This book aims to take the reader through all aspects of fire safety and management in residential settings, from origin and ignition, risk assessment, protection and prevention, as well as comparing effective enforcement options from across all parts of the UK. It outlines the basis of law, standards and guidance relating to fire safety and building performance, and critically evaluates the legal provisions and approaches to risk reduction with the focus on rented properties. This book: Provides wider access to fire safety knowledge previously generally used by regulators and specialists. Examines fire risk assessments in domestic premises and the competency of assessors. Explains the approaches to fire safety enforcement the impact of property licensing. Includes fire risk precautions for housing and general checklists to help landlords and tenants understand their responsibilities Explores the effect of existing legislation with references to key Property Tribunal decisions relating to fire risk management and future legal developments. This book will assist Environmental Health Officers and Environmental Health Practitioners - as well as graduating academics of the field - in their work to encourage the appropriate and effective use of legislation. Landlords, Estate managers, student accommodation managers, surveyors and tenant groups may also find this book of interest.

Black Families and the Recession in the United States goes beyond the massive loss of property among African Americans during the Great Recession of 2007-2009. It connects the housing experience to broader systems of inequality in America. Following the Great Recession of 2007-2009, the US elections of 2008, the impact of COVID-19, and widespread demonstrations resulting from the murder of George Floyd by police, the sociopolitical and economic status of Blacks in the United States is at a critical point in history, with demand for major transformation. The authors reveal a history of racist practices against Blacks in many systems, including education, policing, incarceration, wealth transmission, voting restrictions, and housing segregation. The social costs of the recession are manifested in the daily lives of African American families. In addition to financial losses, African Americans are more likely to be plagued with issues related to poverty, chronic illnesses, and lack of trust of social and economic institutions. Research, policy, and practical implications of this research include identifying social and economic supports unique to African Americans and determining strategies to strengthen families; paramount to addressing racial disparities. The interdisciplinary focus of this book appeals to a wide audience and areas of study.

Affordable and Social Housing - Policy and Practice is a candid and critical appraisal of current big-ticket issues affecting the planning, development and management of affordable and social housing in the United Kingdom. The successor to the second edition of the established textbook An Introduction to Social Housing, the book includes new chapters, reflecting the focal importance of customer involvement and empowerment, regeneration and the Localism agenda which will have radical impacts on housing provision and tenure, as well as the town and country planning system which enables its development. There is also a new chapter on Housing Law in response to demand for a clear and signposting exposition of this often complex area. Reeves indicates how each theme affects the other, and suggests policy directions on the basis of past successes and failures. Paul Reeves takes a people-centred approach to the subject, describing the themes that have run through provision of social housing from the first philanthropic industrialists in the 19th Century though to the increasingly complex mixture of ownerships and tenures in the present day. The book is ideal for students of housing and social policy, and for housing professionals aiming to obtain qualifications and wanting a broad understanding of the social housing sector.

In the wake of the Great Recession, housing and its financing suddenly re-emerged as questions of significant public concern. Yet both public and academic debates about housing have remained constricted, tending not to explore how the evolution of housing simultaneously entails basic forms of socio-spatial reproduction and underlying tensions in the political order. Drawing on cutting edge perspectives from urban studies, this book grants renewed, interdisciplinary energy to the housing question. It explores how housing raises a series of vexing issues surrounding rights, identity, and justice in the modern city. Through finely detailed studies that illuminate national and regional particularities- ranging from analyses of urban planning in the Soviet Union, the post-Katrina reconstruction of New Orleans, to squatting in contemporary Lima - the volume underscores how housing questions matter in a wide range of contexts. It draws attention to ruptures and continuities between high modernist and neoliberal forms of urbanism, demonstrating how housing and the dilemmas surrounding it are central to governance and the production of space in a rapidly urbanizing world.

In a groundbreaking longitudinal study, researches studied seven similar social housing neighbourhoods in Ireland to determine what factors affected their liveability. In this collection of essays, the same researchers return to these neighbourhoods ten years later to see what's changed. Are these neighbourhoods now more liveable or leaveable? Social Housing, Disadvantage and Neighbourhood Liveability examines the major national and local developments that externally affected these neighbourhoods: the Celtic tiger boom, area-based interventions, and reforms in social housing management. Additionally, the book examines changes in the culture of social housing through studies of crime within social housing, changes in public service delivery, and media reporting on social housing. Social Housing, Disadvantage and Neighbourhood Liveability offers a new body of data valuable to researchers in Ireland and abroad on how to create more equitable and liveable social housing.

