residential environments and people
Reframing Social Tectonics with the Sociology of Everyday Life: Insights from the Public Spaces of a Mixed Housing Neighbourhood
Social mix policies aim to integrate residents living in diverse forms of housing. While numerous studies have showcased the limitations of social mix in achieving this objective, explanations for this tendency remain incomplete. Accordingly, this qualitative case study adopts insights from the sociology of everyday life and interaction ritual theory to elaborate on academic understandings of (non)-interaction between disparate groups in mixed housing communities. It draws primarily from observational fieldwork and semi-structured interview data gathered in the public spaces of a transitioning mid-sized city in Ontario, Canada. The findings report how everyday encounters among and between the urban poor and wealthier residents (re)produce patterns of group solidarity and conflict. The continued application of micro-sociological perspectives to housing mix research can chronicle and perhaps mend the gaps between government housing policy objectives and the experiences of residents living within relevant legislative jurisdictions.
‘The Social Managers Are Back in Town’: the Challenges of Housing Management in a Residualised Public Housing Sector
The residualisation of social housing sectors requires housing managers to intensify social management activities aimed at promoting tenants’ wellbeing and social cohesion. This paper discusses the implementation of such activities in the Italian public housing sector. It juxtaposes the vision conceptualised at the policy level with the daily activities of housing managers in practice on the ground and highlights the gaps between policy goals and realities of tenants’ involvement. While social management activities are expected to contribute to breaking the vicious circle of financial, technical, and social decline that has long affected public housing estates, the short timeframe of the planned interventions raises the question of the potential for structural change.
The Housing Satisfaction of Polish Households and Its Determinants
The level of satisfaction that households have with their housing is important for people to function properly, as it largely determines their life satisfaction. Housing satisfaction is a multidimensional concept that can be defined, measured, and analysed in various ways. The aim of the article is to identify the housing satisfaction of Polish households in terms of living space, housing standard, and housing expenses, and to identify the main determinants of housing satisfaction. Factors that have a major impact on housing satisfaction are classified based on a literature review. The sources of Poles’ housing satisfaction are identified using ordered logistic regression. This article is one of the first attempts to analyse housing satisfaction in a post-socialist Central and Eastern European economy.
Airbnb, Platform Capitalism and the Globalised Home
Airbnb, the most ubiquitous of the many online short-term rental platforms offering residential homes to tourists, has infiltrated local neighbourhoods and housing markets throughout the world. It has also divided policy-makers and communities over whether tourism in residential homes is a benign example of the so-called ‘sharing’ economy or a malignant practice which destroys neighbourhoods. These differing positions reflect alternative and changing notions of ‘home’ within wider processes of financialisation and platform capitalism. This paper examines these themes with reference to stakeholder statements solicited in response to government inquiries on how to regulate short-term rental housing in Australia.
Airbnb and Amenity: Is Short-Term Letting Reshaping How We Live in the City?
The popularity of short-term letting (STL) platforms like Airbnb has created housing and planning challenges for cities worldwide, including the potential impact of STL on the quality of life of nearby residents and communities. Underpinning this concern is an inherent tension in urban living between the rights and interests of individual residents, and the collective rights and interests of neighbours. Through interviews with Australian Airbnb hosts, this paper examines how STL hosts navigate this tension, including how they frame their property rights, how they seek to minimise their impact on neighbours, and how they perceive the role of regulation in balancing individual and community rights. In doing so the paper contributes to both theory and policy debates about urban property rights and how ‘compact city’ planning orthodoxies are reshaping the lived experience of urban residents worldwide.
Investigating Green Marketing Implementation with the Hedonic Price Model in Residential Projects: The Case of Istanbul
The strategic importance of green marketing (GM) in value creation for the end customer (VCEC) and the contribution of the spatial and structural characteristics of a residential project (RP) to the final price have been acknowledged in the literature. However, GM features that can lead to price increases have not been evaluated from the VCEC perspective. This study examines the impacts of GM strategies on RPs. This study applies Hedonic Price Modelling to newly built RPs in Istanbul and evaluates the results from the perspective of the Attractive Quality Attributes Theory. The results showed that the total price of the RPs was affected more by design-related sustainable features of RPs and revealed that there is a relationship between GM and sustainable design. The study highlights the importance of GM, which companies can use to operate effectively in a competitive market and increase the satisfaction of end customers through value creation. The study’s findings can be considered useful information for policies on creating a sustainable built environment.
