Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 413-436
Author(s):  
Paul Watt

The concluding chapter summarises the key findings and suggests policy recommendations. Part I delineated the pernicious impacts of neoliberalism and austerity on public/social housing in London, and analysed the role that estate demolition has played. Part II cast a sociological gaze not only at how working-class housing, lives and spaces are materially deprived and symbolically devalued by powerful external forces (neoliberalism and austerity), but also at how such housing, lives and spaces become valued and valuable. This emphasis on positive values corrects those policy perspectives that view estates through the epistemologically narrow lens of quantitative area-based deprivation indices. In comparative urbanism terms, London social housing estates remain substantially different from the anomic, often dangerous spaces of urban marginality such as US public housing projects (Wacquant). Part III focused on residents’ experiences of living through regeneration. It demonstrated how the valuation/devaluation duality tilts around in terms of place belonging. Comprehensive redevelopment diminishes the valued aspects of estates, while the devalued aspects are heightened and eventually dominate. The book provides several policy recommendations and research agendas. Demolition-based regeneration schemes inevitably result in state-led gentrification, but refurbishment-only schemes have the potential to improve estates and residents’ lives.

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-68
Author(s):  
Mark David Major

Pruitt-Igoe, in St Louis, Missouri, United States, was one of the most notorious social housing projects of the twentieth century. Charles Jencks argued opening his book The Language of Post-Modern Architecture, ‘Modern Architecture died in St Louis, Missouri on July 15, 1972 at 3.32 pm (or thereabouts) when the infamous Pruitt-Igoe scheme, or rather several of its slab blocks, were given the final coup de grâce by dynamite.’ However, the magazine Architectural Forum had heralded the project as ‘the best high apartment’ of the year in 1951. Indeed, one of its first residents in 1957 described Pruitt-Igoe as ‘like an oasis in a desert, all of this newness’. But a later resident derided the housing project as ‘Hell on Earth’ in 1967. Only eighteen years after opening, the St Louis Public Housing Authority (PHA) began demolishing Pruitt-Igoe in 1972 [1]. It remains commonly cited for the failures of modernist design and planning.


2013 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-20
Author(s):  
Ian Law ◽  
Jenny Simms ◽  
Ala Sirriyeh

Despite increasing understanding of, information about and official commitment to challenge these patterns, racist hostility and violence continue to have an enduring presence in urban and rural life in the UK. This indicates the paradoxical nature of this racial crisis and challenges for antiracism as a political project. This paper charts how these issues play out at the local level through an examination of a five year process from problem identification through to research, response, action and aftermath from 2006 to 2012 in the city of Leeds, UK, with a focus on two predominantly white working class social housing estates in the city. We explore how embedded tensions and antagonisms can begin to be challenged, while examining how the contemporary climate of austerity and cuts in services, together with prevailing post-racial thinking, make the likelihood of such concerted action in the UK increasingly remote.


2021 ◽  
pp. 89-123
Author(s):  
Paul Watt

This chapter summarises the London research boroughs and estates. The research focusses on fourteen council-built housing estates in seven boroughs: Barnet, Hackney, Haringey, Lambeth, Newham, Southwark and Tower Hamlets. Six of these boroughs (except suburban Barnet) have been among the most deprived local authority areas in England for decades, and include high levels of poverty and large Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic populations, although they have also gentrified since the 1980s. The fourteen estates are analysed in terms of their local authority origins, landlords and housing tenure, and also the rationale, progress and effects of their respective regeneration schemes. Reference is made to entrepreneurial borough strategies where relevant. In addition to the seven main boroughs, less extensive research was undertaken at five council estates in four supplementary boroughs: Brent, Camden, Waltham Forest and Westminster. The chapter provides a socio-demographic summary of the estate resident interviewees divided into four housing tenures: social tenants, Right-to-Buy owner-occupiers, temporary non-secure tenants, and owner-occupiers who bought their homes on the open market. The interviewees broadly reflect the dominant multi-ethnic working-class population of London’s social housing estates, albeit weighted towards elderly and long-term residents.


