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metropolitan housing and urban policy

Living in Large Urban Developments: A Critical Understanding of the Housing Experience

Living in Large Urban Developments: A Critical Understanding of the Housing Experience

This article critically reviews international literature on the social aspects of vertical living. It identifies three research approaches – the built environment effect, the differentiated built environment effect, and the human-environment interrelation – and two focal social orientations of research – suitability and experience – as well as four spatial orientations – space, design, verticality and volume, and technology. The article emphasises the need to extend the scope of future research beyond the building to the residential complex, clusters of complexes, and the entire city in order to better understand relations between volume and experience. It also calls for a more complex investigation of the vertical dwelling experience that would include residential aspirations, new neighbourly roles, and identities.

28.6.2024 | Ori Gershon-Coneal, Efrat Eizenberg, Yosef Jabareen | Volume: 11 | Issue: 1 | Pages: 31-45 | 10.13060/23362839.2024.11.1.562

Traces of Obduracy: Imaginaries of ‘Social Inertia’ in the Process of Introducing Collaborative Housing in the Czech Republic

Traces of Obduracy: Imaginaries of “Social Inertia” in the Process of Collaborative Housing Introduction

This paper explores the sociotechnical change necessary for the introduction of collaborative housing projects into the Czech super-homeownership housing regime. To better understand the obduracy of the current housing system, we examine the major barriers and threats to the implementation of such projects through a series of workshops with non-experts in selected cities. Our findings suggest that the housing system’s obduracy is related to social imaginaries that we conceptualise as the ‘imaginary of social inertia’. This form of imaginary, along with other factors such as a lack of supporting legal and financial infrastructures, creates a complex network of obstacles that reduce the likelihood of such housing projects gaining ground. In conclusion, our research emphasises the role of imaginaries in studying obduracy and thus provides valuable insights into the processes of urban sociotechnical change.

15.6.2023 | Petr Kodenko Kubala, Jan Malý Blažek, Václav Orcígr, Tomáš Hoření Samec, Markéta Káňová, David Tichý, Jana Kubcová | Volume: 10 | Issue: 1 | Pages: 39-49 | 10.13060/23362839.2023.10.1.552

Applying the AD-AS Model to the Housing Market of Post-Socialist Economies

Applying the AD-AS Model to the Housing Market of Post-Socialist Economies

We propose applying the standard aggregate demand and aggregate supply model (AD-AS) to the housing market. It is a very simple and intuitive tool that can help shed light on the major forces at play in the market and that can supplement the use of the general equilibrium and dynamic stochastic equilibrium models (DSGE). The latter models are very sophisticated and aim to cover many aspects of the economy, but they require a significant number of long time series to estimate the model parameters. However, in many countries, such as post-socialist countries, the time series are short. Those models moreover cover only real house prices, but in certain situations we should consider real and nominal prices at the same time.

31.3.2023 | Jacek Łaszek, Krzysztof Olszewski | Volume: 10 | Issue: 1 | Pages: 14-26 | 10.13060/23362839.2023.10.1.550

Self-reported and Market Home Values in Housing Wealth Inequality Measurement: Evidence from Warsaw and Prague

Self-reported and Market Home Values in Housing Wealth Inequality Measurement: Evidence from Warsaw and Prague

This paper aims to examine whether self-reported home valuations can be a substitute for objective market data in studies on the level of housing wealth inequality. In order to achieve this aim, information on subjective values of flats and their features in Warsaw (Poland) and Prague (Czechia) was used. Next, hedonic models were estimated to calculate the objective values of these residential properties. The results indicated that, on average, homeowners overestimated their real estate by 2.10% in Warsaw and underestimated by 5.49% in Prague. Finally, using tests for the equality of variances, it was examined whether the level of housing wealth inequality differed significantly when calculated using subjective and objective home values. The findings showed that self-reported home values cannot serve as a perfect proxy for market values when assessing the level of housing wealth inequality in both cities.

5.5.2022 | Mateusz Tomal | Volume: 9 | Issue: 1 | Pages: 29-38 | 10.13060/23362839.2022.9.1.538
Short-Term Rentals and the Housing Market

Airbnb and Amenity: Is Short-Term Letting Reshaping How We Live in the City?

Airbnb and Amenity: Is Short-Term Letting Reshaping How We Live in the City?

The popularity of short-term letting (STL) platforms like Airbnb has created housing and planning challenges for cities worldwide, including the potential impact of STL on the quality of life of nearby residents and communities. Underpinning this concern is an inherent tension in urban living between the rights and interests of individual residents, and the collective rights and interests of neighbours. Through interviews with Australian Airbnb hosts, this paper examines how STL hosts navigate this tension, including how they frame their property rights, how they seek to minimise their impact on neighbours, and how they perceive the role of regulation in balancing individual and community rights. In doing so the paper contributes to both theory and policy debates about urban property rights and how ‘compact city’ planning orthodoxies are reshaping the lived experience of urban residents worldwide.

