Review

LANDSCAPE PLANNING: an international journal on landscape ecology, reclamation and conservation, outdoor recreation and land‐use management (p122pp Illus.)

LAND SHAPE by Caroline Tisdall.

A review of The Land: Twentieth Century Landscape Photographs at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London and The Land published by Gordon Fraser (hardcover £6.00 softcover £2,75).

Courtesy The Guardian (November 28th, 1975).     

Book reviews

Cities, Housing and Profits: Flat Break‐up and the Decline of Private Renting. by Chris Hamnett and Bill Randolph. London: Hutchin‐son. 1988. 297pp. £25.00.

A Property‐Owning Democracy? by M. J. Daunton. London: Faber and Faber. 1987. 148pp. $6.95 (£3.95).

Loft Living: Culture & Capital in Urban Change. by Sharon Zukin. London: Radius. 1988. £8.95 (paperback).

Housing Association Law. by J. Alder and C. R. Handy. Sweet and Maxwell. 1987. 330pp. £26.00 (paperback).

The Design Professions and the Built Environment. edited by Paul L. Knox. London: Croom Helm 1988. 313pp. £35.00.

The Local State and Uneven Development. by Simon Duncan and Mark Goodwin. Cambridge: Polity Press (in association with Basil Blackwell). 1988. £8.95 (paperback).

Rehumanizing Housing. Necdet Teymur, Thomas A Markus and Tom Woolley (eds). London: Butterworths. 1988. pp196. £30.00.

Housing Policy and Tenures in Sweden. Lennort J. Lundquist. Gower 1988. pp173. FXX.

Housing in Postwar Canada: Demographic Change, Household Formation, and Housing Demand. John R Miron. Kingston and Montreal: McGill‐Queen's University Press. 1988. pp320. $35.00 (paperback).     

Book reviews

Reshaping Housing Policy: Subsidies, Rents and Residualisation. Peter Malpass. London: Routledge, 1989. pp196. £9.95 (paperback).

A Nation of Home Owners. Peter Saunders. London: Unwin and Hyman, 1990. pp418. £12.95 (paperback). £35.00 (hardback).

Ethnic Minority Housing: Explanations and Policies. Philip Sarre, Deborah Phillips and Richard Skellington. Aldershot: Avebury, 1989. xxiii, pp384. £35.00 (hardback). Research in Ethnic Relations Series.

Housing Policy in Developing Countries. Gil Shidlo (ed). London and New York: Routledge, 1990.

Rebuilding a Low‐Income Housing Policy. Rachel Bratt. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989. pp399.

Housing and Social Policy. D. Clapham, P. Kemp and S. J. Smith. London: Macmillan, 1990. pp274. £35.00 (hardback). £9.95 (paperback).

Privatism and Urban Policy in Britain and the United States. Timothy Bamekov, Robin Boyle and Daniel Rich. Oxford University Press, 1989. pp267. £35.00 (cloth).

Housing Policy: An Introduction. Paul N. Balchin. London, Routledge. 1989 second edition. 312pp. £30.00 cloth.     

Book reviews

Landlords and Property. Social Relations in the Private Rented Sector. J. Allen and L. McDowell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. pp209. £30.00.

Housebuilding in Britain's Countryside. Mark Shucksmith. London: Routledge, 1990. pp234. £35.00

A Radical Agenda ‐ after the New Right and the Old Left. David Donnison, London: Rivers Oram Press, 1991. pp215. £9.95 (paperback)

Housing Policy in the Socialist Third World. Kosta Mathey (ed). London: Mansell, 1990. pp332. £40.00.

Living in a Man‐made World: Gender Assumptions in Modern Housing Design. M. Roberts. London: Routledge, 1991. ppl77 and vii‐xii £10.99 paperback.     

Book reviews

Hostels to Homes. T. Dant and A. Deacon. Aldershot: Avebury. 1989. £25.00 hardback.

Scottish Housing: Policy and Politics 1885–1985. Richard Rodger (ed). Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1989. pp250. £35.00.

Urban Decline. David Clark. London: Routledge, 1989. pp161. £25.00 (hardback).

Beyond the Inner City. David Byrne. Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1989. pp179. £9.99 (paperback).

