High-quality housing—A key issue in delivering sustainable communities

UK cities have been subject to severe social and economic pressures over the past few decades, which have had an uneven spatial impact on the urban environment and have given a rise to the concentration of the most deprived households in the worst urban neighbourhoods. The current government objective can be interpreted as an attempt to implement regeneration projects or create sustainable communities to improve quality of life. Housing is a key issue to consider in delivering healthy and attractive communities. Sustainable housing should be well available, high-quality, economical, ecological, aesthetical design, comfortable and cosy one, which would better suit the needs of a person. Furthermore, dwelling houses, apartments or, in other words, housing premises, must be set out according to the conditions of that locality and must meet the established technical and hygienic requirements. The article focuses on sustainable housing issue in the UK and a sustainable housing development model for communities is proposed.     

Globalization and urban governance in Istanbul

Since the 1980s, the topic of governance has been extensively investigated in parallel with the effects of globalization on policy issues. Meanwhile, there has been an increasing fragmentation of responsibilities in the urban arena. Now, the main focus is on new institutional relations and the policy process in which different constituents and agencies participate at both the national and the local level. As a result of the rescaling process of the state, networked forms of governance constitute a new form of politics. The changing governance structure in Istanbul, as in many other cities, is shaped by the interaction of economic and institutional factors, which are mediated through political, cultural and other contextual forces. To demonstrate that global forces influence urban management systems, this article describes the increasing participation of the private sector in urban development in Istanbul. An evaluation of urban governance is made to ascertain whether the concept of governance can explain the urban management model prevailing in Istanbul.     

Impacts of contrasting housing policies on low-income households in Australia and the Netherlands

This paper aims to contribute to the debate in comparative housing studies about the significance of national housing policies by considering what can be learnt from analysing the consequences of different policy paths. In particular, the paper looks at the evidence of the long-run impacts of different housing strategies adopted to assist lower-income households in Australia and the Netherlands, using housing affordability as a measure of their impact. Australia is an example of a country that has promoted mass home ownership across the income distribution supplemented by a very small public housing system. In contrast, the Netherlands has relied more on a large and diversified social housing sector. The comparative analysis shows that there are many similarities in the patterns of affordability among low-income households in the two countries despite the use of different policy means. In the past, both countries had good success providing secure and affordable housing for poorer households. Now, lower-income households are experiencing greater affordability problems that are linked to societal changes and the retrenchment of government housing assistance in both cases. However, the study also finds that affordability problems among lower-income households are worse in Australia because of the greater reliance on private housing in that country.     

Landlords and Tenants in Informal ‘Colonia’ Settlements in Texas

Owner-occupied self-help and self-managed housing has been the norm in colonias—low-income informal settlements along the US–Mexico border—so scholarly treatment of renting in these settlements has been limited. This article adds to the scant literature on this topic and is the first to document the nature of renting in multi-unit rental complexes in colonias. The article explores the characteristics of landlords and their motivations for pursuing landlordism by drawing upon key informant interviews with owners of rental property. The results of 47 surveys conducted with households in multi-unit complexes throughout 18 colonias in Starr County, as well as the results from intensive, conversational case study interviews with selected households, are used to illustrate the precarious and informal nature of renting in colonias and provide a limited portrayal of the housing preferences and needs of renters. The article ends with an evaluation of the policy implications of these findings.     

探求上海“保障性住房涵盖之外”低收入阶层住房解决的可能性途径

通过对特大城市中保障性住房发展建设若干局限性的分析,指出解决特大城市低收入阶层住房不宜仅仅依靠大规模建设保障性住房,充分利用现有的住房租售市场、打破城乡二元分割的住房政策等也是解决低收入阶层的居住问题不可忽视的方面。以上海为例,分析上海市低收入阶层的构成及空间分布,探讨目前"保障性住房涵盖之外"的低收入群体解决住房的典型方式,并据此提出若干针对特大城市中未纳入保障性住房体系的大量低收入阶层解决基本住房需求的政策建议,以缓解社会压力,维护社会的稳定和谐。     

城市设计与城市公共空间犯罪防控

城市犯罪是当代城市严重的社会问题之，在城市设计中对城市公共空间犯罪实施有效的防控是解决城市犯罪问题的个重要途径。该文在对城市公共空间犯罪防控进行理论辨析的基础上，重点针对商业区、住宅区、公园、街道等公共空间作了相应的设计探讨。     

Urban Structures and Land. The Morphological Effects of Dealing with Property Rights

Urban regeneration is an increasingly important but complex business. One factor that is widely recognised as adding to the complexity is the fragmentation of landownership. However, not only does this affect the process, it also reveals itself in the outcome of urban regeneration—the urban morphology. Property rights theory helps to conceptualise this relationship. On the basis of this and two empirical cases, this paper demonstrates that the assignment of bundles of property rights over land, the delineation of the right use land and the value of land are intimately linked. These links affect the urban morphology both directly and indirectly. A direct effect of property rights structures is the incorporation of existing land uses in new development schemes. Indirect effects are the physical measures, such as increased densities and less public space, which are taken to compensate for the financial deficits that are caused by high land acquisition costs.     

An urban social movement challenging urban regeneration: The case of Sulukule, Istanbul

Urban regeneration projects have become a focus of attention in Istanbul due to tourism promotion, particularly great expectations from the European Capital of Culture 2010 Event. Sulukule, a Romani neighborhood on the historical peninsula of Istanbul, was designated as an urban redevelopment zone. The Sulukule Urban Regeneration Project is one of the recent efforts to present “a better urban environment” to foreign visitors and investors. The project has accelerated the struggle for land, causing dispossessions, evictions and demolitions. Locals’ needs and rights are denied. Consequently, the citizens in Sulukule started to oppose regeneration and formed an urban social movement. This paper attempts to analyze the urban social movement in Sulukule, the Sulukule Platform, which emerged as an urban coalition challenging tourism-led regeneration.     