22.6.2021 | Laura Crommelin, Sharon Parkinson, Chris Martin, Laurence Troy | Volume: 8 | Issue: 1 | Pages: 119-128 | 10.13060/23362839.2021.8.1.528
Short-Term Rentals and the Housing Market

Short-Term Rentals and the Residential Housing System: Lessons from Berlin

Short-Term Rentals and the Residential Housing System: Lessons from Berlin

The increasing professionalisation of Airbnb-style short-term rentals has emerged within a grey space between residential housing and hotel accommodation. Subsequently, an array of contestations have arisen, due in no small part to the intangibility of online short-term rental platforms as well as the absence of clear regulation at the municipal level. In urban settings already confronted with housing issues such as supply shortages and reduced affordability, recent studies show how the proliferation of short-term rentals can amplify housing market pressure while feeding into the broader urban processes of gentrification, touristification, and displacement. Using Berlin, Germany, as a site of analysis, this paper explores the expansion of short-term rentals in relation to various policy interventions designed to regulate the conversion of residential housing into tourist accommodation.

21.6.2021 | Adam Crowe | Volume: 8 | Issue: 1 | Pages: 129-140 | 10.13060/23362839.2021.8.1.529
Short-Term Rentals and the Housing Market

Conditions for the Introduction of Regulation for Short-Term Rentals

Conditions for the Introduction of Regulation for Short-Term Rentals

Most cities in major agglomerations in Europe started to address the rise of short-term accommodation rentals by introducing regulation designed to protect the local housing stock. The momentum behind the widespread introduction of such regulations can be attributed to qualitative and quantitative factors. This article examines selected fields related to short-term rentals in order to uncover the (structural) triggers or conditions that are necessary and sufficient for municipalities to initiate the regulation of their housing market. The study is based on the systematic examination of the effects of those triggers and their combinations using qualitative comparative analysis (QCA). With this method, we explore the implementation or non-implementation of regulation on a sample of major German cities. The results suggest a universal set of conditions covering three central fields: housing market situation, accommodation market conditions and tourism accommodation demand.

18.6.2021 | Vilim Brezina, Jan Polívka, Martin Stark | Volume: 8 | Issue: 1 | Pages: 159-170 | 10.13060/23362839.2021.8.1.532

Housing Market Access in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area: Between the Financial and the Pandemic Crises

Housing Market Access in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area: Between the Financial and the Pandemic Crises

The Portuguese housing market underwent major transformations between 2010 and 2020. Until then, a delicate but resentful stability had long existed, with distorted rent schemes and low annual price increases proportional to the national economy and the income of the Portuguese population. After the financial crisis, several internal and external variables converged to dramatically change this scenario. In recent years, a growing number of researchers have centred their attention on the difficulties that the Portuguese urban middle-class populations are facing in trying to find homes. This paper analyses these challenges and their impact quantitatively, focusing on the affordability of housing for purchase or rent and considering synthetic indicators for average household incomes in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area between the beginning of 2016 and the end of 2019. The results show that the cost of buying or renting a house in the main Portuguese urban system has become much more detached from local incomes. The article concludes with reflections on the structural reasons for the enduring inequalities in the housing markets and the difficulties recognising territorial cohesion and spatial justice as important elements shaping urban and housing policies in Portugal.

24.11.2020 | Gonçalo Antunes, João Seixas | Volume: 7 | Issue: 2 | Pages: 58-72 | 10.13060/23362839.2020.7.2.515

The Challenges of the Redevelopment of Old and Dilapidated Buildings in Mumbai: A Policy Perspective

The Challenges of the Redevelopment of Old and Dilapidated Buildings in Mumbai: A Policy Perspective

Affordable housing is the biggest challenge being faced by the city of Mumbai, which styles itself as an emerging Global Financial Centre. The city has the image of being home to a stark dualism, with slums abutting modern skyscrapers. Over the years, adequate policy attention has been given to slums and with the implementation of the Slum Rehabilitation Scheme slum dwellers are being provided with housing in multi-storey buildings and are being granted tenancy rights to the dwellings. However, an emerging area of concern is the large housing stock that is non-slum but is old and dilapidated. The collapse of an old and dilapidated building in Dongri in July 2019 that killed twelve people and the one at Bhendi Bazaar in 2017 that killed thirty-three has brought this problem into the mainstream and new policies have been initiated to address the problem. Implementing these policies seems to be a challenge, and this is the result of different factors. This article looks at the housing problem in Mumbai from a policy perspective and analyses the implementation challenges of the new policy aimed at redeveloping the old and dilapidated housing stock.

