Improving Housing Design

To improve housing design,the Ministry ofConstruction has launched a nationwide competition ofnew housing design for the 8th Five-Year Plan period.The author has made an analytical evaluation of the mainfeatures of more than 2.600 designs submitted.     

The Comfortable Housing Project and Its Impact on Housing Reform

ＴｈｅＣｏｍｆｏｒｔａｂｌｅＨｏｕｓｉｎｇＰｒｏｊｅｃｔａｎｄＩｔｓＩｍｐａｃｔ　ｏｎＨｏｕｓｉｎｇＲｅｆｏｒｍＨｏｎＸｉｍｉｎ１．ＰｏｌｉｃｙＦｒａｍｅｗｏｒｋＴｈｅｐｏｌｉｃｙｆｒａｍｅｗｏｒｋｏｆＣｈｉｎａ／ｓＣｏｍｆｏｒｔａｂｌｅＨｏｕｓｉｎ...     

Problems in Housing Reform

Housing reform is an important com-ponent of comprehensive urban reform. Thereform of the irrational housing system will,on the one hand, solve the urgent housingproblem so as to stimulate people's enthusi-asm for reform and, on the other, shift the     

The Development of Affordable Housing

ＴｈｅＤｅｖｅｌｏｐｍｅｎｔｏｆＡｆｆｏｒｄａｂｌeＨｏｕｓｉｎｇＬｕＹｏｕｊｉｅＣｈｉｎａ／ｓｕｒｂａｎｈｏｕｓｉｎｇｒｅｆｏｒｍ，ｗｈｉｃｈｉｓｏｎｅｏｆｔｈｅｍｏｓｔｉｍｐｏｒｔａｎｔｐａｒｔｓｏｆｔｈｅｎａｔｉｏｎ／ｓｅｃｏｎｏｍｉｃｒｅｆｏ?..     

Housing Cooperatives Come to China

Strongly supported by the Chinesegovernment,the urban housingcooperative is regarded as an effective wayto quicken housing construction.Up tonow,housing cooperatives have been es-tablished in cities like Beijing,Tianjin,Shanghai,Shenyang,Wuhan,Kunming,Lanzhou,Chengdu,Huhehot,Baotou,Taiyuan,Wenzhou,Zibo etc.. It is a com-mon view that housing cooperatives can     

Fixing Housing Cooperative in Wuhan

ＦｕｘｉｎｇＨｏｕｓｉｎｇＣｏｏｐｅｒａｔｉｖｅｉｎＷｕｈａｎＳｕｎＺｉｗｅｉ；ＨｕＪｕｎ１．ＢａｃｋｇｒｏｕｎｄＣｈｉｎａ，ｌｉｋｅｏｔｈｅｒｄｅｖｅｌｏｐｉｎｇｃｏｕｎｔｒｉｅｓ，ｓｕｆｆｅｒｓｆｒｏｍｈｏｕｓｉｎｇｓｈｏｒｔａｇｅｓ．Ａｓｔｈｅ...     

Housing Affordability in Singapore: Can We Move from Public to Private Housing?

With 84 per cent of the Singapore resident population housed in public housing, the ultimate dream for many is to move into private housing, which is generally considered to offer better quality and more exclusive living. This article is concerned with the enabling factors of affordability in housing mobility. It examines the Singapore public housing homeowners' affordability of private housing, suggesting a measure of that affordability. The survey findings indicate that only a small percentage of public homeowners can afford to move to median-priced private apartments. The number is even smaller for the relatively more expensive landed housing with own garden. On a theoretical level, the study demonstrates that the use of multiple methods to measure housing affordability is beneficial as more affordability determinants are included in the measurement.     

Political Economy and Housing in the Twenty-first Century – From Mobile Homes to Liquid Housing?

