Self-help Housing and Co-operation in Post-war Australia

Australia experienced a self-help housing boom after World War Two which played an important part in overcoming a serious housing shortage. This paper looks at the magnitude of the boom and at the factors which made it possible. It argues that the basic factor motivating amateur builders was the absolute scarcity of accommodation rather than its high cost. There were significant regional variations in the extent of self-help activity. These are best explained by the extent of public housing provision. Where state governments invested heavily in public housing there was less self-help activity. The paper also traces the sources of finance used by owner-builders and the extent of co-operation amongst them.     

Housing Policy in the Soviet Union

The Soviet Union has faced a massive housing problem since its creation in 1917. A shortage of housing existed before the 1917 Revolution but the shortage in the cities has been exacerbated by rapid urbanisation of the population and by the destruction of 30 per cent of the housing stock during World War 2. Although significant improvements have been made in the sense that proportionately fewer households now share accommodation and the average space standard has risen, it nonetheless seems apposite to recognise that seventy-three years after the Revolution and forty-five years after World War 2 current housing problems are the result of policy choices or the failure of policy. That is, it does not seem appropriate to continue to locate the causes of current problems in the pre-revolutionary situation or the catastrophe of World War 2.     

Self-help Housing as a Flexible Instrument of State Control in 20th-century South Africa

There is a long and varied usage of self-help housing policy in South Africa, dating from colonial times when Africans were dumped in locations and left to build their own housing, to the present post apartheid reconstruction. The paper documents and periodises the adoption of self-help strategies for housing the African population of South African cities throughout the 20th century. Exploration of the practice of self-help housing practices in Johannesburg suggests that owner construction is a prevailing method of social engineering, whose acceptance or rejection reflects perceived political and economic advantages for the state and the private sector, and is not a simple response to a shortage of affordable shelter among the poor.     

Reconstruction and the Self-help Housing Movement: The French Experience

The destruction during the Second World War made the city a crisis of looming proportions throughout Europe. In the case of France, over three-quartersof the country was struck by the war. Cities and towns were in ruins. Over 2 million buildings, a quarter of the housing stock, was destroyed or damaged (Croize, 1991, pp. 253-257). A million families were left homeless. Millions of others lived in temporary shelters and run-down apartments without access to basic services. This tragic situation made the housing crisis-that is finding a place of live-one of the most serious and explosive post-war domestic issues in France, as it was all over Europe. One way the crisis was addressed was for men and women to build their own homes, or to simply occupy vacant buildings. This paper looks at the role of the organised self-help housing movement within the massive effort of reconstruction and building after the Second World War, from 1945-1954. The movement comprised three phases: the squatter movement; the mouvement Castors or Beavers movement, which became a limited effort at auto-construction; and lastly, the housing campaign launched by the Abbe Pierre.     

Post-war urban renewal and demolition fluctuations in Sweden

In the decades following the Second World War, Swedish cities experienced extensive urban renewal projects that continue to shape the country’s contemporary built environment. Many Swedish cities saw large-scale demolitions starting in the 1950s. The demolitions increased during the 1960s and 1970s, when the government implemented the so-called Million Programme (1965–1974). The declared target of the housing policy was to raise housing standards, create healthy living conditions and lessen the housing shortage through the construction of modern housing. In the 1980s, the preservation and modernization of dwellings replaced the clearance policy. The 1990s brought a new demolition wave, which subsided in the 2000s. This paper reviews the renewal processes and various phases of demolition activity in Swedish post-war cities from the perspective of housing policy and planning. The research analysis is based on the literature and statistics.     

Planning for play: seventy years of ineffective public policy? The example of Glasgow,Scotland

This paper looks at the planning and provision of outdoor play spaces for children over a seventy-year period since the Second World War. Using Glasgow as a case study, the paper examines whether and how research on families and children living in flats has been used to inform national and local planning policies in this area, and in turn how well policy is converted into practice and provision on the ground. The paper considers these issues in four time periods: the period of post-war reconstruction from the late 1940s to the early 1970s, when large amounts of social housing was built; the period of decline and residualization of social housing in the 1970s and 1980s; the 1990s and 2000s when several attempts were made to regenerate social housing estates; and the last five years, during which time the Scottish Government has developed a number of policies concerning children’s health and physical activity. Planning policy in Glasgow appears to have been ineffective across several decades. Issues such as a weak link between research and policy recommendations, unresolved tensions between a number of policy options, and a lack of political priority afforded to the needs to children are identified as contributory factors.     