14.11.2020 | Satish M.K. | Volume: 7 | Issue: 2 | Pages: 36-46 | 10.13060/23362839.2020.7.2.513

Choice or No Choice? Genuine or Fake Choice? – A Qualitative Study for Reflecting on Housing Choice

Choice or No Choice? Genuine or Fake Choice? – A Qualitative Study for Reflecting on Housing Choice

This paper seeks to reflect on issues related to the nature of housing choice, drawing on qualitative empirical data collected in in-depth interviews.  This paper discusses two perspectives related to housing choice, namely, the ‘market perspective of housing choice’ and the ‘perspective of housing choice for well-being’. The ‘market perspective of housing choice’ highlights that desirability generally increases with a greater range of housing choice as the housing supply increases till a climax is reached, after which a further expansion of housing choice may indicate an excess housing supply, which may not be advantageous and home-buyers may instead ‘decide not to choose or buy’.  The ‘perspective of housing choice for well-being’ reveals that choice in the housing arena is often viewed as a means to eventual well-being, rather than as an end in itself.  Housing choice is ‘genuine’ and ‘meaningful’ if there are meaningful and significant options among a few desirable housing alternatives. ‘Fake housing choice’ involves having to choose from among housing options that are all generally bad.

27.7.2020 | Betty Yung, Barbara Y. P. Leung | Volume: 7 | Issue: 2 | Pages: 1-10 | 10.13060/23362839.2020.7.2.510

Subsidised Housing? The Paradoxical Imaginaries of Finnish Non-Profit Rental Housing

Subsidised Housing? The Paradoxical Imaginaries of Finnish Non-Profit Rental Housing

As a developed welfare state, Finland has a long history of and continuing political support for housing policies, ranging from non-profit rental housing to owner-occupied housing supported by tax deductions. The current neoliberal critique, however, has questioned the efficiency and moral foundations of the established policies. This critique has taken as its target the difference between market rents and non-profit rents, citing this as an instance of ‘alternative costs’ for the city and, as such, as a form of subsidy that is unjustly distributed. However, the full picture of different housing subsidies – including those received by owner-occupiers – is not usually considered.  The paper concludes that the current debate does not take into account the ways in which different subsidies interact in the approaches used to provide affordable housing in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area. As such the critique becomes tacitly political, although it is represented in terms of rationality and justice.

28.5.2020 | Johanna Lilius, Kimmo Lapintie | Volume: 7 | Issue: 1 | Pages: 130-139 | 10.13060/23362839.2020.7.1.509

Correlation of Homeowners Associations and Inferior Property Value Appreciation

Correlation of Homeowners Associations and Inferior Property Value Appreciation

North to south migration in the U.S. and housing developers’ claims of benefits led to exponential growth in neighbourhood homeowners associations during recent decades. Sanctioned by state laws, association rules governing homeowners are usually initiated by developers who claim that the rules protect property values. But the claim is not supported by empirical analysis. Inflation adjusted annual percentage returns in consecutive sales of a sample of 900 most recent home sales in Duval County Florida, Pima County Arizona and St. Louis County Missouri during late 2017 and early-2018 were examined. The results revealed that the annual percentage returns on homes sold in homeowners associations were significantly less than those of homes in other neighbourhoods statistically controlling for property characteristics and prevailing economic conditions at the time of the original purchase. Correlates of home prices at any point in time are not predictive of percentage return from purchase to sale.

17.2.2019 | Leon Robertson | Volume: 6 | Issue: 1 | Pages: 42-50 | 10.13060/23362839.2019.6.1.455
Housing Financialisation and Families

The Ongoing Role of Family in the Provision of Housing in Greece during the Greek Crisis

The Ongoing Role of Family in the Provision of Housing in Greece during the Greek Crisis

The importance of the institution of family in housing practices has deep historical roots in Greece, and families tend to follow certain housing strategies such as late emancipation from the parental home, intergenerational house transfers and financial support for housing. Providing and maintaining a housing solution for young members is one of the top worries in this geographical region, and it is relieved via intergenerational micro-solidarities. Moreover, today’s crisis and austerity are threatening, through indirect budgetary cuts and rising taxation, the housing well-being of the citizenry which is supported only by family welfare. Nonetheless, the family still constitutes the main shock absorber of social and economic turbulence, but at what price?

