectors form the basis of a proposed policy agenda for housing renewal across Europe. The concluding chapters draw conclusions from a pan-European perspective and consider the future prospects for renewing older housing. Academics, practitioners, policy-makers and students of housing, urban studies, planning, regeneration, environmental health and sustainability will all want to read this book.

Shortlisted for the Alice Davis Hitchcock Medallion 2021 (The Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain) "It will become the standard work on the subject." Literary Review This major work provides the first comprehensive history of one of modernism's most defining and controversial architectural legacies: the 20th-century drive to provide 'homes for the people'. Vast programmes of mass housing – high-rise, low-rise, state-funded, and built in the modernist style – became a truly global phenomenon, leaving a legacy which has suffered waves of disillusionment in the West but which is now seeing a dramatic, 21st-century renaissance in the booming, crowded cities of East Asia. Providing a global approach to the history of Modernist mass-housing production, this authoritative study combines architectural history with the broader social, political, cultural aspects of mass housing – particularly the 'mass' politics of power and state-building throughout the 20th century. Exploring the relationship between built form, ideology, and political intervention, it shows how mass housing not only reflected the transnational ideals of the Modernist project, but also became a central legitimizing pillar of nation-states worldwide. In a compelling narrative which likens the spread of mass housing to a 'Hundred Years War' of successive campaigns and retreats, it traces the history around the globe from Europe via the USA, Soviet Union and a network of international outposts, to its ultimate, optimistic resurgence in China and the East – where it asks: Are we facing a new dawn for mass housing, or another 'great housing failure' in the making?