Housing Culture is an inter-disciplinary study of old houses. It brings together recent ideas in studies of traditional architecture, social and cultural history, and social theory, by looking at the meanings of traditional architecture in western Suffolk, England. The author employs in an English context many of the ideas of Glassie, Deetz and other writers on the American colonies. In so doing, the book forms an important critique and refinement of those ideas, and should prove an indispensable background text for American historical archaeologists in particular. The study spans the late medieval and early modern periods, looking at the layout and structural details of ordinary houses. It argues for a process of closure affecting both technical and social aspects of houses. The context of the process of closure is explored and related to wider social and cultural changes including the feudal/capitalist transition. Housing Culture embodies an innovative and exciting approach to the study of artefacts in an historic period. It will interest historians, historical geographers and archaeologists of the medieval and early modern periods in both England and America. It is also sure to be of interest to students of all areas and periods who seek a theoretically informed approach to the study of traditional architecture and material culture in general. This book is intended for archaeologists, historians (particularly of landscape, architecture, the medieval period, social and cultural) historical geographers, students and researchers of material culture; such groups are found within departments of archeaology, history and anthropology.

This book originates in two symposia held during 1985 at the annual meetings of the Society for Applied Anthropology and the Environmental Design Research Association.

This history of the idea of “neighborhood” in a major American city examines the transition of Atlanta, Georgia, from a place little concerned with residential segregation, tasteful surroundings, and property control to one marked by extreme concentrations of poverty and racial and class exclusion. Using Atlanta as a lens to view the wider nation, LeeAnn Lands shows how assumptions about race and class have coalesced with attitudes toward residential landscape aesthetics and home ownership to shape public policies that promote and protect white privilege. Lands studies the diffusion of property ideologies on two separate but related levels: within academic, professional, and bureaucratic circles and within circles comprising civic elites and rank-and-file residents. By the 1920s, following the establishment of park neighborhoods such as Druid Hills and Ansley Park, white home owners approached housing and neighborhoods with a particular collection of desires and sensibilities: architectural and landscape continuity, a narrow range of housing values, orderliness, and separation from undesirable land uses—and undesirable people. By the 1950s, these desires and sensibilities had been codified in federal, state, and local standards, practices, and laws. Today, Lands argues, far more is at stake than issues of access to particular neighborhoods, because housing location is tied to the allocation of a broad range of resources, including school funding, infrastructure, and law enforcement. Long after racial segregation has been outlawed, white privilege remains embedded in our culture of home ownership.

Named one of the Top 10 books about council housing - the Guardian online Born of idealism, and once an icon of the Labour movement and pillar of the Welfare State, council housing is now nearing its end. But do its many failings outweigh its positive contributions to public health and wellbeing? Alison Ravetz here provides the first comprehensive and apolitical history from which to arrive at a balanced judgement. Drawing on the widest possible evidence, from tenant and government records to the built environment itself, she tells the story of British council housing, from its seeds in Victorian reactions to 'the Poor', in philanthropy and model villages, Christian and other varieties of socialism. Her depiction of council housing in its mature years shows the often bizarre persistence of 'utopian' attitudes (whether in architectural design or management styles); its rise to a monopoly position in working-class family housing; the many compromises consequent on its state finance and local authority control; and the impact on working-class lives as an intellectuals' 'utopian dream' was converted into a social policy for the masses.

Council Housing and Culture makes clear the importance of council housing to twentieth-century life and culture. A major thread through the work is the interaction of council housing with evolving working-class patterns and aspirations.

Cultural sustainability is a very important aspect of the overall sustainability framework and is regarded as the ‘fourth pillar’ alongside the other three: environmental, economic, and social sustainability. However, the concept is neither fully explored, nor widely accepted or recognized. This book elicits the interplay of ‘nature-culture-architecture’ and theorizes the concept of ‘cultural sustainability’ and ‘culturally sustainable architecture.’ It identifies four key themes in Chinese philosophy: Harmony with Heaven, Harmony with Earth, Harmony with Humans, and Harmony with Self, along with Greek philosopher Aristotle’s physics: form, space, matter, and time, it sets them as criteria to evaluate the renewed and new courtyard housing projects constructed in China since the 1990s. Using an innovative architectural and social science approach, this book examines the political, economic, social, and spatial factors that affect cultural sustainability. Supported by a multiplicity of data including: field surveys, interviews with residents, architects, and planners, time diaries, drawings, photos, planning documents, observation notes, and real estate brochures, the book proposes new courtyard garden house design strategies that promote healthy communities and human care for one another, a concept that is universally applicable. The volume is a first opportunity to take a holistic view, to encompass eastern and western, tangible and intangible, cultures in the theorization of ‘cultural sustainability’ and ‘culturally sustainable architecture.’ It is a comprehensive contribution to architectural theory.

This open access book explores the environmental, social, and financial challenges of housing provision, and the urgent need for a sustainable housing transition. The authors explore how market failures have impacted the scaling up of sustainable housing and the various policy attempts to address this. Going beyond an environmental focus, the book explores a range of housing-related challenges including social justice and equity issues. Sustainability transitions theory is presented as a framework to help facilitate a sustainable housing transition and a range of contemporary case studies are explored on issues including high performing housing, small housing, shared housing, neighbourhood-scale housing, circular housing, and innovative financing for housing. It is an important new resource that challenges policy makers, planners, housing construction industry stakeholders, and researchers to rethink what housing is, how we design and construct it, and how we can better integrate impacts on households to wider policy development.