Housing,Home and Neighbourhood Renewal in the Era of Superdiversity: Some Lessons from the West Midlands

Following two decades of new migration, the EU is now home to the most diverse population ever. Much new migration has occurred into superdiverse escalator areas already experiencing high levels of deprivation. In the UK, housing market renewal areas (HMRA) had a particular challenge to address housing market failure and the high population turnover often associated with new migration while meeting the needs of established residents. Lack of knowledge about the diverse housing needs of residents risked hampering renewal efforts. This paper uses qualitative data collected from a superdiverse sample of settled and new residents located in the Urban Living HMRA in the West Midlands to examine the ways in which they conceptualise home. The paper argues that understanding the ways in which diverse residents conceptualise home and home making, offers potential for policymakers to understand how residents' needs can be met.     

Revisiting the cottage council estates: England, 1919–39

The suburban cottage council estates of inter-war England are an example of how hopes for social transformation emerging in a new physical environment produced by planning worked out in practice. Their roots lay in the anti-urbanism of the nineteenth century. To improve the physical and moral health of the population, reformists had rejected the contemporary city in favour of a more rural environment. The adoption of the pre-industrial English village as the model for development appeared to offer harmonious social relations and a sense of community too. Although these sentiments were diminished by the end of World War I, their legacy was still apparent. Under the influence of Raymond Unwin, the promotion by the Tudor Walters Report of picturesque cottages, streets, gardens and greens presupposed an improved way of life for the cottage council estates that drew upon these romanticized images of the past. Rarely has the social life that developed on the estates been associated with such images. Instead, one of the strongest narratives of suburban working-class life is the loneliness and desolation of the cottage council estates. The estates are usually depicted, especially by modern commentators, as bereft of any sense of community. In particular, the layout of the housing, together with the absence of other facilities and amenities are thought to have hindered the development of social life. Rather than engendering a sense of community, the physical environment is held chiefly responsible for its absence. This paper re-examines these assumptions about the relationship between city plan and social relations by detailing the development of social life in the inter-war period upon the Roehampton and Watling estates, two of the London County Council's cottage estates. Community, it is argued, was not absent from either estate. The precise nature of community that emerged on each estate, together with the wider development of social life, is linked not to the estates' physical planning, but instead their social composition.     

Community Housing in Tasmania: Who Applies for It?

Community housing is increasingly seen as an alternative to public housing by government. However, little is known about the demand for community housing, the relationship with public housing waiting lists and the flow of people between different housing tenures, such as public housing and private rental. In this article we analyse the demand for community housing in Tasmania. We examine who applies for community housing, why they apply and how their needs may differ from or overlap with demand for public housing. This research is based on 499 applications for community housing in southern Tasmania. Applications were made to a medium sized, non-government housing association—Red Shield Housing Association (RSHA)—between December 1998 and December 2001. Our research suggests that the majority of people applying for community housing were already on public housing waiting lists. Those seeking community housing differ little from applicants for public housing. However, women and sole parents were more likely to apply for both community and public housing while men and single applicants were more likely to apply only for community housing. This could be connected to who is likely or not to get into public housing and perhaps men and singles see less chance of getting into public housing. The implication is that low income earners are primarily concerned with access to affordable housing, which is in short supply, and the majority of applicants will apply for both public and community housing if given the opportunity. We note that the transfer of public housing stock to the community sector does not increase the supply of affordable housing stock or provide a greater choice of affordable properties to low income and disadvantaged households, although it could provide greater choice for some groups who do not perceive public housing to be an option.     

我国住房宏观调控政策分析

为了牟取地方财政收入,地方政府利用土地垄断者的身份,与房地产开发商一起推动着房价的上涨,损害了失地农民和购房者的利益.中央政府的住房宏观调控政策没有抓住形成高房价的根源,使得实际效果与宏观调控意图发生了背离.要促进房地产市场的发展,中央政府必须转变调控策略,以物业税替代房地产市场中的各项税费,抑制过度的住房需求,建立住房保障体系.     

