The global financial crisis: challenges for housing research and policies

This paper explores the implications of observed national housing sector experiences across the advanced economies before, through and out of the ‘Great Financial Crash’ (GFC) of 2008. The evidence suggests that over-aggregative explanation of these experiences and their broader economic consequences is somewhat misleading; empirical and theoretical explanations to date have largely failed to recognise that housing sectors can play transformative rather than just passive roles in shaping national economic outcomes. In practice, housing volatility, and the implications of this volatility for macroeconomic stability and growth, reflects specific national financial, spatial and policy structures, housing system institutional structures and participant behaviour patterns. In spite of this, the housing policy paradigms that dominated in the decades prior to the GFC remain largely in place, and national housing policy frameworks continue to give insufficient attention to housing system stability and efficiency concerns. Housing research and housing policies need to be reoriented to better address the processes that contributed to the GFC and that more generally continue to shape national economic cycles and growth paths.     

Sustainable homes,or simply energy-efficient buildings?

Environmental consideration within the Swedish construction sector can no longer be considered marginal. It is here discussed whether the same commitment is extended to facilitate deeper dimensions of sustainability in the provision of housing, beyond simply energy-efficient residential buildings? The paper presents the case of a multi-family ‘green’ residential area being developed in Göteborg, Sweden. An interview study with the seven housing developers building in the area provides primary empirical insights, further complemented by findings from a workshop with architects involved in the project. Conceptualizations of sustainability in housing are explored, based in discourses among these market actors. Issues identified in the inductive data analysis relate to the ambitions set and measures taken in new ‘green’ building, as well as market perceptions of housing standards, lifestyles and household configurations that are reproduced in the built environment. The paper shows that interpretations of sustainability in market-led housing development do not radically challenge the normative and resource intense contemporary ideals surrounding the urban home and that the realization of goals undertaken in the case of Kvillebäcken is generally dependent on economic considerations and market assessments. In conclusion, the paper emphasizes the need to formulate an integrative approach to more holistic sustainable residential environments.     

Policy and practice restructuring urban neighbourhoods in the Netherlands: Four birds with one stone

Since 1997, the Netherlands Ministry of Housing has taken a new course in its effort to restructure urban neighbourhoods. Compared with traditional urban renewal policy, the new approach is both similar and different. The traditional policy was to ‘build for the neighbourhood’ and was thus mainly concerned with accommodating sitting tenants and providing social housing. The new policy differentiates its approach and targets a diverse urban population, specifically by reducing the stock of social rented housing and expanding the stock of expensive owner-occupied dwellings. This paper reviews the new policy and questions the conventional wisdom of avoiding spatial concentrations of low-income households. Instead, it proposes objectives that seem much more viable: objectives related to strategic housing stock policy, economic vitality, and the sustainability of the city. As an outcome of urban restructuring, cities may become vibrant, undivided, and sustainable while providing a housing stock for which there is a real demand—four birds with one stone, not a bad, score.     

High dwelling vacancy rate and high prices of housing in Malta a mediterranean phenomenon

Current data from South European countries, especially Malta, indicates the existence of some contradictory forces in the housing market that defy the law of supply and demand and require explanation. In a ‘normal’ housing market, it can be expected that a high dwelling vacancy rate would help keep down the price of housing. In Malta, however, both the vacancy rate and housing prices have been rising in tandem for decades, unabated, even under the recent international market crunch. The government housing policy, which has always stimulated homeownership, is still encouraging new house building. Despite the high number (over 50,000) of vacant dwellings, the authorities issue more than 6,000 building permits annually to the private sector. In this paper we outline and explain the major factors contributing to this unlikely combination. Doing so, we use a welfare-state perspective. We identify and explain the underlying factors that are collectively responsible for such a paradox: the state; the family; the powerful Catholic Church; the underdeveloped Maltese financial market; and the paternalistic culture prevalent in Malta.     