This title was first published in 1986 during a recession much like that faced in recent years, which placed immense pressure on the British planning system and led to social unrest in the inner cities and in many disadvantaged areas. Within this context, Peter Ambrose outlines the features of land development and explores the circumstances of post-war planning. The central section of the book deals with the key forces at work in land development - finance, the construction industry and the local and central state - and explains how they interact. Using a number of case-studies, including the greenfield urban fringe and London's docklands, as well as examples drawn from other countries, Ambrose provides an essential background to the British planning system and the problems still faced by it today.

Economic Growth and Sustainable Housing: An Uneasy Relationship critically discusses the possibilities of decoupling environmental degradation from economic growth. The author refutes the belief in combining perpetual economic growth with long-term environmental sustainability based on the premise that economic growth can be fully decoupled from negative environmental impacts. This proposition is underpinned by intensive study in the housing sector from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. Xue employs critical realism to inform the investigation and organize the argumentation throughout the book. The book is organised into four parts: the first discusses the relevance of critical realism to the research field of housing and urban sustainable development in terms of ontology and methodology. The second makes a transcendental refutation of the possibilities of decoupling economic growth from housing-related environmental impacts by describing transfactual conditions of full decoupling. The third part presents two case studies to show whether and to what extents decoupling between economic growth and housing-related environmental impacts have historically taken place. Inspired by critical realist ontology, generalization of abstract concept from the case studies are made to cast light on the implausibility of maintaining perpetual economic growth through decoupling. The final part explains why and how the belief in full decoupling and economic growth is generated and sustained despite its implausibility and non-necessity, which constitutes an explanatory critique of the growth and decoupling ideology and paves the way for the paradigm shift to socially sustainable de-growth. This book will be of interest to students of housing and urban studies, to students of environmental sustainability and also for those students and academics with a general interest in critical realism.

The last two decades have seen a marked growth in comparative research within the field of housing studies. This reflects the increasing globalisation of housing finance and therefore the interconnectedness of housing markets, growing interest among researchers and policy makers in learning from developments in other countries and the availability of more funding and better comparative data to support their endeavours. Concurrently, comparative housing research has become more sophisticated, as research training has improved, the number of journals publishing this research has increased and researchers have become what one might call more 'methodologically aware'. However, despite these developments, there is no single volume book that deals with the distinct challenges that arise from comparative housing research, compared to other fields of comparative policy analysis. These challenges relate to spatial fixity of housing, its dual role as a consumption and investment good, and as the "wobbly pillar" of the welfare state, which is delivered using a complex mix of government and market supports. This volume reflects on the significant methodological strides made in the comparative housing research field during this period. The book also considers the considerable challenges that remain if comparative housing research is to match the methodological and theoretical sophistication evident in other comparative social science fields and maps a route for this journey. This book was published as a special issue of the International Journal of Housing Policy.

Current expectations and standards of comfort are almost certainly unsustainable and new methods and ideas will be required if there is to be any prospect of a significantly lower carbon society. This collection reassesses relationships between people and the multitude of environments they inhabit in the context of increasing carbon intensities of everyday life. In this bold and unconventional volume historians, sociologists, environmentalists, geographers, and cultural theorists provoke and stimulate debate about the future of comfort in a lower carbon society. These contributions are then subject to critical commentary from a range of academic and policy perspectives. The result is a book that promotes academic and policy discussion of the environmental consequences of indoor climate change around the world, and that offers new perspectives and strategies for moving towards a lower carbon future. This book was published as a special issue of Building Research & Information.

First published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Experts review the leading social policy scholarship from the past year in this comprehensive volume. Published in association with the Social Policy Association, the latest volume in this long-running series addresses current issues and critical debates throughout the international social policy field with a particular focus on employment policy, housing policy and climate justice. Contributors also explore key developments including researching during the COVID-19 pandemic, migrants' access to social benefits in Germany, the right(s) to healthcare in Italy, American and European homelessness policies and much more. This annual review is essential reading for students and academics in social policy, social welfare and related disciplines.

Should all-inclusive engagement be the major task of architecture? All-Inclusive Engagement in Architecture: Towards the Future of Social Change presents the case that the answer is yes. Through original contributions and case studies, this volume shows that socially engaged architecture is both a theoretical construct and a professional practice navigating the global politics of poverty, charity, health, technology, neoliberal urbanism, and the discipline's exclusionary basis. The scholarly ideas and design projects of 58 thought leaders demonstrate the architect's role as a revolutionary social agent. Exemplary works are included from the United States, Mexico, Canada, Africa, Asia, and Europe. This book offers a comprehensive overview and in-depth analysis of all-inclusive engagement in public interest design for instructors, students, and professionals alike, showing how this approach to architecture can bring forth a radical reformation of the profession and its relationship to society.