2021 ◽  
pp. 189-220
Author(s):  
Paul Watt

This chapter explores how pre-regeneration estates became devalued places, largely connected to neoliberalisation and austerity policies and effects. Five devaluation strands are analysed: overcrowding, landlord neglect, population transience, crime and disorder, and stigmatisation. Overcrowded families living in small flats were unable to transfer to larger properties because social housing has contracted, trapping them in dwellings that no longer felt like home – un-homing. Although properties and estates were physically solid, they had been neglected due to inadequate investment, repairs and maintenance services. Landlord transfers (from the Greater London Council to the borough councils), plus managerialist restructuring (outsourcing and cutting back caretakers), also contributed to tenants’ complaints about living in a worsening environment. London estates have become more transient places due to the Right-to-Buy because of increased private landlordism, tenants and Airbnb guests. Crime, fear of crime and anti-social behaviour were important issues at some estates, but less so at others. Estates have become symbolically devalued via mass media territorial stigmatisation which has been exacerbated by austerity-related ‘poverty porn’ TV programmes. Despite such devaluations, residents generally positively valued their homes and estates (Chapter 6), and there was no mass desire to leave unlike in the case of US public housing projects (Wacquant).


Facilities ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 33 (7/8) ◽  
pp. 465-484 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eziyi Offia Ibem ◽  
Oluwole Ajala Alagbe

Purpose – The aim of this study was to investigate the dimensions of housing adequacy evaluation by residents in public housing with a view to identifying how government and construction professionals can deliver adequate housing facilities. Design/methodology/approach – The research is based on household surveys involving 517 respondents selected from nine public housing estates constructed between 2003 and 2010 in Ogun State Southwest Nigeria. The data were collected using structured questionnaire administered to the residents by the researchers through visits to the housing estates. A total of 33 variables derived from the review of the literature were used in measuring housing adequacy. Descriptive statistics and factor analyses were used in analysis of the data. Findings – The study reveals that residents perceived their housing situation as inadequate. They evaluated housing adequacy based on four key dimensions: ambient condition of interiors spaces, security, utilities and neighbourhood facilities; social infrastructure; level of privacy and size of sleeping; and living and dining areas in the residences. These dimensions of housing adequacy evaluation were found not to be exactly the same way experts conceived housing adequacy in the literature. Research limitations/implications – The concept of housing adequacy can be used to examine occupants’ housing preferences and their standard of living, the quality of housing and the performance of mass housing projects. Practical implications – The paper makes practical suggestions to government and construction professionals on how to improve adequacy levels of public housing. Specifically, in the areas of giving more attention to ambient condition of interiors, security, utilities and neighbourhood facilities as well as privacy and sizes of main activities areas in dwelling units in the design, construction and management of public housing projects. Originality/value – The study identifies dimensions of housing adequacy evaluation by residents in public housing and compares these with experts’ conception of housing adequacy.


2009 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 239-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adesoji David Jiboye

This paper examines tenants’ satisfaction with public housing in Lagos, Nigeria. This was accomplished by assessing the levels of housing satisfaction of the general population and the degrees of satisfaction of tenants living in selected public housing estates within Lagos metropolis. Three (3) major housing components – environment (E), dwelling (D), and management (M), were identified and employed for this study. Six (6), representing 10% of estates, were randomly selected from forty (40) public housing estates in Lagos. Subsequently, questionnaires were administered to 1.022 (10%), of households from the total of 12.323 households in the selected estates of the study area. The data obtained from the survey were analyzed in two stages. First, is the use of descriptive analysis such as frequency tabulation to assess the general levels of tenants’ housing satisfaction, and second, is the use of Satisfaction Indices (RSI) to determine the degree of tenants’ satisfaction with each of the housing components identified for the study. The results of the analysis indicate that the level of tenants’ housing satisfaction varies and is dependent on the environment, dwelling and management interaction systems. It demonstrated that the level of tenants’ satisfaction with the housing environment and dwellings was above average (adequately satisfactory), but their level of satisfaction with the housing management was below average (unsatisfactory). The study shows that users’ inputs and preferences should be strongly considered by planners and public housing agencies when planning and designing public housing projects. Santrauka Straipsnyje nagrinėjamas ir vertinamas Nigerijos miesto Lagos gyventojų pasitenkinimas municipalinio fondo būstais. Autoriaus tyrimas atskleidė, kad pats būstų ir jų aplinkos įvertinimas yra vidutinio lygmens, jų priežiūros ir tvarkymo lygis yra žemesnis. Nustatyta, kad gyventojų pasitenkinimą lemia ir socialinė bei ekonominė, kultūrinė ir fizinė gerovė. Autorius yra įsitikinęs, kad jo tyrimo išvados ir rekomendacijos bus vertingos būstų statybos ir priežiūros įstaigoms, planuotojams ir architektams, formuluojant naujus ateities būstų projektavimo ir priežiūros reikalavimus.


