Housing Policy in Europe provides a comprehensive introduction to the economic, political and social issues of housing across the continent. The changing policy and practice of housing in fifteen countries from across Northern, Western, Southern and Central Europe are described, analyzed and compared. The book explains why different systems of tenure are dominant in different groups of countries, and the extent to which housing policies within these countries conform to different welfare systems. It reveals how owner-occupation has taken over from social housing as the chosen system of tenure and how this reflects a political and economic shift, from social democracy or communism to neo-liberalism across Europe.

First Published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Fifteen essays in this handbook are divided into four parts. Part I surveys basic spatial and spatially related research; Part II surveys literature on specific urban markets; Part III is devoted to studies of urban development and problems in developing countries.; Part IV contains papers on specific urban problems and sectors.

One of the consequences of the post-socialist transformation of Eastern and Central Europe and the Former Soviet Union is the emergence of energy poverty, a condition where households are living in inadequately heated homes. This book provides the first full-length examination of the causes, consequences and patterns of energy poverty in former Communist countries. Based on empirical evidence that spans different spatial contexts and scales and compares these with other parts of the world, the book links household-level deprivation with broader organizational and political dynamics. The book also analyzes the lived experiences of scarcity and marginalization with the aid of two in-depth country studies. Furthermore, it identifies the socio-demographic factors that distinguish energy-poor families from the rest of the population, while stressing the need for a comprehensive range of policy tools to address energy poverty. As the issue of energy supply from the former Soviet Union is likely to become one of the most important economic and political problems across the whole of Europe within the next couple of decades, the book argues that there is a direct link between the energy crises experienced by the region, and the social aspects of energy use in households.

Going beyond the assumption that East Central European cities are still 'in transition' this book draws on the postsocialism paradigm to ask new questions about the impact of demographic change on residential developments in this region. Focussing on four second-order cities in this region, it examines Gdansk and Lódz in Poland and Brno and Ostrava in the Czech Republic as examples and deals with the nexus between urban development and demographic change for the context of East Central European cities. It provides a framework for linking urban and demographic research. It discusses how residential areas and urban developments cope with changes in population development, household types and different forms of in- and out-migration and goes on to explore parallels and differences in comparison with broader European patterns. This book will be useful to academics of urban planning and development especially in transition areas, Central and Eastern European studies, demographics and population studies, and sociology/social exclusion.

The countries of Eastern Europe have been on the long road to the market for more than a decade. And while the macroeconomic record has been well documented, there has been little analysis of individual country and cross-sector progress. This book offers detailed comparative analysis of the housing sector in seven countries as a window to understanding the developments beyond the headlines. The authors document housing progress towards reliance on markets, how easy it is for families to buy housing, and how the housing sector has contributed to macroeconomic stabilization in Hungary, Slovenia, the Czech and Slovak Republics, Poland, Russia, Armenia, and Estonia.