Once Only the Sky was the Limit: Bangkok's Housing Boom and the Financial Crisis in Thailand

This paper explores the causes of the collapse of the housing sector in Bangkok in 1997 and its impact on the financial sector and the economy of Thailand. With the liberalisation of the Thai economy and its integration into the world economy during the 1980s and the early 1990s, real estate companies gained access to US$-nominated off-shore loans at low interest rates. Because of the availability of cheap loans and the speculative demand for housing, financial institutions and real estate developers did not conduct market research and invested in doubtful projects, resulting in an enormous oversupply of housing. The close relationship between bankers, developers and politicians ensured that the government would bail out insolvent real estate companies and financial institutions. In 1996, exports fell and the economy stopped growing due to increased international competition. Unhedged foreign debts reached dangerous levels and speculative attacks forced the government to devalue the currency. Real estate companies and financial institutions would have collapsed without continued bail-outs by the government. However, the government's non-transparent policies eroded the confidence of the general public and international investors, resulting in capital flight and a serious financial and economic crisis.     

Social Cohesiveness of Disadvantaged Communities in Urban South Korea: The Impact of the Physical Environment

This paper examines the impact of the physical environment and residents' perception and use of the environment settings on the social cohesiveness of disadvantaged communities in South Korea. Multiple regression and qualitative analysis were applied based on the data collected in four public rental housing estates in Seoul accommodating the lowest income households. This paper argues that social cohesiveness could be operationalised in shared norms and trust, attachment to housing estate and social networking. It was found that the characteristics of social cohesiveness were different across the same type of public rental housing estates, and that this variance was partly due to the different conditions of the physical environment. It was also found that a more positive perception of the physical environment and the more frequent use of facilities generally enhanced community cohesiveness. Desirable land use mix and housing types around the housing estates, preferable community facilities, housing block design and more effective refurbishment programmes within the estates were recommended.     

利用长期趋势法对房地产需求量的预测

目前我国房地产市场还不够成熟,供需失衡的现象普遍存在。如何简单准确的预测房市需求,从而相应地调控商品房供应已经成为摆在政府调控部门面前的一道难题。笔者拟从具有可操作性的角度,依据房地产价格和交易量之间的高度相关性,寻找一种实践中可行的房地产需求预测方法。     

廉租房建设与我国房地产市场的宏观调控

中国作为一个处于经济转型期的发展中国家,如何妥善处理好关系居民生存环境的住房问题,将影响到全社会的稳定与和谐发展。本文对我国房地产市场的发展态势进行了分析,从供求角度揭示了房价持续高涨的深层原因,提出基于我国的具体国情,借鉴一些成功的国际经验,通过加快廉租房建设进一步完善住房保障制度,是加强房地产市场宏观调控的有力措施。     

Encountering the Multiplicity of Community in Planning and Designing New Neighbourhoods

In contrast to recent understandings of community beyond place, urban partnerships of developers and policymakers focus on creating place-based communities in new neighbourhoods such as master-planned housing estates. These efforts are critiqued for ignoring the multiple ways community is experienced in everyday life as physical places take precedence over social relations and processes. Drawing on the example of a master-planned community (MPC) in Australia, this article explores some of the complexities involved in attempting to create community in these and other new neighbourhoods by comparing conceptualisations of community depicted in marketing materials with future residents' expectations and lived experience. Although some notions of community portrayed in the marketing of the estate resonated with future residents' expectations, their everyday experiences of community were broad and varied, and not confined to one particular place. In concluding, the article suggests there is greater scope for the multiplicity of community to be incorporated in the planning and design of MPCs. Specifically, policymakers could make more of partnerships with developers to advocate for the acknowledgement and inclusion of broader experiences of community in everyday life.     

Difficult to Let Housing Association Stock in England: Property,Management and Context

Problems related to unpopular housing are not new in Britain's social rented sector. In the past, however, these have generally been associated with housing provided directly by the state through local authorities. For many, the term 'difficult to let' has become synonymous with large, ageing, poor quality estates managed under a centralised framework and subject to a long period of low investment and indifferent management. There has also been a long-standing assumption that social housing allocations systems tend to channel the most vulnerable tenants into the least desirable housing. In fact, the problem of difficult to let property is now as pervasive in the not-for-profit sector managed by housing associations as it is within council housing. In many cases the developments affected are small in scale and, in a significant proportion of cases, recently constructed. In explaining why property becomes difficult to let, the local and regional context is clearly important. The balance between social, economic and housing demand circumstances and property and estate characteristics varies between regions. There is relatively little evidence that difficult to let housing association properties are occupied by disproportionate numbers of the most severely disadvantaged tenants and this suggests that something has happened to modify the segregating effects of allocations systems observed in earlier studies. Nevertheless, this apparent change must be seen within the context of the general trend towards a residual role for social housing in its entirety. The social class and income range of new social sector tenants now is much diminished by comparison with earlier decades with few distinctions between the occupiers of difficult to let and other housing.     