Should all-inclusive engagement be the major task of architecture? All-Inclusive Engagement in Architecture: Towards the Future of Social Change presents the case that the answer is yes. Through original contributions and case studies, this volume shows that socially engaged architecture is both a theoretical construct and a professional practice navigating the global politics of poverty, charity, health, technology, neoliberal urbanism, and the discipline's exclusionary basis. The scholarly ideas and design projects of 58 thought leaders demonstrate the architect's role as a revolutionary social agent. Exemplary works are included from the United States, Mexico, Canada, Africa, Asia, and Europe. This book offers a comprehensive overview and in-depth analysis of all-inclusive engagement in public interest design for instructors, students, and professionals alike, showing how this approach to architecture can bring forth a radical reformation of the profession and its relationship to society.

Housing is an essential, but complex, product, so complex that professionals involved in its production, namely, architects, real estate developers and urban planners, have difficulty agreeing on "good" housing outcomes. Less-than-optimal solutions that have resulted from a too narrow focus on one discipline over others are familiar: high design that is costly to build that makes little contribution to the public realm, highly profitable but seemingly identical "cookie-cutter" dwellings with no sense of place and well-planned neighborhoods full of generically designed, unmarketable product types. Differing roles, languages and criteria for success shape these perspectives, which, in turn, influence attitudes about housing regulation. Real estate developers, for example, prefer projects that can be built "as-of-right" or "by-right," meaning that they can be approved quickly because they meet all current planning, zoning and building code requirements. Design-focused projects, heretofore "by-design," by contrast, often require time to challenge existing regulatory codes, pursuing discretionary modifications meant to maximize design innovation and development potential. Meanwhile, urban planners work to establish and mediate the threshold between by-right and by-design processes by setting housing standards and determining appropriate housing policy. But just what is the right line between "by-right" and "by-design"? By-Right, By-Design provides a historical perspective, conceptual frameworks and practical strategies that cross and connect the diverse professions involved in housing production. The heart of the book is a set of six cross-disciplinary comparative case studies, each examining a significant Los Angeles housing design precedent approved by-variance and its associated development type approved as of right. Each comparison tells a different story about the often-hidden relationships among the three primary disciplines shaping the built environment, some of which uphold, and others of which transgress, conventional disciplinary stereotypes.

Young People and Housing brings together new research exploring the economic, social, and cultural challenges that face young people in search of permanent housing. Featuring international case studies from Asia, Europe, and Australia, Young People and Housing is a collection of groundbreaking work from leading scholars in housing policy. Younger generations across a wide range of societies face increasing difficulties in gaining access to housing. Housing occupies a pivotal position in the transition from parental dependence to adult independence. Delayed independence has significant implications for marriage and family formation, fertility, inter and intra generational tensions, social mobility and social inequalities. The social and cultural dimensions are, of course, enormously varied with strong contrasts between Asian and Western societies in terms of intergenerational norms and practices in relation to housing. Nevertheless, younger households in China (including Hong Kong), Japan, the USA, Australasia and Europe face very similar challenges in the housing sphere. Moreover, concerns about the housing future for younger generations are gaining greater policy and popular prominence in many countries.

Defining the "unsheltered woman" and her needs is a complicated task. Regardless of the roots of the condition, a significant number of women are not being housed as well as they could be. Women are not the only victims of an inadequately met housing demand; their families suffer as well. This volume provides sources of information for understanding which women are ill-housed and why their shelter is substandard.

Birch reviews basic demographic issues and trends in household formation, using census information to reveal which groups in the country and in New York City have housing problems. The essays then turn to the needs of special groups of women: elderly women, working-class women, and professional women--married and single. Later essays investigate locational and design issues related to women's concerns: a model case study in Denver; high-rise housing in New York City; neighborhood housing for the elderly in Manhattan.

The author has gathered together more than twenty of the top professionals in the field including Susan Cotts Watkins, Evelyn S. Mann, May Engler, Roberta R. Spohn, Olivia Schieffelin Nordberg, Barbara Behrens Gers, Susan Saegert, Elizabeth Mackintosh, Gwendolyn Wright, Dolores Hayden, Jacqueline Leavitt, Ronnie Feit, Jan Peterson, Michael Mostoller, Clara Fox, Celine G. Marcus, Jane Margolies, Lynda Simmons, Judith Edelman, Rebecca A. Lee, and Michael A. Stegman. The Unsheltered Woman is significant not only for women, but also for housing policy in America. Until now, very little research has focused on gender policy issues, as such it should be read by all urban planners, policy makers, and housing authorities.

