Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

Mid-twentieth-century large housing estates, which can be found all over Europe, were once seen as modernist urban and social utopias that would solve a variety of urban problems. Since their construction, many large housing estates have become poverty concentrating neighbourhoods, often with large shares of immigrants. In Northern and Western Europe, an overlap of ethnic, social and spatial disadvantages have formed as ethnic minorities, often living on low incomes, settle in the most affordable segments of the housing market. The aim of this introductory chapter is to synthesise empirical evidence about the changing fortunes of large housing estates in Europe. The evidence comes from 14 cities—Athens, Berlin, Birmingham, Brussels, Budapest, Bucharest, Helsinki, Madrid, Milan, Paris, Moscow, Prague, Stockholm and Tallinn—and is synthesised into 10 takeaway messages. Findings suggest that large housing estates are now seen as more attractive in Eastern Europe than in Western Europe. The chapter also provides a diverse set of visions and concrete intervention measures that may help to improve the fortunes of large housing estates and their residents.

Large housing estates—and high-rise blocks in particular—are well-known for their problems. This chapter explores the extent to which physical form is responsible for causing the eventual failure of many large housing estates. Although the process of planning large housing estates in the post-World War II era is considered to have been well-thought out, it is also worth exploring how the design, size, form and appearance of these housing estates affected their negative perception and outcomes. The chapter investigates the relationships between the built environment of large housing estates, their local contexts and negative social outcomes commonly associated with estates. To understand this relationship, the chapter examines why high-rise apartment blocks and large housing estates were built the way they were, why problems are concentrated there and what is being done to combat the problems commonly experienced in large residential districts.

In the 1960s and 1970s, all over Europe housing estates emerged that were very similar with respect to construction methods and urban design. At the same time, housing estates across Europe did not all follow the same trajectory after their completion. This divergence occurred because the main reasons for their deterioration and social degradation are exogenous factors, not internal factors. Of course, it makes a difference whether the physical quality of the dwellings was good and whether the spatial planning was adequate. But even well-designed housing estates are subject to social degradation due to competition with newer neighbourhoods that are usually added at the top of the market and more geared to contemporary housing preferences. In Western Europe, this process of relative depreciation is further exacerbated by the prioritisation of owner-occupation leading to residualisation of the social rented sector. The social and ethnic transformation of large housing estates is not only the consequence of planning and housing policies but also of external factors like immigration and economic decline. Most European countries have witnessed a substantial inflow of immigrants in the previous decades, and many of these find their way to large housing estates. Next to that, the social decline of housing estates is often related to a shrinking local economy. Policies aimed at reversing the decline hurt the sitting population more often than it helped them.

This chapter describes housing estates in Athens, Greece in terms of their number, the periods in which they were produced, the public agencies involved in their production, the profile of their beneficiaries and the changes they have undergone since they were produced. It also provides a map of housing estates in the Athens Metropolitan Region depicting their various spatial patterns. Housing estates are a rather exceptional form of social housing in Athens. The fact that rented social housing has never been developed in Greece has limited housing estates not only in terms of their number but also in their social function. Thus, housing estates in Athens have never formed a sector of the housing stock serving the needs of the most vulnerable population groups. Instead, housing estates followed the dominant trend of the local housing provision system—i.e. the promotion of socially diffused homeownership—but played a relatively minor role in the whole process.

Large estates of towers and slabs can be found all over the German capital, and the differences between those which, before 1990, were situated on different sides of the Berlin Wall are often hard to tell for the layperson. They stand witness to the dream of modern living and acceptable housing conditions for the whole population, which in the decades after World War II inspired the socialist regime in the East in the same way as the welfare state in the West. In terms of political background and social significance, however, the (slab buildings) in the East were rather distinct from the (dwelling blocks) in the West. Not only were those in the East far more frequent—in 1990 about one-third of East Berliners called a large housing estate their home, compared to about only 5% of West Berliners—they also constituted an environment that was closely aligned to the East German regime’s sociopolitical goals. This chapter summarises the history of large housing estates in both East and West Berlin, pointing out commonalities and differences that determine significance and perception of these buildings to date.