POLICY REVIEW Tackling Deprivation on Social Housing Estates in England: An Assessmentof the Housing Plus Approach

The poverty and social exclusion experienced by growing numbers of social housing tenants in England is making landlords' task increasingly difficult. Concentrations of unemploymentand other forms of disadvantagetend to lead to other problems such as indebtedness,crime and vandalism which make such housing estates unpopular and expensive to manage and maintain. In response, housing associations (HAs) in England are increasingly seeking to address these wider problems so that their investment in bricks and mortar is underpinned by efforts to sustain community well-being. This has been termed the 'Housing Plus' (HP) approach.But HP raises questions about social landlords' role vis-a-vis that of other agencies. This paper reviews HAs' progress in implementing HP in England,its impact upon residents' quality of life and links with wider regeneration strategies. While some HAs have achieved notable successes, the overall response has been patchy because of differences of view on mission, resource constraints,the modest scale of initiatives in relation to the severity of the problemsand contradictory housing and urban policies.     

Community Planning Based on Socio-Spatial Production:Explorations in “New Qinghe Experiment”

Rapid urbanization and the booming of diversified community development requirements have challenged the development of community planning in China from theory to practice. Community planning, especially with localized and practice-oriented characteristics, is now facing many limitations. These include aspects such as traditional urban planning techniques that mainly focus on space, a restricted research perspective, as well as basic planning theories that are mostly imported from the West. Using the perspective of socio-spatial dialectic for reference, this paper summarizes the evolution process of Chinese modern residential space planning and design from residential district planning under the planned economy system, to housing estate planning in the real estate development, and to community planning in the new era, presenting an important characteristic of transitioning from "producing space" to "production of space," with "society" gradually replacing "space" and returning to the goal of production. Based on the analysis on the main limitations and problems in the former work of community planning in China, the paper takes the practical exploration on community planning in the "New Qinghe Experiment" in Haidian District, Beijing for an example. Aimed at the prominent problem of an extreme imbalance between "urbanization of space" and "urbanization of population" in the current Qinghe area, the key objective, means, and technical path of new-type community planning are proposed, within which three significant transition features are demonstrated, including going from "need-oriented" to "capital-oriented," from "interest intervention" to "relationship intervention," and from "community construction" to "community building."     

Explanations of Social Exclusion: Where Does Housing Fit in?

This paper takes the view that concepts of social exclusion are socially constructed by different combinations of economic, social and political processes. It is suggested that the core meaning of social exclusion is bound up with social isolation and social segregation, and it is therefore argued that an analysis of social mobility (or the lack of it) is crucial to understanding the content and extent of social exclusion. Three approaches to the analysis of social mobility are briefly considered, and it is concluded that the causation of social exclusion appears to have three interrelated dimensions: economic, legal/political, and moral/ideological. The main theoretical approaches to social exclusion, encompassing 'structural' and 'cultural' perspectives, are then examined, and a new, more holistic theory is proposed, using the concept of a duality of interrelated labour processes. This theory is developed on three different levels, corresponding to the three dimensions of social exclusion. The final part of the paper is concerned with the application of the theory of social exclusion to housing processes. The latter are discussed under the headings of housing production, housing tenure, residential segregation, housing mobility, and processes associated with homelessness and leaving home. It is shown how housing processes cut across the different social levels (labour process, social reproduction and ideology), how they reflect prevailing patterns of social exclusion, and how they can either mitigate or reinforce those patterns. Social exclusion is distinguished from forms of housing exclusion (for example, relating to tenure), with which it is sometimes confused. It is noted that the groups which are commonly socially excluded through housing processes are those which are to be expected on the basis of the theory, namely unwaged, unskilled, not within a 'traditional' family household, and seen as 'undeserving'.     

房地产价格机制小议

目前房地产市场上供需矛盾相当突出，供需总额与结构的失衡严重地阻碍了房地产市场上商品流通的顺利进行，制约着整个房地产业的健康发展。作者认为房地产价格机制的不健全，没能充分发挥其调节作用，是造成这种供需不平衡的主要原因。为此，本文就房地产市场价格机制的构成、功能、调节对象、局限性等作了一些初步的探讨。     

What the Tenants Think of Kensal House: Experts' Assumptions versus Inhabitants' Realities in the Modern Home

Abstract

In keeping with the growing interest in user needs in social housing, this article takes a historical approach to the subject by comparing tenant responses with designers' intentions in an estate of social housing, Kensal House, built in north Kensington, London, in 1937. The survival of a rare and early investigation into the tenants' reception of the estate has allowed such a comparison. The resulting analysis demonstrates not only how people responded to and used housing in the middle decades of this century but how and why experts operate as they do.     