Since the start of the twenty-first century, urban communities have faced increasing challenges in housing affordability, with environmental issues causing additional concern. It is clear that changes to urban housing are needed to enhance the resilience of cities and improve the economic, social and physical well-being of residents. This book provides a comparative cross-national perspective on urban housing and sustainability in Europe, exploring the key barriers and drivers associated with sustainable urban development and community regeneration. Country-specific chapters allow for easy comparison, with each summarizing how sustainable housing operates in the country in question, before going on to discuss the key barriers and drivers at play. This book brings a sustainability perspective to the comparative housing literature which frequently fails to integrate the social, economic and environmental pillars of sustainability. The book outlines many of the changes that professionals and residents will need to make to their practices and cultures in order to enhance housing resilience. Students, researchers and professionals with an interest in sustainable housing creation and regeneration will find this book an invaluable reference.

First published in 1998, this book addresses a central issue in housing: that of 'need' and how to meet it. Need refers either to individual household circumstances or to the aggregate requirement for new (social and market) housing. The book develops a new policy mechanism to address the present fragmented policy situation. The mechanism now used to allocate finance and new social housing numbers is complex and ineffective in terms of meeting needs. The book's proposals are rooted in clear definitions of the key terms, especially that of housing need, which suffers from lack of any clear definition. The analysis is developed using a large database of survey information covering England and Wales. The proposed policy mechanism should be of great interest at a time when radical change to local government are being considered. The proposed mechanism would greatly increase value for money of public time and expenditure on (planning for) social housing.

Uncertain Regional Urbanism in Venezuela explores the changes cities face when they become metropolises, forming expanding regions which create both potential and problems within settlements. To do so, it focuses on three metropolitan areas located in Venezuela's Center-North region: Caracas, Maracay and Valencia, designated as "Camava." Considering three core topics, government and territorial administration, infrastructure and environment, as well as looking at the reciprocal impact, this book describes and analyzes the determinant variables that characterize the phenomenon of regional urbanization in this area and in the wider Global South. It includes documentary research, semi-structured interviews and Delphi methodology, involving a total of forty experts from different disciplines to build a comprehensive outlook on the situation. This book presents a broader understanding of the region to encourage a more sustainable and knowledge-based development plan, moving away from the exploitation of natural resources, with six future-oriented scenarios to consider. This is a much-needed study in the urban regions of Venezuela, which will be of interest to academics and researchers in Latin American studies, the Global South, architecture and planning.

Architecture for Residential Care and Ageing Communities confronts urgent architectural design challenges within residential innovation, ageing communities and healthcare environments. The increasing and diversified demands on the housing market today call for alterability and adaptability in long term solutions for new integrated ways of residing. Meanwhile, an accentuated ageing society requires new residential ways of living, combining dignity, independence and appropriate care. Concurrently, profound changes in technical conditions for home healthcare require rethinking healing environments. This edited collection explores the dynamics between these integrated architectural and caring developments and intends to envision reconfigured environmental design patterns that can significantly enhance new forms of welfare and ultimately, an improved quality of life. This book identifies, presents, and articulates new qualities in designs, in caring processes, and healing atmospheres, thereby providing operational knowledge developed in close collaboration with academics, actors and stakeholders in architecture, design, and healthcare. This is an ideal read for those interested in health promotive situations of dwelling, ageing and caring.

Architecture for Residential Care and Ageing Communities confronts urgent architectural design challenges within residential innovation, ageing communities and healthcare environments. The increasing and diversified demands on the housing market today call for alterability and adaptability in long term solutions for new integrated ways of residing. Meanwhile, an accentuated ageing society requires new residential ways of living, combining dignity, independence and appropriate care. Concurrently, profound changes in technical conditions for home healthcare require rethinking healing environments. This edited collection explores the dynamics between these integrated architectural and caring developments and intends to envision reconfigured environmental design patterns that can significantly enhance new forms of welfare and ultimately, an improved quality of life. This book identifies, presents, and articulates new qualities in designs, in caring processes, and healing atmospheres, thereby providing operational knowledge developed in close collaboration with academics, actors and stakeholders in architecture, design, and healthcare. This is an ideal read for those interested in health promotive situations of dwelling, ageing and caring.