Housing supply,profit and housing production: The case of the United Kingdom,the Netherlands and Germany

This article investigates the relationship between housing production in the private sector and profitability in three European countries: the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Germany. The relationship between private sector production and profitability is suggested by Ambrose and Barlow (1987) to be an important contributory factor to understanding levels of house building in Europe. The article utilizes a model of ‘profitability’ based upon three variables: house prices, land prices and building costs. The model is considered with other theories relating to housing production. These are: first, the way in which governments organize housing production, second, the mode of housing development; and third, motivations of house builders themselves. These issues are shown through the results to be significant in explaining why trends in the three countries are dissimilar. The conclusions are that a private sector functions better where government plays a strong steering role, particularly in the land market. The relationship between production and profit is weak where systems of supply exhibit a high degree of speculative activity or where new production relies upon the decisions of individual households rather than firms. The article raises particular questions of definition and comparison. These are in relation to the ‘private sector’ and to the profit model itself.     

荷兰社会住宅的可持续更新——以罗森达尔“被动房”住宅项目为例

文章简述了荷兰可持续社会住宅的基本情况和欧洲“被动房”建筑的相关概念,并介绍了荷兰罗森达尔的一个社会住宅更新项目。该项目运用“被动房”建筑的理念和技术对原有住宅进行更新改造,从而大大降低建筑的能耗,实现了社会住宅的环境可持续性目标。     

Meanings of housing qualities in suburbia: empirical evidence from Auckland, New Zealand

Housing research has mostly addressed notions of housing qualities either from a quantitative approach or through the provision and availability of housing. The literature has predominantly focused on physical structures, often neglecting residents’ experiences of the built environment. Including individuals’ perceptions of their dwelling environment can add insights valuable to planning and design efforts which are aimed at providing good ‘quality’ and need to be taken into account in concepts of housing quality. The present study considers the housing qualities of a suburban built environment as psychological and socio-cultural aspects that are experienced by residents. Owner-occupants’ perceptions of housing quality are illustrated through the use of ‘tag clouds’ that represent visual dwelling-quality profiles. They highlight which attributes of the occupants’ living environment are meaningful to them and how they achieve a greater sense of belonging in the dwelling as well as in the neighbourhood. This paper draws on results from in-depth interviews and brainstorming about housing qualities with 19 owner-occupants in the suburb of Farm Cove in Manukau City in the Auckland Region, New Zealand. Two predominant age groups were identified in this case study: the elderly long-term residents who moved to the area in the 1970s during the time of suburbanization; and families in their thirties and early forties who moved to the area in recent years. The paper reveals a shift in experienced housing qualities from tangible among the younger cohort towards more intangible qualities among the elderly. An assessment of the findings suggests a need for future planning which caters for more heterogeneous housing qualities.     

The Reverse Side of the Medal: About the 2010 FIFA World Cup and the Beautification of the N2 in Cape Town

This paper aims to show the reverse side of the (football) medal. The N2 gateway project in Cape Town is presented, by government and media, as a ‘flagship’ project of the new Breaking New Ground strategy, to fight the housing backlog of 400,000 houses in the city. But I want to argue that the fast-tracking of the project has to be understood as a beautification strategy to prepare the city for 2010. Massive slum eradication and the construction of ‘beautiful formal housing opportunities’ between the airport and the mother city are becoming a painful reminder of the forced removals under the apartheid regime.

Towards Creating Inclusive Cities: Experiences and Challenges in Contemporary African Cities

Housing provision in South Africa has focussed on the delivery of ownership houses at the expense of other forms of tenure and types of housing. This strategy presumes that people live close to where they work. However, ‘migrant’ workers who do not want to own but need affordable accommodation in the city are still prevalent in urban areas. The focus in this paper is on access to affordable rental housing as a mechanism for inclusion in the city with a particular emphasis on ‘rooms’ as this appears to be a neglected type of provision on the formal housing agenda. The paper explores the socio-economic circumstances of the persons occupying these rooms, their strategies for seeking accommodation in the city in the face of a shortage of appropriate and affordable housing, and under conditions of extreme poverty. The paper looks at the different ways in which rooms are accessed and provided in the city of Johannesburg with an emphasis on the physical aspects of this form of housing. The paper is based on the author's previous research and policy work on homelessness, transitional and communal housing, backyard rooms, RDP housing evaluation and design strategies for medium density housing.     

Environmental Sustainability of Hong Kong's Housing System and the Housing Process Model

A preliminary assessment of the overall environmental sustainability of the existing housing system of Hong Kong is given, and the usefulness of M. Bhatti's building life-cycle model in developing a policy for sustainable housing development is assessed. While it is found that housing development in this highly compact city may not be ecologically sustainable, high-density living does enable some environment-friendly practices. The life-cycle model is instrumental in estimating the overall greenness of the housing processes, and prompts the need for formulating a sustainable housing policy. However, the model itself does not provide a framework for developing such a policy.     