From stigma to demolition: Australian debates about housing and social exclusion

Although the concept of social exclusion is well established in the UK and wider Europe, as an alternative to the use of poverty and inequality, it only recently entered Australian housing and urban policy debates. This paper explores the dominant debates that emerged about housing and inequality in two major reports, which investigated future options for East Fairfield (Villawood) public housing estate in New South Wales prior to its demolition. In conceptualising the debates, the analysis draws on the framework devised by Watt and Jacobs (2000, Housing, theory and society, 17(1), 14–26), which identified three different discourses of social exclusion in British housing and urban policy. It is concluded that the dominant debate at East Fairfield estate drew extensively on a moral underclass discourse that implicated public housing tenure as a major cause of inequality. Whilst there is little doubt that serious problems existed on the estate, questions are raised about the utility of this moral underclass depiction and the rationale it provided for adopting demolition as the definitive solution. The experience of East Fairfield demonstrates that demolition is not a low-cost solution in financial or social terms.     

Reassessing State Housing Trust Funds: Results of a Florida Survey

While their structure and targets vary, state housing trust funds offer an increasingly common form of assistance designed to flexibly meet local housing needs. Frequently they are generated through real estate transaction fees, making them particularly relevant in high growth states such as Florida. For 16 years, Florida's housing trust fund (SHIP) has consistently met its major funding targets, assisting housing initiatives from rural counties to the largest urban centers. A survey of local SHIP administrators provides insight on defining characteristics and key policy dilemmas. Although this critical housing program fails to consistently meet certain goals, those stakeholders involved in its passage, maintenance and implementation consider it a success. Given these conditions, strengthened state oversight to ensure consistency with housing plans and increased state support for other programs, particularly those targeting rental strategies and the lowest income, rather than major legislative changes, could result in more informed, effective and equitable local implementation.     

基于挤出效应的住房保障规模对商品住房价格的影响

中国房地产市场中保障性住房的角色和作用愈加重要,保障性住房建设规模正在逐年扩大。商品住房价格变化是供给需求作用的结果,但是随着保障房供给规模的增加,商品住房价格的涨幅也会发生改变,说明保障房的供给规模会对普通商品房的供需产生影响。本文以北京市商品住房市场为例,选取住宅需求、住宅供给、住房投机对价格的影响为自变量,住宅价格为因变量,利用多元回归模型对商品住房价格变化进行实证研究,同时通过考虑保障房供给对住房市场产生的不同挤出效应,分析保障房供给规模供需变化对房价产生的影响,进而为政府制定相关的住房保障政策提供建议和对策。     

Housing Pathways of Camping Ground Residents in New Zealand

A housing pathways approach captures the dynamics of housing: people's experiences of movement between dwellings and location, their decision making and preferences over time and space (Clapham, 2002). This paper presents the narratives of camping ground residents and community key informants, through discussing the experiences of residents in, through and out of camping grounds in New Zealand. The movement in and out of camping grounds is not a discrete event, but can be seen as affecting and affected by previous and future moves. This paper has a particular focus on the forced nature of many residents' pathways. The narratives highlight social, economic and political factors affecting residents' access to housing, and show the social exclusion experienced by many residents. The experiences of camping ground residents are placed within the context of the broad housing sector, which draws attention to the complexity of housing pathways.     

Theorising Exclusion and Difference: Specificity,Structure and Minority Ethnic Housing Issues

This paper explores the balance between experiential diversity on the one hand, and structural factors on the other. Drawing examples primarily from 'race' and housing, the paper indicates that 'difference' is inevitably conceptualised and constructed at more than one level. There is diversification of cultures, preferences and experiences at household level, yet institutions remain crucial at other levels for any discussion of processes of exclusion. The concept of social exclusion developed here includes differential incorporation through a patterned set of processes, in which power and institutional practices are central. This, however, need not invalidate a simultaneous focus on grass-roots agency, and on experiential or cultural differentiation. Thinking in terms of 'difference within difference' offers a starting-point for analysis, both of circumstances and of relationships between exclusion and policy options.