An Analysis of the Holiday Rental Issue in Spain
Holiday lets and holiday rentals have generated a major debate in recent years in Spain with regard to their regulation. Their impact, not only on tourism, but also on urban sustainability and local planning, have led to public intervention to control their expansion. This article analyses the origin of holiday lets, their problems, and how the public authorities have intervened in this regard, thus providing an overview of the impact of this type of accommodation in Spain.
The Provision of Socially Minded Housing in Cyprus: Examining Historical References and Addressing Recent Challenges from an Architectural Perspective
The purpose of this paper is to examine the recent challenges faced by stakeholders concerned with providing socially minded housing in Cyprus in view of the increased need for affordable housing in the five years after the financial crisis, which hit Cyprus in the spring of 2013 and impacted households. The demand was exacerbated by the influx of immigrants from South-eastern Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa in the same period. The paper discusses these challenges by examining the historical context of providing socially minded housing in Cyprus since the first institutional attempts were made in the years following the Second World War. The paper also presents some case studies, which are illustrated with design proposals that are the results of research in design by students and staff in the Department of Architecture of the University of Cyprus.
Participatory Design Processes for the Development of Green Areas of Large-scale Housing: Case Studies from Budapest and Riga
Large housing estates (LHE) found in CEE countries can be seen as a legacy of socialism. Their endurance in these countries is still evident: the future of LHEs is substantially linked to their physical and social characteristics formed during socialism and their decline in status in Hungary and Latvia. The Western European practice of urban rehabilitation and community initiatives has gained more and more ground (sometimes literally) as of late. Our paper examines this phenomenon by analysing examples of converted green space of LHEs in two former socialist cities - a neglected and underused former “traffic park” in Budapest and a typical LHE “courtyard” overgrown and unused in Riga. We focus on the conversational process and the participatory approach of inhabitants and analyse how the redesigning of green areas involving local communities can lead to inhabitants feeling more at home in this housing structure.
Public Gardening and the Challenges of Neighbourhood Regeneration in Moscow
The popularity of public gardening in post-Soviet countries has arisen quite recently along with the penetration of neoliberal ideas. Public gardening not only visually improves the environment, but it also creates a range of public spaces and “other” places in which urban citizens can come together; eventually it could help to enhance the image of distressed neighbourhoods. Such community initiatives can be divided into sanctioned intervention and unauthorised intervention (“commoning”); unauthorised intervention is when residents are displeased with their surroundings and attempt to improve their environment in their own way. This paper explores the limitations of the practices of commoning as a source of regeneration and compares its cultural dimensions. In this paper I discuss the initial results of an ongoing research project focused on the expectations of people involved in these forms of participation. During this process, the differing typical understandings and perceptions of urban gardening in public and semi-public spaces will be applied.
Community Gardening As a Means to Changing Urban Inhabitants and Their Space
Community gardening has become a new phenomenon in Slovakia. The evolution of community gardens has been enhanced thanks to the various motivations of the people involved: to grow and share fresh and healthy vegetables in unused urban spaces adjacent to their homes, to build a sense of community and strengthen social relations, to use and cultivate vacant urban space and to contribute to a more sustainable urban environment. This paper discusses the case of community gardening in the medium-sized city of Banská Bystrica in Slovakia. It analyses the growing popularity of community gardening as a result of the emergence of grassroots activism, a sign indicating the development of civil society. Using an ethnographic approach of participant observation and interviews, this paper also looks at community gardening as a non-political collective action addressing broader global issues.
