First published in Great Britain in 2015 by
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is Senior Research Associate in Housing and Local Government, Department of Politics and Public Policy, De Montfort University, Leicester
is Professor of Social Science, Ecole Nationale Suprieure dArchitecture, Paris Val de Seine
is Professor Emeritus, Institute for Sociology and Social Psychology, University of Cologne
is Associate Professor, Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Istanbul Technical University
is Associate Professor, Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Istanbul Technical University
is Professor of Sociology, University of Paris 8 Saint-Denis
is Head of Sub-department Housing and Property, Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Regional Planning, Bonn
is Associate Professor of Sociology, Tallinn School of Economics and Business Administration, Tallinn University of Technology; and Tallinn University
is Professor, Department of Architecture, Istanbul Technical University
is Professor of Sociology, Tallinn School of Economics and Business Administration, Tallinn University of Technology
is Associate Professor, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Barcelona
is Post-doctoral Fellow, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Barcelona
is Vice President and Professor of the Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning (retired); and Lecturer, Department of Political Science and Sociology, University of Bonn
is Managing Director, Metropolitan Research Institute, Budapest
is Executive Director of Housing Vision; and Honorary Research Associate, Centre for Comparative Housing Research, De Montfort University, Leicester
is Senior Researcher, Town, Housing and Property, Danish Building Research Institute, Aalborg University
is Programme Manager Research, Platform31, The Hague; and guest researcher at OTB Research Institute, Faculty of Architecture, Delft University of Technology
is a former Director of the Centre for Urban and Regional Studies; and Honorary Senior Lecturer, Housing and Communities Group, School of Social Policy, University of Birmingham
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Christopher Watson and Richard Turkington
Background
In the aftermath of the Second World War, a priority for many governments in Europe was to tackle the problems of housing shortage arising from war-time destruction and the lack of new building during the war years. In most countries, large-scale housing programmes were developed and supported by governments. In the socialist countries of eastern and central Europe, the emphasis on new building continued for more than 40 years. In other countries, especially those of northern and western Europe, the high cost and growing unpopularity of slum clearance and large-scale housing developments, and the sense that the main post-war housing shortages were being overcome, led governments to look for ways to reduce their financial commitment to slum clearance and rehousing. The result was a shift from bricks-and-mortar subsidies to personal subsidies; a focus in some countries on encouraging owner occupation; and a re-think about the future of older housing as public and political support for slum clearance declined. From the 1970s onwards, many countries in northern and western Europe adopted area-based approaches to the improvement of older housing considered suitable for modernisation, and although these approaches were limited in their scale and coverage, physical housing conditions were improved for many occupants.
In northern and western Europe, an area approach was applied also to the improvement of large post-war public sector housing estates which, by the 1980s, were showing serious physical, management, social and economic problems. The financial resources, however, were not there to deal fully with these problems and although estate renewal and regeneration have often been highly successful, the need for further action remains substantial. Throughout Europe, and notably in post-socialist countries, the situation has been complicated by the adoption of privatisation policies, especially in the 1980s and 1990s, and in some countries the virtual withdrawal of public funds for older private housing improvement has made it difficult for lower-income households or their landlords to contemplate such work.
In the early twenty-first century, many countries in Europe have a shortage of good quality affordable housing; considerable problems with much of the post-war social housing stock, especially where it has been transferred to individual private ownership; and the long-standing problem of nineteenth and early-twentieth-century housing which still requires modernisation. At the same time, there are growing concerns about the environmental sustainability and poor energy performance of housing of all ages and types. All these problems have been exacerbated by the financial crisis that began in 2007, which has led to uncertainty about the future prospects for housing renewal, especially through public funding.