The recent Global Financial Crisis started as a crisis in the US sub-prime mortgage market, and rapidly spread to a wider financial crisis. This article suggests that beyond the crisis, we can now see that households are playing an evolving role as a site of risk absorption. In so doing, households have become a frontier of capital accumulation, not just as producers and consumers, but also as financial traders. Households are increasingly buying financialized products as an ordinary part of daily subsistence – houses, insurance, education, electricity and mobile phones. But at a level beyond the household’s daily reality, these regular purchases are being re-specified as assets, on which asset backed securities are built and then traded. It is in this way that by securitizing mortgage debt, finance has given global liquidity to housing. The size of securitized markets on housing as well as household assets and payment streams now dwarfs stock markets. The requirements of this emergent financial citizenship for the house and households extend beyond just honouring payments on a home purchase, it is requiring a culture of financial calculation that becomes absorbed as part of the daily norms and dispositions of social being. The presumption of rights of access to housing, education and health care are being replaced by the acceptance of individual financial participation and calculation. Here, we argue housing is being reconstructed as both the capital base for, and site of, individualized life course risk management.     

瑰丽石材且看Karim Housing Enterprises

Karim Housing Enterprises致力于所有的商业、工业和住宅从设计理念到装修石材使用的完美,是巴基斯坦一家拥有矿山的石材家族企业,创建于1975年。在过去的35年里公司已经发展成为巴基斯坦最大的天然石材供应商。其产品广泛出口到中国、中东和非洲等地区。     

Opportunities and Constraints in State Housing Policy: The Example of Tasmania's ‘Affordable Housing Strategy’

The lack of Commonwealth government funds for public housing has encouraged state governments across Australia to develop ‘Affordable Housing Strategies’ to address the problems that result from the shortage of housing available for low-income households. However, to date there has been limited discussion of the implications of these affordable housing strategies and their significance as a form of policy intervention. This article highlights the Tasmanian Government's ‘Affordable Housing Strategy’ as a case study to illustrate the obstacles that confront state housing policy makers. These include difficulties in securing partnerships with the private sector, an inability to influence macro-economic policy settings, fluctuations in the property market cycle and a reliance on small and uncertain budgetary allocations. However, there is limited scope to address some of the problems that have undermined previous state and Territory housing policy initiatives by reaching agreements with local government to ease planning controls for social housing, boosting the capacity of the community housing sector and using additional budgets judiciously.     

Housing System Reform is Steaming Ahead in China

A reform of the housing system whichconcerns the immediate interests of over 200million urban residents is going full steamahead in a great number of Chinese citiesand towns.Chen Jinhua,head of the leadinggroupfor housing reform of the State Councilrecently called cities and towns to have a boldtrial and to speed up the housing reform.     

The Reform on Housing Ownership in Urban China

ＴｈｅＲｅｆｏｒｍｏｎＨｏｕｓｉｎｇＯｗｎｅｒｓｈｉｐｉｎＵｒｂａｎＣｈｉｎａＬｉＹａｎｇＷｉｔｈｔｈｅｄｅｅｐｅｎｉｎｇｏｆｈｏｕｓｉｎｇｒｅｆｏｒｍ，ｔｈｅｉｓｓｕｅｏｆｈｏｕｓｉｎｇｏｗｎｅｒｓｈｉｐｈａｓｃｏｎｓｔａｎｔｌｙｂｅｅｎｒａｉｓｅ...     

On the Setting up of Independent Housing Institutions

ＯｎｔｈｅＳｅｔｔｉｎｇｕｐｏｆＩｎｄｅｐｅｎｄｅｎｔＨｏｕｓｉｎｇＩｎｓｔｉｔｕｔｉｏｎｓ（ＴｈｅＲｅｓｅａｒｃｈＧｒｏｕｐｏｎＨＯｕｓｉｎｇＲｅｆｏｒｍ，ＣｈｉｎａＡｃａｄｅｍｙｏｆＳｏｃｉａｌＳｃｉｅｎｃｅｓ）Ｈｏｕｓｉｎｇｒｅｆｏｒｍｉｎｕｒ...     

