Council Housing Research Articles

The Agency of Socially Mixed Neighbourhoods Insights from the Historic Centre of Naples

In a city like Naples, the concept of neighbourhood is continuously negotiated and redefined through everyday practices of urban interaction and through the existence of multiple forms of social capital that animate daily life. In the historic centre of the city the negotiation of the neighbourhoods is influenced by the coexistence and close proximity of different social groups, which compels us to think about the significance of the 'agency of place' and how social difference defines the neighbourhood itself. The diverse housing situations and economic activities shape the characteristics of these central neighbourhoods that, crucially, are not captured in formal, administrative definitions of the city's districts. Through the case of the Condominio Sociale divia S. Nicola a Nilo, a city council housing policy to build a socially inclusive block of flats, this article discusses how the coexistence of various inhabitants, social networks, and spatial relationships represent a fundamental feature of the concept of neighbourhood in Naples. In doing so, the article points to the importance of the 'agency of place' and the maintenance of social heterogeneity as key to inclusive urban policies.

Domestic Cartographies: A Post-Occupancy Ethnographic Assessment of Barcelona’s Social Housing Strategies, 2015–2023

The lack of affordable housing remains a major problem in Spain. Following the decline in public and affordable housing production caused by the economic, political, and social crisis of 2008, efforts to produce public housing were reactivated in the mid-2010s, gaining increasing importance. In Barcelona, housing policies have played a central role in recent political discourse, particularly with the tenure of housing rights activist Ada Colau (2015–2023). With traditional approaches failing to address the housing emergency, the local government introduced five new procurement strategies to increase the affordable housing stock. These involve new forms of council housing, delegated developments, limited-profit investments, zero-equity housing cooperatives, and urban refurbishment. This article uses a mixed methods approach to analyse these strategies. The analysis spans all design phases, from inception to construction, and includes post-occupancy evaluations. Methods include typological analysis, expert interviews, and spatial performance analysis using ethnographic methods and inhabitant interviews. The results evidence the importance of diversifying procurement models, tailoring approaches to different user profiles, and enhancing emerging opportunities by including new stakeholders in the development process.

Impact of access to housing on mental health and coping amongst Ukrainian refugees in England

Abstract Background Though the link between war-related trauma and poor mental health is well-established, less is known about stressors due to prolonged displacement, and how these relate to mental health. As the numbers of forcibly displaced persons rise worldwide, the associated mental health burden represents an urgent public health need. This qualitative paper explores housing-related stressors amongst adult female Ukrainian refugees England, mental health impacts, and coping responses. Methods We draw on 40 semi-structured interviews: 30 with Ukrainian refugee women, 10 with stakeholders (council staff, mental health professionals, staff/volunteers at relevant charities). Thematic analysis identified macro- and micro-level factors impacting housing access, perceived mental health and coping. Results Most of the Ukrainian sample were provided with housing for an initial 6 months. Facing the pervasive shortage in council housing, many were attempting to transfer into rented accommodation at interview time. These efforts were hindered by a lack of employment history, discrimination from landlords, and the language barrier. Interviewees linked these issues to high stress levels and deteriorating well-being, adding to their anxiety over the ongoing war. Coping centred on support-seeking (reaching out to councils, charities, other Ukrainians), distraction (exercise, volunteering), problem-solving (taking a methodical approach to problems), and cognitive restructuring (focusing on the positive). Conclusions Ukrainian refugees face significant barriers in accessing long-term housing in England, forcing some to choose between insecure housing and returning to a war zone. This bind has compounded mental health issues attributed to the trauma of leaving Ukraine and the ongoing war. Though refugees took an active approach to coping with housing hardships, resources to support the transition to long-term housing is necessary to better safeguard their mental health from further harm. Key messages • Ukrainian refugees face significant barriers in accessing housing in England, forcing some to choose between insecure housing and returning to an active war zone. • Participants linked barriers to accessing housing to high stress levels and a deterioration of well-being, compounding trauma from fleeing Ukraine and anxiety over the ongoing war.

Fear and loathing in north London: Experiencing estate regeneration as psychosocial degeneration

This article analyses residents’ emotional responses to the regeneration – involving demolition and rebuilding – of West Hendon council housing estate in north London. Based on ethnographic research, the article outlines what living on the estate meant for its working-class residents in terms of providing ontological security and place belonging prior to regeneration. The reality of regeneration for residents involved multiple layers of physical, social, symbolic and psychosocial ‘degeneration’. The article’s focus is psychosocial degeneration, which is illustrated through three emotional dimensions: frustration, anger and betrayal arising from broken promises; stress resulting from living near a building site; and displacement anxiety regarding the uncertainties of where and when they would be relocated. The article highlights how residents are emotionally scarred by the protracted, opaque, ever-changing regeneration process. The reality of regeneration/degeneration for residents – involving state-led gentrification – is at stark variance to the official narrative that regeneration entails a smooth, unidirectional trajectory of improving homes and communities.

