Open House International

Goetgeluk, Roland; Musterd, Sako

2005 Open House International

doi: 10.1108/OHI-03-2005-B0001

Over the past decades, residential mobility has received a good deal of attention in the academic world. However, its mutual relationship with urban change has a more recent history. Even so, an increasing number of academic researchers and policy makers who focus on housing processes and urban transformations realize the importance of linking the two together. This is exactly what this special issue is about. Starting from the perspective of one of the working groups of the European Network for Housing Research - the migration, residential mobility, and housing policy group (http://www.enhr.ibf.uu.se), we plan to relate the knowledge on migration and residential mobility to the knowledge of processes of urban change. A range of papers on this topic was presented during the ENHR conference in Cambridge in the summer of 2004.

Musterd, Sako; Bontje, Marco; Ostendorf, Wim

2005 Open House International

doi: 10.1108/OHI-03-2005-B0002

Over the past four decades, many urban regions, including the Amsterdam region, have changed from compact monocentric urban entities to - albeit still fairly compact - polycentric urban regions. This has been illustrated frequently and in various ways, for example with daily interaction information. A question relevant to this transformation concerns the implications it poses to the different centres and milieus in the urban region, especially the “old” central city. Is the central city quickly losing position, or is it gaining a new, vital place in the urban region? Can the answer to that be deduced from the population dynamics in the urban region? Is insight into the residential mobility process helpful in understanding the changing residential structure and the functioning of the urban system? This paper addresses these questions, using data that make it possible to analyse urban dynamics.

Clark, William A.V.; Deurloo, Marinus C.; Dieleman, Frans M.

2005 Open House International

doi: 10.1108/OHI-03-2005-B0003

Residential mobility is the process by which households attempt to harmonize their housing needs with their housing consumption. However, since houses are geographically inseparable from their neighbourhoods, when households move they also change their locations and their neighbourhoods. This paper examines how households make relative selections when they move between improving their housing consumption and improving the quality of their neigh-bourhoods. We found that households gain in both housing quality and neighbourhood quality, and in many cases, maintain the same housing quality, but gain in neighbourhood quality.

Corte, Stefan De; Raymaekers, Peter; Thaens, Karen; Vandekerckhove, Brecht

2005 Open House International

doi: 10.1108/OHI-03-2005-B0004

This paper analyses migrations at neighbourhood level in relation to the persistence of deprived neighbourhoods. The research is based on a sample of deprived neighbourhoods located in the inner-cities of Brussels and six Flemish cities. Their migration pattern was analysed and compared to a sample of middle-class neighbourhoods which are also located in the inner city. More than one million migration movements covering a period of 14 years (1986-1999) were analysed according to age, nationality and family composition. This was the first time that data of this kind were available for research in Belgium. The main findings hint at a migration pattern that perpetuates deprived neighbourhoods. Residents of these neighbourhoods move more often and over a shorter distance then their counterparts in the reference neighbourhoods. Residents of a deprived neighbourhood also tend to move to another deprived neighbourhood. A clear difference is noted between the Belgian population and migrant groups such as Moroccans and Turks. Groups that are weaker from a socio-economic perspective tend to stay much more within the circuit of deprived neighbour-hoods, hereby perpetuating their existence. We also noted that once their economic situation has improved, the strongest households move out of the neighbourhood, leaving the rest of the population ‘trapped‘ behind. The article closes with a set of policy recommendations.

Robin, Stéphane R.

2005 Open House International

doi: 10.1108/OHI-03-2005-B0005

In France, social housing provides a significant proportion of housing services. The present contribution seeks to identify housing careers for social tenants, using event history analysis on a sample of over 40,000 households located in the Lille metropolitan area (in northern France). The data was provided by a local social housing company, and contains extensive geographical information. The analysis was conducted for the metropolitan area and for its three main cities (Lille, Roubaix and Tourcoing). This made it possible to measure the effect of geographical location at both the agglomeration and neighbourhood levels. Our main results are threefold. First, access to better housing depends more on individual characteristics than on residential location; thus, it appears that comparatively favoured households may use social housing to increase their “upward mobility.” Secondly, forced mobility (eviction) depends on household histories and characteristics, but is spatially heavily concentrated. Finally, urban renewal, by increasing the quality of the built environment, tends - at least in some neighbourhoods - to make social housing more desirable (by giving households a stronger incentive to stay). It may thus improve the quality of life of people who are less likely to become homeowners or to access larger/more comfortable houses.

Cho, Youngha; Whitehead, Christine

2005 Open House International

doi: 10.1108/OHI-03-2005-B0006

An important question from the point of view of neighbourhood dynamics is the extent to which households are satisfied with where they live and their mobility patterns. Many of these factors can be assessed by looking at evidence on moving expectations in relation to household, dwelling and neighbourhood attributes. In this paper we examine evidence from London to examine the major factors affecting expectations. The descriptive data make it clear that there are important differences between tenure, satisfaction and expectations of moving. Once these are examined more formally in a model which introduces background, accommodation and neighbourhood variables sequentially, it becomes clear that patterns differ between the private sector, where household variables remain important, and the social sector, where dwelling variables dominate. Across all tenures the impact of neighbourhood is surprisingly limited, given the extent of dissatisfaction expressed. In policy terms this suggests that, in the UK context, the policy emphasis should be as much on changing the nature of the social rented tenure as on improving accommodation and allocation.