Author(s):  
James Greenhalgh

Building on the conclusions and individual agency highlighted in the last chapter, this chapter uses examples of the clashes between local government and inhabitants on the social housing estates of Manchester and Hull to show how the practices of everyday life could subvert and challenge the spatial practices of urban governance, shedding light on the lived experience and agency of the inhabitants of mid-twentieth-century social housing. Expectations about how certain spaces should function, what it was appropriate to do in them and the beneficial outcomes they were supposed to produce meant mapping certain expectations about how societies and individuals interacted onto places like parks, grass verges or community centres. Corporations’ and planners’ perceptions of how space should function is thus used here to demonstrate how spatial policies evidenced governmental anxieties over working-class association, concerns about suburban anomie and a growing disquiet about youth and delinquency.


2018 ◽  
pp. 233
Author(s):  
Huda Mohamed Elathtram ◽  
Mohammed Ramadan Almousi ◽  
Mahmed Wali Abdalgader Alsharef ◽  
Arch Basheer Musbah Khalifa Alnnaas

2021 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-46
Author(s):  
John Braithwaite

A disappointment of responses to the Covid-19 crisis is that governments have not invested massively in public housing. Global crises are opportunities for macro resets of policy settings that might deliver lower crime and better justice. Justice Reinvestment is important, but far from enough, as investment beyond the levels of capital sunk into criminal justice is required to establish a just society. Neoliberal policies have produced steep declines in public and social housing stock. This matters because many rehabilitation programmes only work when clients have secure housing. Getting housing policies right is also fundamental because we know the combined effect on crime of being truly disadvantaged, and living in a deeply disadvantaged neighbourhood, is not additive, but multiplicative. A Treaty with First Nations Australians is unlikely to return the stolen land on which white mansions stand. Are there other options for Treaty negotiations? Excellence and generosity in social housing policies might open some paths to partial healing for genocide and ecocide.


Facilities ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Florence Yean Yng Ling ◽  
Zhe Zhang ◽  
Stephanie Yen Ling Tay

Purpose This study aims to investigate how the situational factors that facilities managers (FMs) in Singapore face in their jobs affect their work outcomes. Job situation factors such as types of tasks, interpersonal relationships in teams, supervisors’ actions and advancements opportunities are classified into job characteristics, social environment characteristics, leadership and organisational practices categories. Design/methodology/approach Based on a systematic literature review, a questionnaire was designed to collect data on work outcomes and job situational factors from FMs working in public housing estates in Singapore. Using the Statistical Package for the Social Science software, inferential statistical analyses were carried out. Findings FMs reported that they used economical means and resources to carry out their work significantly frequently and achieved significantly high productivity. Complaints are received significantly frequently and maintenance defects are regularly encountered. Many of the job situational factors are present and found to be significantly correlated with work outcomes and some of these may be used to predict FMs’ work outcomes. Based on the correlation results, the frequency of complaints from residents may be reduced through the following ways: make FMs’ work tasks less challenging; reduce the variety of work tasks that FMs need to execute; reduce FMs’ work volume and speed of work. Research limitations/implications This study is limited to FMs managing public housing estates in Singapore. The work outcomes are self-reported, and thus susceptible to bias. However, as the respondents reported significantly frequent complaints and defects, this might indicate that the bias is not serious. Practical implications FMs’ jobs should be broken down into small parts/tasks and assigned to different FMs to specialise. This makes FMs’ tasks less challenging, and allows them to specialise to increase their productivity, improve their quality of work and overcome the problem of high work volume or demanding work speed. By adopting job specialisation, the frequency of receiving complaints from residents may be reduced. Originality/value This study discovered strategies to reduce the number of complaints from residents of public housing about facilities management. The contribution to knowledge is that complaints by residents on facilities management can be reduced by adopting job specialisation but not job enlargement. Decomposing work into different tasks and allowing FMs to focus on a few tasks would lead to a reduction in complaints. It also enables FMs to master the skill and complete the tasks without much oversight or supervision.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document