This chapter discusses mass public housing estates in England and uses Birmingham to illustrate how estates have changed. In British cities, large housing estates built between the 1950s and 1970s are particularly associated with flats and tower blocks. They formed an important part of public housing, but failures in design, construction, management and maintenance meant that they often also damaged its status and reputation. Estates have changed over time and this Chapter, highlights internal and external influences and demolition, privatisation and regeneration. These influences have been layered on each other and interacted to generate different outcomes in different places. Some estates and properties from this era have proved popular and successful, but in other cases questions have arisen about their construction, suitability for disadvantaged communities and continuing role. The failures of some estates and of their regeneration are likely to continue to generate demands for demolition and substantial funding for their redesign.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the socioeconomic evolution of large housing estates in Brussels, Belgium, in particular their role in shaping residential segregation in the city. As in many European countries, modernist and functionalist ideas of the mid-twentieth century led to the raising of large housing estates in Brussels, in an attempt to offer middle-class households affordable yet modern and comfortable dwellings. However, contrary to other countries, the development in Belgium was marked by general housing policies that promoted homeownership, with limited investment in social housing, and a lack of laws and political vision related to spatial planning Whereas some public ensembles were conceived by modernist architects, most of Brussels’ large housing estates were built by private contractors in peripheral neighbourhoods and were aimed at homeownership of the lower middle class. In this chapter, we first present a brief historical perspective of the policies, ideologies and territorial processes that made it possible for housing estates to develop and spread in Brussels. Next, we analyse how large housing estates evolved since the 1990s in terms of socioeconomic composition and the role they play in segregation. We finally discuss the challenges, current perspectives and political awareness with respect to large housing estate. Our findings point out that Brussels’ housing estates are spatially scattered and have only a limited impact on the concentration of deprivation and foreign nationals. However, the trends identified in our study indicate that housing estates can become important socioeconomic fractures at the local level.

Housing estates built during the post-World War II decades in many countries have followed diverging trajectories. These include maintenance and repair, demolition, ‘doing nothing,’ and demolition with mixed-usage replacements. Drawing on empirical and historical material from Bucharest, Romania, a city in which 80% of the housing stock consists of socialist era housing estates, we argue that such housing continues to be viable and is even enjoying a minor renaissance, mainly through the financial efforts of residents and, occasionally, through the allocation of a certain amount of public funds. The empirical analysis illustrates that it is neither the mass character of such housing, nor its high-rise nature that creates the problems and negative image often associated with housing estates elsewhere in the world. Rather, we outline seven challenges faced by such estates: ageing of their structure and resident population, networked connectivity, energy efficiency, densification, urban planning that favours real estate agents, neglect of housing policies and housing rights, and condominium governance. The housing estates and their problems are so much a part of everyday normality in Bucharest that the local administration tends to take them for granted and has not placed them on the public agenda despite the inevitability of their structural decay at some time in the future. More than anything else, the state and the owners need to gather data in order to preempt future emergencies or continuing physical decay of this valuable housing stock.

In post-socialist cities of Central and Eastern Europe, large housing estates became dominant features of post-war housing development. Unlike in Western Europe, these neighbourhoods were not developed for immigrants and the poorest segment of society. Instead, they provided homes for lower middle class and working class families with stable incomes. After the change of regime, however, these neighbourhoods experienced different development trajectories not only on the international but also on national and city levels. With regard to contemporary developments of housing estates, Budapest provides a typical post-socialist case where housing estates are continuously re-evaluated by the people and the market, while socialist legacies leave their imprints on the actual socio-economic developments. This chapter focuses on the development of large housing estates in Budapest and in Hungary before and after the transition. Today, one-fifth of the Hungarian population and one-third of Budapest’s residents live in housing estate neighbourhoods. The main objectives of the study are to display the spatial distribution of different generations of housing estates at the national and city level with special emphasis on their physical and social characteristics. The chapter also sheds light on the consequences of the post-socialist transition on the recent developments of housing estates in Budapest. After almost three decades of transition, debates about housing estates and their future possibilities are still relevant in Hungary and Budapest, because some of these neighbourhoods are experiencing a renaissance in the housing market, attracting younger and better off strata, whereas others show symptoms of socio-economic decline.

The contingent of large housing estates built in the 1960s and 1970s accounts for almost a half of all high-rises in Finland. The primary ideology in their genesis was to combine industrially prefabricated urban housing development with the surrounding forest landscape—together with a policy of spatial social mixing—to prevent social disorder and segregation. These policies seemed to work as intended until the early 1990s, but have since proved to be insufficient. With Western integration and new information and communication-based economic growth, new trends of population differentiation have emerged. As new wealth has moved out to the fringes of cities, the large housing estates have declined socio-economically—and have been enriched ethnically. This differentiation is structurally produced, works through the regional housing market and, as such, is beyond the scope of the preventive policies pursued. Recent attempts at controlling the regional markets and new forms of spatial social mixing have so far proved difficult.