Magnusson, Lena

2005 Open House International

doi: 10.1108/OHI-03-2005-B0007

Urbanization usually involves gentrification. Gentrification implies revitalization whereby housing becomes more up-market. This aim of this study is to ascertain whether conversion of tenure from rent to cooperative ownership might initiate a gentrification process. The focus is on the socio-economic composition of individuals living in the converted residential properties. The degree of gentrification is determined by the extent to which the original tenants are replaced by individuals with more resources.The analysis is limited to the distinct of Östermalm in Stockholm city. The quantitative analysis is based on a longitudinal database, Geosweden, covering the total Swedish population in 1990-2000.Östermalm is an inner city district with 60,000 inhabitants and a higher share of converted dwellings than any other district in Stockholm. About 2,300 dwellings were converted between 1991 and 1996. Limited indications of social change can be identified during the conversion.The conversion was completed in 1995. All indicators of gentrification point to social change through residential mobility in 1995-2000. Individuals who moved into the converted properties had more disposable income than those who moved out or stayed in 1995-2000. They also had higher levels of education. The results also point to families with children as a new group of gentrifiers.

Sandlie, Hans Christian

2005 Open House International

doi: 10.1108/OHI-03-2005-B0008

Housing consumption has been rising throughout the post-war era in Norway. However, at the end of the 1990s there was a decline in consumption among young age groups. This tendency is confirmed by newer data: consumption among younger households has stabilised at a lower level than used to be the case. Less of these households are owner-occupiers and they live in smaller dwellings compared to fifteen years ago.In this paper the life course paradigm is used to explain these consumption changes. We find no signs of altering housing preferences among today's youth. The reduced housing consumption among this group can instead be seen in relation to new ways of organising the life course. Postponement of important life events such as completing one's education, entering the labour market, and starting a family of one's own will also postpone the point at which one becomes a homeowner for the first time. The observed decline in housing consumption among young household can, in other words, be understood as a delay in consumption. New life courses among today's youth entail new ways of adapting to the housing market.

Hassan, Asan Ali Golam

2005 Open House International

doi: 10.1108/OHI-03-2005-B0009

The discussion in this article will attempt to establish the general pattern of demographic structural change in Peninsular Malaysia and its constituent regions, and to examine the extent to which government policy (restructuring population and decreasing poverty) has influenced the pattern of regional inequalities in Peninsular Malaysia. Although rural-to-urban migration has contributed to decreasing poverty and income distribution, it has also had side effects for the urban and rural population. In the urban areas, these include urban poverty, housing problems and a high influx of foreign workers; in the rural areas, they include an increased dependency ratio, greater gender inequality, increased poverty and abandoned housing.

Goetgeluk, Roland; Jong, Tom de

2005 Open House International

doi: 10.1108/OHI-03-2005-B0010

This paper explains how a relatively simple analytical spatial algorithm and a GIS visualization of inter-municipal migration patterns revitalized the negotiations for a formal merger (called Holland Rijnland) between six municipalities in the urbanized Leiden Region and ten municipalities in the adjacent rural Bulb Region, both situated in Randstad Holland. Though the regional housing market was just one of the negotiation topics, the political discussion around it almost stymied the entire merger. We discovered a lack of knowledge about three key questions: Would the new merger function as one housing market region within the broader context of Randstad Holland? Do the original two regions interact at all? Or do lower-order regions exist instead? We answered these questions with the aid of individual migration data from Statistics Netherlands and by applying a method called Intramax Clustering in the GIS Flowmap programme. We found that the intended merger is indeed a housing market region; that interaction between the two regions is limited; and that lower-order housing market regions do exist. These findings helped to restart the negotiations; since 2004 Holland Rijnland has been a fact.

Yýlmaz, Meltem

2005 Open House International

doi: 10.1108/OHI-03-2005-B0011

Much of the world, is currently experiencing intense growth, especially in and around cities. Most conventional practitioners of modern design and construction find it easier to make buildings as if nature and place did not exist. Cars and factories might be thought as the most obvious enemies of the environment, but buildings consume more than half the energy used worldwide. Attempts to destroy building traditions have been associated in some countries with a drive to modernize. Beyond the traditional aspects of dwelling, the impact of globalization and its effect on rural economies, environmental problems, rapid urbanization and the unprecedented scale of housing problems which confront the peoples of the world in the twenty-first century, bring a new urgency to the study of the vernacular architecture in a sustaining sense. In this work, the concept of “sustainability” will be taken into consideration especially within the building scale. Vernacular architecture in the past produced a built environment which met people's needs without deteriorating the environment. This paper discusses the concept of sustainability in building design and connects it to the vernacular architecture with the search of the vernacular Antiochia houses as a sample; focusing on its architectural properties in detail. The study concludes that what is expected of architects in the current century is, wherever they work, they are to understand and digest the nature of climate, history and culture, that is to say, to obtain inspiration from the essence of place and to contribute to the creation of relevant architecture and city for a sustainable future.