Core Housing Strategy for Improved Urban Low-Cost Public Housing Delivery in Anambra State, Nigeria

Anambra state of Nigeria experiences acute housing shortage for urban low-income population owing to inefficient public housing delivery system principled on conventional full-provision house types. Insufficiency of funds for housing development is a major cause. Increased rate and scale of housing production and volume of housing stock have been stalled. Low-income households are adversely affected, being priced out of the limited stock. Core housing, a partial-provision strategy believed to require less financial resources has been neglected. This research focused on the potentials of core housing strategy in financial cost-saving and other aspects of public housing products’ performance. Components of public housing products’ performance and the measuring variables were first outlined; followed by a review of the relationship between core housing and the variables, which was apt and revealing. This study has widened knowledge and prepared grounds for empirical studies of core housing performance in Anambra State public housing sector.

Traffic Trumps All: Examining the Effect of Traffic Impact Analyses on Urban Housing

Traffic impact analysis (TIA), which estimates the nearby traffic effects of proposed land development, tends to bias against higher density developments in urban areas where traffic is often heavy and travel alternatives plentiful. This has important implications for housing supply and affordability, suburban sprawl, and private vehicle dependence. We examine the understudied implications of TIA on housing by drawing on empirical evidence from distinct bodies of research in the transportation and land use planning literatures to describe the mechanisms through which TIA may affect housing markets. We conclude that TIAs likely have negative effects on both urban housing production and affordability.

Power, production and disorder: The decline of Sweden’s housing industrial complex and the origins of the present housing discontents

It is often assumed in housing and urban studies scholarship that the roots of Sweden’s present housing discontents are to be found in a neoliberal ‘system switch’ following the early-1990s banking crisis. This paper offers a different account, identifying and expounding how insuperable contradictions in Sweden’s complex of housing production, distribution and finance, from the 1970s onward, led to a marked deterioration in its much-lauded housing model. Advancing a historical institutionalist framework, the paper seeks to historically couch the processes and outcomes commonly associated with the contemporary neoliberal era and position them more concretely in relation to actors and their social relations through time. Using a range of data pertaining to housing finance, subsidies, house prices and building output, as part of a mixed-methods analysis, the paper explores how macroeconomic factors, mediated by interactions between the state and sectoral cleavages, influence urban and regional development aspects. The paper’s conceptual and methodological relevance to housing and urban studies scholarship thus extends beyond Sweden.

The transition of housing in Albania and the role of adopted practices. Dynamics of social integration in differentiated urban contexts

This article aims to investigate the transition of housing in Albania from a centrally planned to a free-market economy, by studying practices adopted in housing production. The main argument is that, despite differentiations in urban dynamics, housing sector plays an important role in social integration processes in the post-socialist context and, at the same time, poses crucial questions about the future of Albanian cities.

The financialisation of housing production: exploring capital flows and value extraction among major housebuilders in the UK

This paper examines trends in the operation and financial performance of major UK housebuilders shortly before, during and after the global financial crisis (GFC) in 2008. It outlines two contrasting explanations of what has happened in the sector over this period. The first is described as an ‘institutional recovery’ perspective, in which a period of initial retrenchment after the crash was followed by steady reinvestment, and then a cautious move back to growth by the major housebuilding companies. This is set against what we describe as a ‘financialised recovery’ perspective. This explanation stems from our own analysis of the annual accounts of major UK housebuilders since 2005. It reveals the impact of the intensive financialisation of a sector initially weakened by the GFC, but where the strategic primacy of maximising shareholder value has been asserted more strongly than before. Our analysis of dividend payments post-GFC reveals this in the starkest of terms. We suggest that the sector has been in more robust financial health than implied by the ‘institutional recovery’ narrative, but that significant value is being extracted out of these companies, and indeed the sector overall, by institutional investors. The analysis provides unique insights into the financialisation of housing production, an issue which to date has received only limited attention. We reflect on the implications of identified trends for housing supply in the UK. We also sketch future research possibilities to examine the ongoing impact of intensive financialisation and the capital flows into, and out of, major housebuilders.