Post-Soviet Housing: “Dacha” Settlements in the Tashkent Region
The post-Soviet period has been witness to a rather difficult process of establishing a new socio-economic and political system in Uzbekistan. The housing question was significantly resolved within the U.S.S.R., while currently the issue of housing has become exacerbated mainly due to the privatisation of the existing housing stock. However, as more young people now enter adulthood, the need for affordable housing once again comes to the forefront in Uzbekistan - namely in Tashkent, a place attracting the youth from all other regions. This research paper focuses on one of the housing solutions in the Tashkent Region: particularly the reconstruction of summer houses, or dachas, into permanent homes for year-round living. The findings are based on several observations from the field and expert interviews with local dacha residents during the summers of 2015 and 2016. The revival of a traditional lifestyle, combined with the modernisation and “Euro-style” of Uzbek houses, represents a case of “indigenous modernities”.
Urban Green Space in Transition: Historical parks and Soviet heritage in Arkhangelsk, Russia
Urban green space was largely underestimated as a potential for healthy and liveable environments in the state socialist countries. In Soviet Russia, green in the city was part of urban planning but more as a proclamation and mostly implemented in a top-down-manner. During postsocialist transformation, economic restructuring dwarfed the debate on urban nature and greening. Within last years, we see a change here: Urban nature for residential quality and well-being has become more relevant for people, their perceptions and daily practices. The paper analyses the development and main characteristics of urban green spaces in Arkhangelsk, Russia. It discusses the importance of urban nature for human well-being, housing and its contribution to social cohesion and local identity. The paper argues that urban greening is not only a planning tool to create liveable and healthy urban environments but also an important strategy in awareness raising and public involvement activities.
The Apartment with the Best Floor Plan Layout: Architects versus Non-architects
This study examined differences in the floor-plan preferences of architects and laypersons with no architectural education or experience (non-architects). Qualitative data on floor-plan preferences were collected using interviews and an online survey. The floor plans used in the online survey were differentiated primarily by spatial arrangements and included the original layout of a socialist prefab apartment and two contemporary redesigns of the space. The results showed significant differences in the floor-plan preferences of architects and non-architects. Topological properties of layout and a required level of privacy were identified as key factors influencing the between-group differences. Architects and non-architects disagreed in particular over how the public and private zones were defined and arranged in the apartment layouts. From the perspective of architectural practice, understanding non-architects’ preferences can decrease the uncertainty in new product development for an unknown end user and increase residential satisfaction.
Single Access Neighbourhoods and Neighbourhood Cohesion
This paper compares the level of neighbourhood cohesion of two single access neighbourhoods in Calgary, Alberta. The two neighbourhoods had a high sense of neighbourhood cohesion. It is argued that the single access to the neighbourhood has contributed to a high sense of neighbourhood cohesion. One neighbourhood outperformed the other on all three subscales of cohesion due to a stronger sense of seclusion for the neighbourhood. Establishing a sense of identity, a focus, and a clear boundary for a neighbourhood is paramount. Meanwhile, visionary planning for the future of neighbourhood design in terms of ease and flexibility of redevelopment for the open grid model seems to dominate the mindset of municipal planners raising the banner of sustainability.
Imposing Tenure Mix on Residential Neighbourhoods: A Review of Actions to Address Unfinished Housing Estates in the Republic of Ireland
The ‘Celtic Tiger’ years (1995-2007) saw prosperous economic growth in the Republic of Ireland and an intense period of housing construction and urban development. In 2008 Ireland entered into recession, which resulted in a collapse of the property market and the construction industry. This collapse left just over 2,000 housing developments unfinished across the country. Since 2008, the Irish Government, in conjunction with local authorities, has been developing strategies and plans to finalise these unfinished estates. This paper reports on the current practices for resolving issues in unfinished housing estates in the Republic of Ireland, with a particular focus on the plans to utilise empty housing for social housing purposes. The paper critiques the ways in which this imposed tenure mix can potentially threaten housing policy objectives for sustainable and balanced communities. It is the contention of this paper that this housing practice needs urgent review.
How to Understand Residential Value and Valuation
Sustainable urban development requires education of professionals dealing with the built environment. Property valuers constitute one such important albeit neglected actor group. When the aim is to comprehend value and valuation, the questions to ask include the following argumentation: What is the ideal definition of sustainable development in a valuation context? Is it about the diversity of value systems? Or about long-term thinking in terms of reinvesting the profits harvested? And what is the role of generating data on these factors? The paper reports some suggestions for answering these questions in a residential context.