The Theory and Practice of Housing Sector Development for Developing Countries, 1950-99

In terms of welfare, development, and overall distributional impact, the study of whole sector housing development is more significant than attention to parts of a housing system. Housing policy development is increasingly taking the more comprehensive approach. The first phases of international housing policy, 1972-83, represented in sites and services (and related in situ slum upgrading) projects, could never become completely effective. These approaches had only fragmentary relationships to general land policies, to the development of housing finance systems, and to the broader economic, social and institutional conditions for enhancing the qualities and supplies of housing. In due time the theoretical and practical limitations became apparent and various international aid agencies, including the World Bank, adopted broader, more sophisticated thinking in housing, leading to a quest for whole sector housing development. But in the late 1990s, within managerial reforms in the World Bank, the specialist housing section was disbanded and the staff dispersed to other sections. This paper provides an historical explanation for the change, along with critical commentaries on the potential dilemmas with the modern, more comprehensive approaches. It is argued that policy and research agendas should be more evidently based upon understanding of the developmental dialectic between the economic, the social and the political. The developmental welfare of such a dialectic has authority and legitimacy from several Nobel prize winners in the 1990s. This paper reflects upon the relevance of their theoretical contributions.     

The State and Self-help Housing in Urban Finland, 1920 to 1950

This paper examines self-help housing and state housing policies in urban Finland from 1920 to 1950. In Finland self-help housing consisted primarily of self-building of one- and two-family houses. It is often assumed that self-building used to be the typical urban form of housing production. It was certainly the form that housing reformers preferred. However, most urban housing production was private speculative production. Self-building became relatively important only when other production was depressed. The state supported self-building by providing subsidised housing finance. Of the three successive housing finance systems examined, only the last concerned only self-building. The loan policies also included an attempt to control the quality and design of self-built housing. The policies were, however, so limited that they did not have a large impact on urban housing in normal times. In Finland, as in many other countries, the government's attitude towards self-building can be characterised as guarded support.     

Public Housing as Control: Spatial Policy of Settling Immigrants in Israeli Development Towns

This paper examines the relationship between inter-ethnic power relations and public housing policy for immigrants in Israel since 1948. Based on a comparative analysis of Israeli policy of housing Mizrahi immigrants in the 1950s and Russian immigrants in the 1990s, the paper argues that despite the perceived decline in the state's capacity, the implication of public housing policy has remained unchanged since the 1950s. By moving Jewish immigrants into development towns in sparsely populated and overwhelmingly Palestinian regions of the country, Israeli policy has served to Judaize these regions and to reinforce ethnic stratification among the country's Jewish population. In this manner, Israeli public housing policy was neither consistent with conceptions of post-Second World War public housing policies in welfare states nor with the recent impact of globalization and the free-market dynamics on public housing policies.     

Towards more Social Cohesion in Large Post-Second World War Housing Estates? A Case Study in Utrecht,the Netherlands1

The last few years have seen many studies of large post-Second World War housing estates. At present they are often the most deprived areas of European cities. The turnover of the population on these estates is characteristically rapid, leading to considerable socio-economic and socio-cultural changes and a multi-ethnic neighbourhood. Such areas often have to contend with severe physical, social and economic problems and the consequent dissatisfaction of the residents. This combination of rapid and selective population turnover and increasing numbers of problems may well affect aspects of social cohesion within these neighbourhoods, particularly the social networks. This process is regrettable, because social cohesion is regarded in a positive light, something that enhances the quality of life. Stimulating social cohesion is therefore an important objective of many policies that focus on large post-Second World War housing estates. The authors have found it interesting to discover how important social cohesion is in the opinions and the lives of the inhabitants rather than the policy makers. In their opinion, urban policies focus on social cohesion while the inhabitants' views of its relevance are unknown. On the basis of this paper, certain aspects of social cohesion in large post-Second World War housing estates appear to be valued, but housing market behaviour, such as residential moves, is hardly affected by aspects of social cohesion. Other aspects, such as moving to a better house, are much more relevant. The results may put into doubt the stress placed in urban policies on social cohesion.     