Women’s Activism in Twentieth-Century Britain: Making Difference across the Political Spectrum. By Paula Bartley

Women’s Activism in Twentieth-Century Britain introduces a wonderfully diverse range of campaigns, protests, and political engagement women undertook as they sought to bring about change at a local, national, and international level during the twentieth century. Activism occurred through formal and informal organizations or even individually, like Mrs Roberts, a mother of two who in the 1960s chained herself to a noticeboard at the council offices because she needed a council house. The many areas discussed in the book are a real indication not only of Bartley’s research but also of the seismic growth of women’s history and resources available to historians of women in the last 40 years. Taken as a whole, this book thus broadens the reader’s understanding of the scope of women’s activism and makes an argument for its importance to twentieth-century British political history. The introduction opens with a discussion of the Anglo-Indian social reformer Olive Malvery, whose writing exposed the: ‘lives of women and the sharp end of exploitation: factory and ship workers, waitresses, barmaids, costermongers and seamstresses’. [P1] She is one of the many women who lifted the lid on the unseen exploitation women experienced in the workplace. Indeed, this volume has a strong focus on Labour and working-class histories, including women’s industrial action during the First and Second World Wars. This is to be expected from a historian whose recent publications have included books on Ellen Wilkinson and Labour Cabinet Ministers. However, as Bartley explains there were multiple different reasons why women took action such as redressing injustice, creating a better world, or even a response to loss. Thus, this book’s scope is not limited to campaigns around women’s issues; for example, Women against Pit Closures and Lilian Bilocca, who led a huge protest again poor safety standards on Hull trawlers in which her sons and husband worked. Overall, these women’s campaigns for the lives and livelihoods of their men also find a place in the text.

Social Housing Provision in Rural Areas: Lessons learned from a Historic Analysis of Council House Building in a Small Town in Rural England

History shows that one successful method of addressing poverty and inequality is by providing social housing. In England during its post war peak, local authorities, such as borough, urban and rural district councils, built thousands of “council” houses. The common perception of the “council” estate is of huge developments such as in Beacontree built by the London County Council, but construction took place on a smaller scale in rural districts and much can be learned from studying how social housing was provided in these areas. Princes Risborough in Buckinghamshire is an excellent example of council housing provision before and after WW2. Archival data was used to analyze and evaluate the council house-building program from 1919 to 1953. Beginning in 1919 with 10 workers cottages built under the powers of the Housing and Town Planning Act 1919 and ending in 1953 with the erection of 164 “Wimpey” no-fines concrete houses, the Wycombe Rural District Council built 790 dwellings. By the time of the 1961 Census after the WRDC postwar building program effectively ended in 1953 council houses accoutned for about 40% of the homes in the town and the population doubled since 1921. Records show construction of the dwellings helped develop a thriving local construction economy fueled by procurement with local builders, constructing as few as two units. Only toward the end of the building period were contracts let in large quantities when non-traditional construction methods were adopted.

Social mix and the city: Council housing and neighbourhood income inequality in Vienna

The Austrian capital of Vienna is widely acknowledged as one of the most livable cities, featuring a unique model of council housing that accounts for roughly 25% of all residential dwellings. This paper studies whether the broad provision of council housing is linked with a higher social mix in the neighbourhood. The analysis is based on administrative wage tax data at a small-scale raster grid of 500 × 500 meter with neighbourhood income inequality as an indicator for the social mix. While council housing is widely spread across the city, we find distinct spatial clusters of high and low income and inequality. Spatial econometric models show that council housing in Vienna is associated with lower income areas but slightly correlates with higher neighbourhood income inequality. These findings suggest that well-designed public housing policies may contribute to a higher social mix in a city.

Informal Modes of Governance: Negotiating Evictions and Housing Rights in Lisbon, Portugal

Recent literature has drawn the attention to the impact of neoliberal and financialised urban policies on the enjoyment of access to housing by the urban poor, as well as on how these policies limit the spheres of action that are possible in urban margins. Yet literature tends to pay less attention on the modes of government the state actors use to manage access to housing. Examining housing exclusions and their contestations gains relevance in the current context, in which homelessness is growing and evictions are increasing in numbers. This paper examines how council housing managers negotiate access to housing with occupying families, using neoliberal and disciplinary modes of governance. The concept of informality is used as an analytical device to explore diverse interpretations on occupations as well as to shed light on the management practices of council housing estates. The article is based on ethnographic fieldwork, conducted from December 2017 to April 2019 in the Metropolitan Area of Lisbon, in close collaboration with the Association Habita. It contends that while occupations are criminalised, the state itself also resorts to extra-legal practices in the governance of homelessness. The forms of governance employed by council housing managers are enmeshed with diverse forms of informality, producing both housing exclusions and inclusions.