Homelessness in Britain. J. Greve with E. Currie. York: Joseph Rowntree Memorial Trust, 1990. pp32.

The New Homeless: The Crisis of Youth Homelessness and the Response of the Local Housing Authorities. R. Thornton. London: SHAC (The London Housing Aid Centre), 1990. pp86. £3.95.

Address Unknown: The Homeless in America. J. D. Wright. New York Aldine de Gruyter, 1989. pp170. DM42 (paperback).     

Book reviews

Housing Policy and Practice in Asia. edited by Seong‐Kyu Ha London: Croom Helm 1987. p197. Tables, figures, index. £25.00.

The Mortgage Market. by M. Boleat and A. Coles. Studies in Financial Institutions and Markets No 3. London; George Allen & Unwin, 1987. ppxi + 176. £25.

The Housing Morass: Regulation, Immobility and Unemployment. by Patrick Minford, Michael Peel and Paul Ashton. London: Institute of Economic Afiairs, 1987. pp 162. £6.50.

Rural Housing in Scotland: Recent Research and Policy. edited by Bryan MacGregor, Douglas Robertson and Mark Shucksmith. Aberdeen University Press. 1987. pp 224 £11.90 paper.

Property Before People, the Management of Twentieth Century Council Housing. by Anne Power. London: Allen and Unwin. 1987. £9.95 paper.

Housing, Dwellings and Homes: Design Theory, Research and Practice. by Roderick J. Lawrence. Chichester John Wiley and Sons. 1987. pp 290. £34.00 cloth.     

Race and the allocation of public housing: Changing perspectives,recurrent themes

Housing on Trial. By Elizabeth Burney. Oxford University Press (for Institute of Race Relations). 1967.

What Price Equality? Deborah Phillips, Greater London Council 1986.

Race, Class and the Allocation of State Housing. By Jeff Henderson and Valerie Kam. Aldershot: Gower. 1987.

Race and Housing: New Perspectives. edited by Susan Smith and John Mercer, University of Glasgow, Centre for Housing Research. 1987.     

Book reviews

Public Housing: Current Trends and Future Developments. edited by David Clapham and John English London: doom Helm, 1987.174pp. £22.50 cloth.

Shelter, Settlement and Development. edited by Lloyd Rodwin, Foreword by Dr Arcot Ramachandran, London: Allen & Unwin, 1987. 476 + xviipp. £30.

Building Communities the Co‐operative Way. by Johnston Birchall, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1988 223pp. £14.95.

The Weller Way. The Story of the Welter Street"s Housing Co‐operative. by Alan McDonald, London: Faber and Faber 1987 222pp. £2.95.

The Property Owing Democracy. edited by John Doling, Janet Ford and Bruce Stafford: Gower, 1988. 259pp. £25.     

Book reviews

Housing, Race and Law. Martin MacEwen. London: Routledge, 1991. ppxvii + 490.

Deterioration of the Public Sector Housing Stock. Diane Diacon. Aldershot: Avebury, 1991. pp267, £32.50 hardback.

The Colour of Money. The Impact of Housing Investment Decision Making on Black Housing Outcomes in London. Beverley Mullings. London: London Race and Housing Unit, Runnymede Trust 1991. pp142. £7.95.

Third World Housing in Social and Spatial Development: The Case of Jakarta. Lars Marcussen. Aldershot: Avebury, 1990. pp205. £28.50.

Clearance: The View from the Street. Frances Heywood and Mohammed Rashid Naz. Birmingham: Community Forum, 1990. pp284. £10.95.

No Place Like Home: The Hostels Experience. P. L. Garside, R. W. Grimshaw and F. J. Ward, Department of the Environment. London: HMSO. pp131, plus four Appendices and Bibliography. £16.00.

Housing and Labour Markets: Building the Connections. John Allen and Chris Hamnett (eds). London: Unwin Hyman, 1990. pp304, £14.95 (paper).     

Book reviews

Home Ownership: Differentiation and Fragmentation. Ray Forrest, Alan Murie and Peter Williams. London: Unwin Hyman, 1990. pp234. £12.95 (paper).