Proceeding from Actual Conditions to Conduct Housing Reform

The city of Tangshan in Hebei Provincehad a population of 1.41 million by the endof 1986,including 618,900 workers andstaff.The housing reform is a new subject inChina.With the approval of the Hebei pro-vincial people's government and the StateCouncil,Tangshan's housing reform planfor trial implementation has gone into     

A Review of Housing Construction in China''''s Cities

In this article,the author briefly reviews the urban housing construction in the 40 yearssince the founding of New China,especially over the recent ten years.He puts emphasis on theanalysis of the benefits and defects brought about by the financing and banking system for urbanhousing construction before and during the reform of housing system.     

Social Aspects of Beijing''''s Old and Dilapidated Housing Renewal——Beijing''''s Old and Dilapidated Housing Renewal(Part Ⅵ)

Ⅰ.Introduction Since the start of the program in 1990,Beijing＇s Oldand Dilapidated Housing Renewal has received considera-ble attention from all areas of society-from government of-ficials and professionals as well as ordinary citizens.The re-newal program has not only exerted a major impact on theold city areas of Beijing like the demolition of the old CityWall and the Pai Lou(Memorial Archways),but has alsobeen a sensitive issue related to housing problems whichmay affect hundreds of thousands of residents both in theold city and in other parts of Beijing.Furthermore,the pres-ervation of architectural relics and the historic core of Beij-ing Old City is now receiving more and more attention.Asa result,research on Beijing＇s housing renewal program in-volves a broad range of issues covering city development,housing construction and Old City preservation. The work of our group has involved lookingcomprehensively at all aspects of residential area renewal inold city areas-the economic,social and enviro     

Public Housing in U.S.A.

Housing problem was one of the prominent issues which would triggered revolution in the modem history, especially in 19th century Europe. This article is divided to three parts, policy of public housing, a historic view; built form of public housing and people's co-operation.     

Housing Renewal—Doesn't it Make You Sick?

Correlative links between poor housing and poor health have been well known for many years. A problem for urban studies, however, is that the supposed causal relationships underlying this correlation are ill-understood and only weakly established. Hence the expectation that housing improvement will lead to a corresponding change in the health of the community (and therefore of individuals) has little causal support and remains an assumption. Studies of renewal schemes have rarely operated at the micro process level which would allow this assumption to be tested. Moreover, significant changes in health are likely to occur only over a relatively long period; hence measurement is difficult and ascribing causation problematic. One way of approaching this research problem is to examine what impact the uninvited, and frequently dramatic, renewal process itself has on the health of the individual. In this research an interpretive biographical interview method was used to elicit tenants' understanding of their situation, of the experience of housing renewal and how it impacted upon their health and well-being. In some cases the process itself was indeed stressful and damaging while in others enjoyable and rewarding. This pointed to a complex web of factors but predominant and influential was that of personal control, its degree of importance to the individual and, crucially, its negotiability. This paper looks at the connections between control and health and re-introduces into the housing policy arena the importance of the individual whose interests are currently submerged in the 'imperatives' of community involvement and consultation. The research contributes to a housing-health linkages model (Easterlow et al., 2000) by introducing, as an important factor affecting health and well-being, the nature of the tenant/landlord relationship itself in the social rented sector and examining the potential for a new partnership at this 'micro' level.     

Magical or Monstrous? Hybridity in Social Housing Governance

While a growing number of national social housing strategies rely on the work of hybrid entities blending social and commercial tasks, the state/market dualism continues to dominate the conceptual landscape of housing research. This exploratory paper develops a conceptual approach to support research into the role of not-for-profit social entrepreneurs in the housing market. It looks for insights within their ‘hybrid’ status, spanning state and market, and subject to multiple sets of institutional conditions. Four frames of hybrid identity are developed, and then substantiated via a discussion of two different sectors of not-for-profit social entrepreneurs in Australia and the Netherlands. As the growth trajectory of each sector is traced and the construction of hybrid identity is explored from both public and private perspectives, institutional pressures are revealed that set the current context for development. This brings forth implications for existing conceptual tools, as well as directions for new research.