Property-based welfare and European homeowners: how would housing perform as a pension?

Notwithstanding current market volatility, there has been exceptional expansion in owner-occupied housing sectors and increases in house prices across European countries in recent decades. In the EU, individual wealth held in housing equity, especially among older people, has been considered a substantial reserve that could be tapped into to meet future pension needs as the ageing of the population becomes a greater stress on European welfare states. This paper seeks to take the notion of ‘property-based welfare’ further by examining, in principle at least, how home ownership may function as a pension across EU states. This firstly involves very approximate estimates of the types of, and rates of, income homeowners could hypothetically generate from their homes, including forms of income in kind. Secondly, criteria are identified to estimate how ‘adequate’ such potential incomes are in relation to working incomes and in bringing retired households above poverty levels. Thirdly, different circumstances across EU member states with regard to existing housing and pension arrangements are examined. Broad national groupings appear evident, with housing income having least impact in older member states in central and northern Europe. The paper concludes that while the potential outcome of housing wealth is country specific, in many cases, greater dependency on home ownership in welfare provision, particularly if it is used as a substitute rather than a complement to existing arrangements, may have adverse consequences for many.     

INTEGER现代复合竹结构建筑

Integer China设计近期落成的昆明世博生态城多层现代复合竹结构住宅与正在实施的四川灾区中国儿基会毕马威社区中心的大跨度竹结构公共建筑是中国现代房屋发展进程中的里程碑。竹集成材发展成的2×4工法、大跨度框架结构以及各类墙体板材的开发与实践是整体性可持续房屋体系改革的积极示范,是通过绿色方式解决中国住屋中的规模问题、资源问题、性能问题的有效途径。本文将详细介绍两栋示范屋的创新体系、性能以及相关的实施要素。据此,文章引申出可持续建设产业化的INTEGER绿色创新模式,即整合资源保育、技能发展、体系效益与社会融合的四位一体的可持续之道。     

International comparison of social housing management in Western Europe

This article provides an overview of social housing management in seven West-European countries. In order to place the concept of housing management in context and allow comparison, housing management is classified according to technical, social and financial aspects of management. Housing management has become increasingly independent and the financial ties are becoming looser in nearly all of the seven investigated countries. Even though governments still play a major role in Europe with respect to the granting of subsidies, the non-profit institutions have to entirely rely on the capital market in order to obtain the required funds. However, in many cases intermediary organisations are still responsible for attracting loans. Peter Boelhouwer is a senior research at the OTB Research Institute for Housing, Urban and Mobility Studies, Delft University of Technology. His research focus has been on general housing policy, housing finance and comparative housing research. This paper is based on two recent OTB-studies about the social rented sector in Western Europe. The first study was written by Birgitta van de Ven and was published in 1995 in the Dutch series “Volkshuisvestingsbeleid en Bouwmarkt” (26). The title of this report is “Housing systems in Europe: A comparative study of housing management”. The second study (Boelhouwer, 1996) is titled “Financing the social rented sector in Western Europe”, and is published in the series Housing and Urban Policy Studies. This project was carried out by the OTB in cooperation with the School of the Built Environment of the De Montfort University in Leicester (UK). This cooperation forms part of the Centre for Comparative Housing Research.     

Quasi-marketising access to social housing in Britain: assessing the distributional impacts

Since 2000 growing numbers of British social landlords have emulated their Dutch counterparts by introducing a ‘quasi-market’ approach to letting vacant properties. Known in Britain as choice-based lettings (CBL), the new approach aspires to treat people seeking social housing as consumers and to encourage consumerist behaviour. This is consistent with a wider drive for UK welfare state reforms emphasizing ‘customer choice’. As in other policy areas (e.g., education and health) the widening of service-user choice in this area has given rise to concerns that a more market-like system could be to the detriment of already disadvantaged groups. In the CBL case, particular concerns have been expressed about the possible consequences for formerly homeless households. It has also been suggested that, in shifting responsibility for decisions on matching properties and people from landlords to house-seekers themselves, CBL might exacerbate ethnic segregation. Drawing on a government-commissioned study focusing on early CBL schemes in England and Scotland, this paper examines these hypotheses in the light of empirical evidence. The analysis finds no indication that formerly homeless households tend to be disadvantaged under CBL in terms of area popularity or property quality. And, in general, the system appears to produce a more spatially dispersed—rather than a more concentrated—pattern of lettings to ethnic minority households.