The Politics of ‘Race’ and Residence: Citizenship, Segregation and White Supremacy in Britain. Susan J. Smith, Oxford: Polity‐ Press, 1989. £29.50 (cloth), £9.95 (paper).

Housing Finance. David Garnett, Barbara Reid and Helen Riley. Harlow: Longman/Institute of Housing, 1990. pp171. £12.95.

Squatter Citizen: Life in the Urban Third World. Jorge E. Hardoy and David Satterthwaite. London: Earthscan Publications Ltd, 1989. pp ix + 374. £9.95 (paperback).

Moving the Housing Market. Ray Forrest and Alan Murie. Aldershot: Avebury. 1990. pp129. £27.50.

Under One Roof. Michael Ball. Harvester Wheatsheaf. 1990.     

Book reviews

The Housing and Living Environment for Retired people in Australia. edited by Ross Thorne. Sydney: Hale & Iremonger. 1986. pp348 $A 29.95.

The Modern Urban Landscape. by Edward Relph. London: Croom Helm, 1987 pp279. £10.95.

Housing the Homeless. edited by Jon Erickson and Charles Wilhelm New Brunswick, New Jersey: Center for Urban Policy Research, Rutgers University. 1986. pp459. $19.95.

Cities: Special Issue: Shelter and Homelessness. Vol 4 No 1, February 1987. London: Butterworth. pp104.     

Shared ownership: The socialisation or privatisation of housing?

Shared ownership schemes are being introduced in Australia at a time when there has been a considerable shift in community attitudes towards the role of the public sector. This shift has brought both a push for privatisation and a push for improved targeting of public expenditure.

The emergence of support for shared ownership can be interpreted, in turn, as a desire to prop up home ownership; a means of reducing public expenditure on housing and/or an attempt to improve the targeting of support provided by public housing. Shared ownership has been heralded as the new way of providing social housing by its protagonists and decried as a means of diverting scarce resources from more pressing needs by its critics. Which of these is paramount depends on the way in which shared ownership schemes are implemented.

This paper outlines a basic framework within which an unsubsidised shared ownership scheme can work and indicates how a subsidised approach can be introduced without threatening funds provided for public housing.     

Housing policy in the emergent socialist mixed economy of Eastern Europe

The late 1980s signal a qualitatively new stage in the development of socialist economies. Earlier reforms attempted to move away from a monolithic, centrally planned system, to find more effective mechanisms of economic management, in particular to reduce the role of planning and increase the role of the market within the statist economy. But during the last two or three years a significant change has occurred in the reform discourse. The debate over ‘how much plan and how much market’ has come to be replaced by a call for a reform of ownership (Bauer, 1988). A ‘socialist mixed economy’, with a statist sector complemented by a private sector seems to be in the making.

This paper has two aims.

In the first part I present the trend towards a socialist mixed economy. I will explain the forces pointing in this direction, the likely functioning of a socialist mixed economy, and finally, how different a socialist mixed economy might be from a capitalist one.

In the second part I look at the housing economy, and explore how housing policy may change as the national economy becomes increasingly mixed. Re‐privatisation of housing preceded re‐privatisation or deregulation in other sectors. From the late 1960s onwards the state began to withdraw from housing construction in many countries (Ciechocinska, 1988; Daniel and Temesi, 1984; Tosics, 1987). By the late 1980s a significant proportion of new housing was built which was the individual property of the occupants. Is the housing system therefore already a mixed economy? In my view, the answer to this question is no. The main purpose of the second section of my paper is to show that this ‘re‐privatisation’ or ‘marketisation’ of the housing economy has been highly restricted. As far as the system of production is concerned there has been no private (profit orientated) sector in the housing economy; market‐like forces only regulated the distribution of housing. The task of this paper is to show that the transformation of the national economy into a socialist mixed economy is therefore likely to have far‐reaching consequences for the housing system. I will also try to show, in some detail, what these consequences are likely to be.     

Book reviews

The State of Welfare. The Welfare State in Britain since 1974. John Hills (ed). Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1990. ppxvi + 395.£40.00 hardback.

Housing and Health. Stella Lowry. London: British Medical Journal, 1991, pp109. £7.95 UK and EC. £9.50 abroad including airmail.