日本公共租赁住宅的建设历程与经验教训

本文以日本住宅公团为代表的公共租赁住宅为例,分析建设历程中积累的很多经验教训,提出住宅不应只是一个空间,而必须成为普及新的生活方式和提高生活水平的道具;住宅建设也应该是包括维持管理、改造再生的长久和可持续的过程,同时普及产业化,促进生产力水平的提高,希望对我国现在进行的保障性住房的建设起到借鉴意义。     

北京市非正式住房聚居区居住环境发展趋势研究——以双泉堡为例

非正式住房聚居区已成为特大城市中不可忽视的重大问题,北京市目前针对此类区域主要采取整体腾退取代的改造方式,但对于此类区域应该运用取代还是改良的改造方式一直还处在争论之中。本研究回顾了2010年上半年以北京著名的双泉堡非正式聚居区为案例展开的居住实态调研,并结合2013年下半年开展的后续实地调研,获取了区域内物质环境与群体特征等方面的数据而后基于时间序列进行对比。笔者希望通过调研和对比分析从而研究这类区域在城市化进程之中的发展趋势,并希望此研究结果对政府今后制定与此类研究对象的相关政策有一定参考意义。     

Atkinson Housing Co-operative: A Leading Edge Conversion from Public Housing

In 2003 the Atkinson community became the first public housing project to convert into a non-equity co-operative. After providing a brief introduction to the development of non-market housing policy in Canada, this paper discusses the process of creating the Atkinson co-operative. The conversion of Atkinson has produced a new model of social housing, in that Atkinson operates neither as a pure housing co-operative nor as a public housing project, but rather as a synthesis of the two models, referred to as a hybrid, or an incorporated co-operative within the public sector. The features of the hybrid arrangement are grouped within the following categories: land/property; finances; property management and administration; governance and decision-making practices; education and community programs; housing charges/rents; and living in public housing. The final section of this paper locates the Atkinson experiment within the tenant-management literature in public housing and also discusses the conversion as a process in community development. Although it is premature to determine the efficacy of this model, the results are likely to influence the movement for increasing tenant involvement in the management of public housing.     

城市可持续发展研究在建筑设计教学中的应用 ——城市生态住宅设计课题介绍

本文概述了一次将可持续发展研究成果引入建筑设计课教学的成功尝试。可持续发展观念对未来的城市规划、建筑设计和建筑教育具有重要影响。设计课的选题和设计过程,应引导学生用可持续发展的眼光来研究和批判现实问题,并用可持续发展的原理来提出解决问题的方法。本文通过介绍一个城市生态住宅设计任务书,以及在此任务书的指导下做出的几个方案,展示了可持续发展观念在激发创造性思维方面的作用,同时也说明科研与建筑教学相结合的重要意义。六个课程设计方案在国际学生竞赛中获奖。     

Repackaging the poor? Conceptualising neoliberal reforms of social rental housing

This paper considers the need for conceptual renewal in comparative housing research. Since the mid-1990s, Kemeny’s model of ‘unitary’ and ‘dualist’ rental markets and Harloe’s classification of ‘mass’ and ‘residual’ social housing provision have been repeatedly recycled in comparative studies of ‘social’ and ‘public’ housing provision. Amidst international neoliberal policy mobilities, their models based on liberal welfare regimes wield particular power. Conceived during neoliberal cutbacks of public services, Kemeny’s ‘dualist’ rental market and Harloe’s ‘residual’ model of social housing similarly depict state-subsidised rental housing provision as bureaucratic, and targeted to the poor. Despite empirical change, these models are still used to describe liberal welfare regimes, and to theorise international policy convergence. Based on a review of recent market-oriented reforms of state-subsidised rental housing provision in the US, Australia and England; original neoliberal ‘sites of production’, this contribution asks whether these conceptual models still reflect the empirics. Findings diverge from the models, undermining their assumptions about how neoliberal reforms progress.     

The Duration of Bad Housing and Children's Well-being in Britain

Improving children's living standards is a top priority for government policy makers. Whilst the presence of a link between bad housing and child outcomes has been acknowledged in a number of studies, there is little evidence on how long children live in bad housing for and whether the duration of living in bad housing is associated with other poor outcomes for children. This research uses five waves of data from the Families and Children Study, a representative longitudinal study of families with children in Britain, to show that the longer children live in bad housing the more vulnerable they are to a range of other poor outcomes included in the Government's Every Child Matters framework. The research implies that policy makers need to focus on reducing the substantial number of children who live in bad housing for long periods and that interventions in housing provision for families are likely to lead to improvements in many other aspects of children's lives.     

New trajectories in urban regeneration processes: Cultural capital as source of human and social capital accumulation – Evidence from the case of Tohu in Montreal

Throughout the late 20th and early 21st Centuries, culture has gained increasing importance in strategies designed to deal with new trajectories of urban areas. Post-industrial cities seek to revive former industrial, contaminated and waterfront sites and their city centers, as they are aiming to establish themselves in the new arena of the global market place.     

Converting a public housing project into a tenant-managed housing co-operative: A Canadian case study

The conversion of the Alexandra Park public housing project into the Atkinson Housing Co-operative took place from 1992 to 2003. The new co-operative represents an attempt to increase resident participation in the management of their housing community. Although there have been other efforts to increase resident participation, this is the first conversion of its kind in Canada, and as a result a new housing model has been created. This paper discusses this new model, referred to as a hybrid structure that contains elements of the co-operative and public housing models.