A price-responsive framework for interregional input-output

In interregional analysis, supply models are based typically on defined sets of ‘representative firms’ with given ‘averaged’ technological and cost coefficients, such that, when aggregated as identical units into both sectors and regions, they reproduce the total output of each sector in each region. Then, deterministic models obtain profit-maximising patterns of input demands and corresponding output, prior to aggregating these quantities as if the firms were truly identical and homogeneous. In this paper, the above optimisation models are replaced by a probabilistic framework, which nevertheless guarantees convergence to the above classical deterministic solutions in the limit. The models are estimated on ‘observed’ flows, technological coefficients and prices, and a CES function (optionally) handles substitution between primary factors. These new input-output models become explicitly price-responsive, allowing tatonnement with spatial models of final demand. Received: June 1996 / Accepted: February 1997     

Value for money: Quality and price of land for social housing in the Netherlands

The Dutch take pride in their policy on housing and the development of urban land. After the Second World War, the Housing Act—dating from 1901—was elaborated into specific rules for physical planning and a system of subsidizing the production and management of a large number of social rented dwellings. The effectiveness of the Dutch approach was based upon the synergy of state interventions in physical planning, housing and land policy. This article analyses the performance of this system in two respects. Firstly, it looks at how the system affected the influence of prices of virgin land and of land development costs on decisions in physical planning, and what effect it had on prices of serviced land for social housing. This section is based on an analysis of Dutch land policy and the resulting land prices for housing over the entire post-war period. Secondly, this article considers what the Dutch system contributed to social integration in Dutch cities, and whether it gave lower—income groups access to locations with better quality than the free market would have offered. This second part of the study is based on empirical data on the socio-spatial development of The Hague and its region. Regarding the existing English literature on the successes of Dutch policy, the author suggests a more carefully balanced appraisal. This leads to some points for a research agenda for land policy in the Netherlands, given the rapid shift to marketled production in Dutch housing.     

The interorganizational innovation processes of sustainable building: A Dutch case of joint building innovation in sustainability

This article's subject is the cooperation process between organizations that develop and implement innovations in sustainable building. Its main research question is how governmental and commercial organizations organize and structure their joint activities to develop innovations in sustainability. In the search for answers to this question the cooperative activities of innovating organizations are modelled as an interorganizational innovation process. The case study research method is used to investigate the development of interorganizational innovation patterns in sustainability in seven house-building projects in the Dutch residential building sector. The empirical research findings are discussed by means of a comparison with the theoretical framework that includes five complementary stage models of interorganizational innovation processes. The main conclusions of the research are that (1) governmental and commercial organizations that successfully innovate in sustainability go through eight consecutive stages of interorganizational innovation, and (2) perform twenty-two interaction patterns that are part of these stages.     

Housing intermediary services in China: the rise and fall of ‘Fang Wu Yin Hang’

Housing reforms in China are often conceived to have engendered a gradual shift towards a market system. New institutions have been introduced to enable decentralized, monetarized and privatized allocation of housing units. This study explores the emergence, growth and downfall of an intermediary service (known as ‘fang wu yin hang’) created spontaneously by real estate agents to facilitate housing transactions in the Chinese cities. Although this new institution looked capable of strengthening the rationality, efficiency, transparency and impersonality of China’s housing market, it was abandoned soon after its inception. The failure of this transient service suggests the presence of some social institutions, which could have blocked China’s progress towards a full-fledged market system in the housing sector.

The changing role of the Dutch social rented sector

The article traces the evolution of the research interests of Dieleman, an academic who combined the development of analytical models with explorations of the policy implications of the changing structure of housing markets. During his long career as a professor of geography, he championed international cooperation in research and played a major role in disseminating the results of Dutch academic studies to an international audience. His own work was concentrated on the analysis of residential mobility. But much of that work also revealed his interest in applying scholarly insights to policy issues. Throughout his career he showed a deep commitment to improving the functioning of the social rented sector in the Dutch housing market. After reviewing some of Dieleman’s major contributions to the understanding of the housing market, the article follows in his footsteps by analyzing the current use of social rented housing. In this way, this article provides an update on his field of interest based on recent survey data that underlines the validity of his insights.