6.12.2018 | Myrto Dagkouli - Kyriakoglou | Volume: 5 | Issue: 2 | Pages: 35-45 | 10.13060/23362839.2018.5.2.441
Social Housing after the GFC: Further Evidence

The Provision of Socially Minded Housing in Cyprus: Examining Historical References and Addressing Recent Challenges from an Architectural Perspective

The Provision of Socially Minded Housing in Cyprus: Examining Historical References and Addressing Recent Challenges from an Architectural Perspective

The purpose of this paper is to examine the recent challenges faced by stakeholders concerned with providing socially minded housing in Cyprus in view of the increased need for affordable housing in the five years after the financial crisis, which hit Cyprus in the spring of 2013 and impacted households. The demand was exacerbated by the influx of immigrants from South-eastern Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa in the same period. The paper discusses these challenges by examining the historical context of providing socially minded housing in Cyprus since the first institutional attempts were made in the years following the Second World War. The paper also presents some case studies, which are illustrated with design proposals that are the results of research in design by students and staff in the Department of Architecture of the University of Cyprus.

21.12.2017 | Andreas Savvides | Volume: 4 | Issue: 2 | Pages: 84-98 | 10.13060/23362839.2017.4.2.389
Social Housing after the GFC: New Trends across Europe

Social Housing in England: Affordable vs ''Affordable''

Social housing in England: Affordable vs ''Affordable''England''s increasing housing affordability problem, widely described as a ''housing crisis'', has become a major public and political concern in recent years. The proportion of social housing has been shrinking for 40 years but there is no political appetite—at least under the current government—to reverse this. Policies are instead addressed at making some private housing more affordable and at increasing access to owner occupation by allowing more social tenants to buy their homes. The government has increased its control over the financial affairs of social landlords, who are responding by concentrating on those areas of activity where control is less stringent.
27.6.2017 | Kathleen Scanlon | Volume: 4 | Issue: 1 | Pages: 21-30 | 10.13060/23362839.2017.4.1.321
Special issue on Nature-Home-Housing: Greening and Commoning of Urban Space

Nature-Home-Housing: Greening and Commoning of Urban Space

Nature-Home-Housing: Greening and Commoning of Urban Space

Editorial

30.12.2016 | Petr Gibas | Volume: 3 | Issue: 2 | Pages: 13-16 | 10.13060/23362839.2016.3.2.293

Imposing Tenure Mix on Residential Neighbourhoods: A Review of Actions to Address Unfinished Housing Estates in the Republic of Ireland

Imposing Tenure Mix on Residential Neighbourhoods: A Review of Actions to Address Unfinished Housing Estates in the Republic of Ireland

The ‘Celtic Tiger’ years (1995-2007) saw prosperous economic growth in the Republic of Ireland and an intense period of housing construction and urban development. In 2008 Ireland entered into recession, which resulted in a collapse of the property market and the construction industry. This collapse left just over 2,000 housing developments unfinished across the country. Since 2008, the Irish Government, in conjunction with local authorities, has been developing strategies and plans to finalise these unfinished estates. This paper reports on the current practices for resolving issues in unfinished housing estates in the Republic of Ireland, with a particular focus on the plans to utilise empty housing for social housing purposes. The paper critiques the ways in which this imposed tenure mix can potentially threaten housing policy objectives for sustainable and balanced communities. It is the contention of this paper that this housing practice needs urgent review.

28.6.2014 | Therese Kenna, Michael O'Sullivan | Volume: 1 | Issue: 2 | Pages: 53-62 | 10.13060/23362839.2014.1.2.115

Managing the Land Access Paradox in the Urbanizing World

Managing the Land Access Paradox in the Urbanizing World

In the midst of rapid urbanisation and economic growth, the developing world faces challenges in the relationships between land, poverty, and security. Rising social and economic exclusion and insufficient land regulations have spawned an informal housing sector. Given the risk to the broad base of middle- and low-income households in developing countries and the growing demands in urbanising land markets, it is imperative that governments develop a more fine-grained understanding of their land and housing policies.  Local authorities must also begin to consider innovative ways to preserve affordability in a market-responsive way. Community land trusts (CLTs) provide one means of resolving the paradox between formalising land ownership and mitigating exclusion from an increasingly unaffordable land market. CLTs seek to balance private property rights, which are the cornerstone of modern land markets and individual wealth, with the affordability and accessibility needs of the community.

28.1.2014 | Meagan Ehlenz | Volume: 1 | Issue: 1 | Pages: 17-25 | 10.13060/23362839.2014.1.1.26

The Development of New-Style Public Rental Housing in Shanghai

The Development of New-Style Public Rental Housing in Shanghai

This paper studies the roles of the new-style PRH (public rental housing) programme in Shanghai’s socio-spatial dynamics. It shows that the development of PRH in Shanghai is mainly a result of a deliberate urban development policy in line with other strategies such as city marketing and gentrification. The analysis is augmented with data from a questionnaire survey of PRH tenants in Shanghai. Finally, this paper identifies challenges for the future development of the public rental housing sector in China.

27.1.2014 | Jie Chen | Volume: 1 | Issue: 1 | Pages: 26-34 | 10.13060/23362839.2014.1.1.27