Safe as Houses: Housing Inheritance in Britain. Chris Hamnett, Michael Harmer and Peter Williams. London: Paul Chapman, 1991. ppl75. £14.95.

Landlord and Tenant: Housing the Poor in Urban Mexico. Alan Gilbert and Ann Varley, London and New York: Routledge, 1991, pp240.

Demands and Constraints: Ethnic Minorities and Social Services in Scotland. Alison Bowes and Duncan Sim(eds). Edinburgh: Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations, 1991. pp 200. £9.95.     

Book reviews

Gentrification of the City. edited by Neil Smith and Peter Williams. Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1986. pp. 257. $30 cloth, $14 paper.

Property Companies and the Construction Industry in Britain. by Hedley Smyth. Cambridge University Press. 1985. pp. 262. £25.00.

Councillors and Tenants: Local Authority Housing in English Cities. 1919–1939. ed M.J. Daunton. Leicester University Press. 1984. pp. 216. £22.00

Housing, States and Localities. by Peter Dickens, Simon Duncan, Mark Goodwin and Fred Gray. London and New York: Methuen, 1985. pp. xiii, 280. £27.50.     

The struggle for housing provision in Tanzania: A case of confusing policies

This paper uses secondary sources to examine ambiguities inherent in the socio‐economic and political policies which guide national development plans in Tanzania. These ambiguities have negative impacts on overall development strategies including housing.

The main focus of the paper is on post‐independence socio‐economic policies. These have been divided into three distinct periods, that is, pre‐Amsha, Arusha and post‐Arusha Declaration periods. Policies that were enforced in each period are carefully examined and their direct or indirect impact on national development plans evaluated in terms of housing production. Finally, the paper proposes drastic changes within the government machinery if future development policies are to be more successful.     

Housing finance in the Nordic countries

The aim of this article is to describe and compare the housing finance systems in the Nordic countries from a housing policy perspective. The starting point is the obvious similarity between the countries in economic, cultural, geographical and historical respects. While a housing consumption goal is important to all these countries and in spite of their similarities, the countries have chosen quite different housing finance systems.

It is suggested that one explanation of these differences is different methods of targeting or selectivity. Nevertheless, some countries do have a more selective policy than others. One explanation may be differences in the housing stock. It is observed that countries with a high share of selective subsidies do not have a public, non‐profit housing sector. The paper ends with a discussion of the need for more research in this important area.     

The social use of market processes in British and Hungarian housing policies

The switch of state subsidies away from support for public housing investment and towards an intensification of market processes is no longer the prerogative of Western countries, but, in the 1980s, has also become a feature of some state socialist societies. However, given the contrasting social, political and economic character of these societies, does the apparently similar process of privatisation in fact have the same characteristics, meaning and social consequences?

In this paper Britain and Hungary have been chosen as countries representative of the two social systems and in which market processes have intensified. The comparison begins by examining the social meaning of'owning’ and ‘renting’, the historical context of the development of housing policy, the allocation systems, rents, and subsidies. Focusing on the social housing sector the paper contrasts current housing issues. Particular attention is given to the “Right to Buy” policy which is a common feature in the 1980s of housing policy in both countries.

As a result of their mainly empirical comparison the authors conclude that privatisation in Britain and Hungary occurred in housing systems which have been similar in their tenure structure but very different in historical context. Because the broad social‐political context of privatisation is different, particularly the economic and institutional interests rooted within this issue, it is not inevitable that the regressive social consequences of measures which promote the privatisation process (which are common to both countries) are automatically negative in terms of the general sociological assessment.Thus comparison can help in the preparation of policy options and the assessment of new possibilities, but only as background. Strategies should be evaluated primarily against the social‐political context of each country and against the current policy objectives.     

Book reviews

Selling the Welfare State: The Privatisation of Public Housing. Ray Forrest and Alan Murie. London: Routledge, 1988. 279pp. £35.00.

Affordable Housing and the Homeless. Jurgen Friedrichs (ed). Walter de Gruyter: Berlin and New York.

The Homeless in Contemporary Society. Richard D. Bingham, Roy E. Green and Sammis B. White. £29.95 cloth, £12.95 paper.