National Jewish Book Awards Winner of the Maurice Amado Foundation Award for Sephardic Studies, 2000. In the seventeenth century, Amsterdam took in several thousand New Christians from the Iberian peninsula, descendants of Jews who had been forcibly baptized some two hundred years earlier. Shortly after their initial settlement, the members of this mostly Portuguese refugee community chose to manifest themselves as Jews again. No real obstacles were put in their way. The tolerance extended to them by the Amsterdam authorities was as exemplary as their new-found commitment to Jewish orthodoxy (barring a few famous instances) was strong. These circumstances engendered the new dynamic of a traditional Jewish society creatively engaged with the non-Jewish, secular world in relative harmony. Amsterdam's Portuguese Jewry was in this sense the first modern Jewish community. Through a fresh and rigorous approach to the documents, Daniel Swetschinki's lively and original portrait of this justly famous community presents some unexpected conclusions. As well as characterizing the major dimensions of the New Christian migrations and identifying trends within an array of economic activities, it explores the appeal that Judaism as a religion and as a communal structure exercised. Throughout, the analysis focuses on the common rather than the exceptional and seeks the centre from which the interrelationship of all the constituent parts may be grasped. Swetschinski's emphasis is on the social dimension of Portuguese Jewish economic and religious life, formal and informal. He thereby uncovers the internal dynamics of this remarkable Jewish community that moulded a renegade New Christian population into a model Jewish society, 'model' in the sense that it had the support of proponents of modernity and traditionalism alike and also won the respect of the Christian population. His research adds a broad and authentic vision to the panoply of images of early modern Jewish history and enables him to offer new insights into the troublesome question of the transition from medieval to modern Judaism.

The Aesthetics of Neighborhood Change explores cultural shifts that result from gentrification and redevelopment, showing how cultures of racially and economically marginalized groups are appropriated or erased by the introduction luxury real estate and retail branding. The book explores the literal and symbolic shifts in ownership that are happening in urban locations undergoing redevelopment and demographic shifts. As lesser discussed manifestations of these shifts, cultural symbols of leisure, tourism and elite consumption can be witnessed as cities work to reshape their landscapes through real estate, retail, and public space development. Aesthetic changes often show up in the form of boutique coffee shops, distilleries, high-end restaurants, retail flagships, and more. Through careful branding and visual design, the new spaces and places become recognized as signs of exclusivity. This exclusivity also emerges in public spaces through local, informal retail practices like street vending, food trucks and outdoor markets. As these changes take shape, more affluent groups replace and displace the cultural practices of existing groups. These changes send tangible, observable messages of neighborhood change which signal the race and class profiles of the desired incoming population who can afford to participate in the redeveloped landscape. Developing a discourse on how to better observe and analyze signs of exclusion in the built environment, The Aesthetics of Neighborhood Change will be of great interest to scholars of community development, social mobilization, urban studies and design, and urban planning and development. The chapters were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Cultural Geography.

Regent Park Redux evaluates one of the biggest experiments in public housing redevelopment from the tenant perspective. Built in the 1940s, Toronto's Regent Park has experienced common large-scale public housing problems. Instead of simply tearing down old buildings and scattering inhabitants, the city's housing authority came up with a plan for radical transformation. In partnership with a private developer, the Toronto Community Housing Corporation organized a twenty-year, billion-dollar makeover. The reconstituted neighbourhood, one of the most diverse in the world, will offer a new mix of amenities and social services intended to "reknit the urban fabric." Regent Park Redux, based on a ten-year study of 52 households as they moved through stages of displacement and resettlement, examines the dreams and hopes residents have for their community and their future. Urban planners and designers across the world, in cities facing some of the same challenges as Toronto, will want to pay attention to this story.

This title was first published in 2003. This text seeks to show the importance of housing to individuals and in the broader context of social welfare. It offers a universal philosophical justification for housing provision based on a detailed theoretical consideration of need, choice, rights and responsibility. The implications of basing housing policies on these concepts are considered. Dr Peter King suggests that we should see housing as, above all, a pre-requisite for human flourishing. As such it is an essentially private activity. As a consequence, he argues, housing policy should be limited to a consideration of the enhancement of the personal fulfilment of individuals rather than seeking to further collective or utilitarian ends. Dr King's purpose in this book is to explore housing using the techniques and methods of social philosophy. He seeks to combat relativist approaches to housing discourse with a theoretical appreciation of housing based on universalist principles derived from Kant and Nozick. The book therefore addresses housing issues with a philosophical rigour, but without ignoring key policy debates.