Abstract
Large pre-fabricated housing estates were erected all over Europe, however the political and ideological factors conspired to ensure that they developed on the largest scale in communist countries. Today, they continue to provide some 30–40% of the housing stock in this part of Europe. The present paper discusses the transformations of large housing estates in Poland 25 years after of the collapse of communism. The main purpose of the study was to identify the social and demographic changes in Polish large housing estates and to clarify the crucial factors underpinning them. The key questions were: (1) How the social and demographic structures of the large housing estates in Poland have changed since the collapse of communism? (2) What are the main determinants of these processes? (3) Whether the processes occurring in large housing estates reproduce the negative phenomena of social degradation observed in many Western European countries? The study is based on a review of the available literature concerning transformations of large housing estates in several of the large Polish cities and the results of the author’s own investigations conducted within Łódź – one of the largest cities in the country.
Highlights
As Frank Wassenberg rightly pointed out in his book Large Housing Estates: Ideas, Rise, Fall and Recovery (2013) large housing estates for many people symbolise all that is wrong in urban planning
The key questions were: (1) how the social and demographic structures of the large housing estates in Poland have changed since the collapse of communism? (2) what are the main determinants of these processes? (3) whether the processes occurring in large housing estates in post-socialist Poland reproduce the negative phenomena of social and physical degradation, in the literature referred as the “large housing estate syndrome” (Rembarz 2010) or “spiral of decline” (Prak, Priemus 1986)?
Unlike in certain European countries, there is no single definition of large housing estates in Poland3, numerous authors (e.g. Węcławowicz et al 2005; Górczyńska 2008; Gorczyca 2009) use the definition formulated for the purposes of the RESTATE4 project
Summary
As Frank Wassenberg rightly pointed out in his book Large Housing Estates: Ideas, Rise, Fall and Recovery (2013) large housing estates for many people symbolise all that is wrong in urban planning. During the state-socialist era, these residential complexes were built hastily and negligently in order to satisfy growing residential needs caused by accelerating urbanization Their main drawbacks were: monotonous architecture, poor technical quality of large-panel buildings inflexible design systems, substandard floor plans (small rooms, kitchens without windows, or dysfunctional bathrooms) and small floor areas, as well as the insufficient social infrastructure and the shortage of basic services. Despite these characteristics, the large housing estates were seen as an attractive place of residence during the socialist period. The discussion of social and physical decay and the outflow of better-off inhabitants has slowed down (Wiest 2011; Gorczyca 2016; Szafrańska 2016) the future development of large housing estates still remains a great challenge in many former socialist countries, primarily due to the fact that they constitute the dominant form of urban residential environment
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