Australian housing,technological change and the Fordist regime of accumulation

Although the concept of Fordism has been used to explain a range of phenomena in Australian post‐war political economy, there have been few attempts to assess its utility within the field of housing provision. This paper is a preliminary attempt to ‘test’ the Fordist model. It distinguishes between two uses of the concept—a narrow ‘productivist’ approach which focuses on the ‘backwardness’ of the housing industry, and a broader ‘societal’ approach which focuses on the interrelationship between dominant production techniques, patterns of consumption and urban form. The first section examines the fate of post‐war visions of Fordist housing. Following this, the paper suggests that the broader use of the concept—derived from the regulation school of political economy—is useful for explaining the coincidence between suburbanisation, mass consumption, mass production and state intervention after the Second World War.     

Financing Self-help Housing: Evidence from Bogotá, Colombia

A priority for housing policy in most Third World countries is to channel credit to the poor. Unfortunately, this has proved difficult to achieve as formal lending institutions are reluctant to lend to the poor. This paper examines how formal lenders deal with self-help housing in Bogotá, Colombia. It also compares how housing construction and/or purchase is financed in four self-help settlements and in two formally constructed, low-income estates in the city. Finally, some ideas are presented about how housing finance for the poor might be improved.     

Comparing Low-Income Housing Outcomes in Self-Help and Contractor-Driven Projects: the Case for Longitudinal Research

The South African housing research environment is commonly known for its application of the case study approach as a preferred research method. Even the evaluation and assessment of low-income housing developments, to a large degree, are being done through several case studies. However, longer-term assessment or longitudinal studies are virtually absent from this fairly large body of research on low-income housing in South Africa. Although this paper does not deviate from the case study approach, the difference lies in its intent to demonstrate through the housing outcomes of two low-income housing projects (laissez-faire self-help and aided self-help which used a contractor-driven approach) the value and significance of long-term evaluation or longitudinal studies in housing research. Essentially, the paper argues that the limitations associated with one-off case studies and to a large extent, the general absence of longitudinal studies in housing research, lies in the domination of political and economic frameworks. Therefore, the paper showcases the limitations with regard to the interpretation and methods in one-off case studies as opposed to our findings based on longitudinal surveys.     

The FHA and the “Culture of Abundance” at the 1935 San Diego World's Fair

This article explores the national debate about modern housing in Southern California during the 1930s through an examination of Federal Housing Administration (FHA) participation at the 1935 San Diego World's Fair. Shaped by the political and cultural crises of the Depression, the FHA's first exhibition of model housing contained two contradictory impulses: an idealistic and social democratic architectural modernism and a sound bottom-line promotion of the real estate industry. These original dual impulses indicated that suburban expansion and industrial dispersion were not the only alternatives to demographic and industrial growth in Southern California after World War II. The social idealism embedded within numerous examples of model housing suggested that patterns of development and housing in Southern California and the nation might be more egalitarian and democratic: true mixed-use communities characterized by variety in social class complexion and, by implication, race and ethnicity. For a number of important reasons, by the 1940s, FHA financial requirements did not push suburban developers to change their operations much from the 1920s. In the end, the FHA only federalized the voluntary and arbitrary practices created by the housing division of the Commerce Department for the real estate industry of the 1920s.     

A critical review of the modernization of Dutch rent policy

Since the Second World War, the Dutch rental market has been subject to close government regulation. In the 1970s, however, landlords started to gain greater freedom in setting the initial rental price and in determining the level of annual rent increases. In late 2004, the government announced plans whereby the hitherto cautious liberalization of the market would be continued with greater vigour. The proposed modernization of rental policy will be achieved by removing all restrictions on one quarter of the rental stock, and by implementing substantial rent increases in the remaining regulated sector. This paper gives a critical analysis of the new rent policy. This is done in the light of two considerations: the current context of the housing market, and the objectives and effects which the government hopes to achieve through the new rental policy. The author concludes that the implementation of this policy will have many disadvantages, and that alternative strategies exist which will not only serve to attain the objectives of public housing policy, but will have a less disruptive influence on the Dutch housing market.     

Urban History Matters: Explaining the German–American Homeownership Gap

The homeownership rate in the United States has continuously been about 20 percentage points higher than that of Germany. This homeownership gap is traced back to before the First World War at the urban level. Existing approaches, relying on socio-economic factors, demographics, culture or housing policy, cannot explain the persistence of these differences in homeownership. This article fills this explanatory gap by making a path-dependence argument: it argues that nineteenth-century urban conditions either began to create the American suburbanized single-family house cities or compact multi-unit-building cities, as in Germany. US cities developed differently from German ones because they lacked feudal shackles, were governed as “private cities” and gave easier access to mortgages and building land. The more historically suburbanized a city, the lower its homeownership rate today. Economic and political reinforcing mechanisms kept the two countries on their paths. The article’s contribution is to give a historical and city-focused answer to a standing question in the housing literature.     

THE WORLD BANK AND HOUSING POLICY IN MADRAS

ABSTRACT: This article offers an explanation and evaluation of three linked housing policy themes: (1) the learn-by-doing experience of the World Bank after 1972, with Madras as the testing ground for the Bank's theory of affordability, cost recovery, and replicability; (2) the Bank and Tamil Nadu government's achievement of substantial progress in tipping the balance of housing policy toward low income residents, 1977–1988; and (3) the neoliberalist political economy of the World Bank is assessed in terms of its performance and by comparison with alternatives such as neo-Marxism and modern theories in social criticism.     

Bruno Zevi,the continental European emissary of Geoffrey Scott’s theories

In the late nineteenth century, Bernard Berenson revived the analytical methodologies employed in art history by proposing new methods of pictorial analysis, such as space-composition and life-enhancement. In the twentieth century, his pupil Geoffrey Scott transferred these new methodologies from their original context, Renaissance painting, to architecture. Though Scott was a recognised critic within English aesthetic circles, he was largely ignored in Continental European academic communities. The influence of his book The Architecture of Humanism (1914) was limited to the Anglo-American world before the 1940s. This essay depicts the key role that the Italian architect Bruno Zevi played after the Second World War, by becoming the primary architectural historian to introduce and diffuse Scott’s forgotten masterpiece in many non-English-speaking countries. Zevi defended a critical methodology based on spatial, empirical, and sensory analysis of architectural works, an attitude that is observed in his theoretical corpus written immediately after his return from the United States. This paper proposes an examination of Zevi’s reception of Scott’s theories and the debates that it propagated, and aims to contribute to the understanding of the methodological approach followed in the years after the Second World War on both sides of the Atlantic.     

Changing Residential Land Use Regulations to Address High Housing Prices

Problem, research strategy, and findings: In the past 3 decades, a series of presidential administrations—and the APA—have recommended that cities update their zoning codes to enable more affordable and market-rate housing development. I identify 5 main categories of policy recommendations they have suggested and then assess Los Angeles’s (CA) zoning changes in these categories between 2000 and 2016. I answer 2 questions: First, what zoning changes did Los Angeles adopt to address housing affordability? Second, how were these changes initiated, and what were their scope and geographic extent? I find that Los Angeles made modest progress in the 5 policy categories. The city left its large-lot, single-family zoning mostly untouched, but it rezoned roughly 1,200 acres citywide to allow at least 50 housing units per acre, reduced parking requirements in some areas, made it easier to build accessory dwelling units, and adopted new incentives for affordable housing. Several policy changes resulted from new state laws, and Los Angeles voters approved new incentives for affordable housing near transit. Homeowner influence likely prevented the municipality from engaging in larger zoning reforms. I do not study the effects of Los Angeles’s regulatory changes on housing production and prices, but such research is an important next step. I also do not assess new regulations that counteracted the impact of the 5 categories of policy recommendations.

Takeaway for practice: This research suggests 2 lessons: 1) Planners should encourage state governments to preempt local zoning when it reduces affordable housing options and there is limited local political will for change, and 2) planners should identify feasible and effective zoning changes that would increase affordable housing given local considerations.     

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.