Signs, billboards, and graffiti a social-spatial discourse in a regenerated council estate

ABSTRACT Residents within a council housing area in Stirling, Scotland, which is undergoing regeneration, took photos for an auto-driven photo-elicitation study. There was limited guidance on what images to capture. Residents were simply invited to focus on the neighbourhood. An unexpected finding was the significance participating residents gave to the linguistic and semiotic landscape such as signs, billboards and graffiti. Within the interview, it became apparent that the participants considered the signs as part of the expression of spatial social discourse. Therefore, the billboards and signs placed there by the powerful social actors such as developers were understood and scrutinised for their claims and the lived reality of residents. Also, graffiti was understood in context with the social-spatial dialectic of being inscribed within a community with an underlying sectarian discourse.

The Early Materialization of Democratic Institutions among the Ancestral Muskogean of the American Southeast

Democratic cooperation is a particularly complex type of arrangement that requires attendant institutions to ensure that the problems inherent in collective action do not subvert the public good. It is perhaps due to this complexity that historians, political scientists, and others generally associate the birth of democracy with the emergence of so-called states and center it geographically in the “West,” where it then diffused to the rest of the world. We argue that the archaeological record of the American Southeast provides a case to examine the emergence of democratic institutions and to highlight the distinctive ways in which such long-lived institutions were—and continue to be—expressed by Native Americans. Our research at the Cold Springs site in northern Georgia, USA, provides important insight into the earliest documented council houses in the American Southeast. We present new radiocarbon dating of these structures along with dates for the associated early platform mounds that place their use as early as cal AD 500. This new dating makes the institution of the Muskogean council, whose active participants have always included both men and women, at least 1,500 years old, and therefore one of the most enduring and inclusive democratic institutions in world history.

Socialist fragments East and West: Towards a comparative anthropology of global (post-)socialism

This article initiates a comparative anthropological analysis of the legacies and endurances of socialism in two different European contexts. It draws on ethnographic and historical material relating to the UK and Romania, 40 years after the first efforts to privatize central elements of the welfare state in the UK and 30 years after the collapse of state socialism in central and eastern Europe. Rather than restricting our analysis to the ‘East’ and the 20th century, as is often the case in the literature on post-socialism, we argue for the need to attend to socialism’s historical border-crossings as well as its persistence today as a set of practices and imaginaries which are not wedded to one historically existing state form. Through controversies around the demolition of council (public) housing estates in London and exploration of work practices in cooperatives of production in Romania this article illustrates such historical border-crossings, and comparatively analyses the contemporary curation of what we call ‘socialist fragments’ at both these sites.

Art as therapy

Art as therapy

Women’s Criminality in Europe, 1600–1914 edited by Manon van der Heijden, Marion Pluskota, and Sanne Muurling

This collection addresses women’s criminality from the perspectives of history and historical criminology, recognizing that gendered expectations have long affected the prosecution, understanding, and study of crime and criminals. The authors are confident that contextualisation is “the key to understanding female crime, its representation and its variation in time and space,” and that historians of crime must therefore pay more attention to socioeconomic factors, such as social mobility, employment, and migration patterns, than has generally been the case (4). To do so effectively requires first that female criminals be identified. Hence, the research concentrates on the lower courts, where women appeared in much larger numbers than in the superior courts. The additional records on which the authors rely give the volume a mainly urban focus, but comparisons to the male experience make the findings particularly insightful and persuasive.The chapters are organized around three main themes—violence and women, prosecution and punishment, and representations of crime. But the geographical and chronological coverage is not quite as the book’s title suggests. Three largely historiographical essays (Chapters 1, 2, and 9) cover most, or all, of the period from 1600 to 1900. The remaining eight chapters, all based on extensive archival research, tend to focus on the later nineteenth century, particularly in England (Chapters 4, 6, 7, and 10) but also in Australia (without explanation for its inclusion in a book about criminality in Europe) and the Netherlands.Only two chapters adopt an early modern perspective, both offering fascinating appraisals of male and female defendants. Sara Beam’s examination of the prosecution of adultery in Geneva shows that although gender was relevant, social status and the authorities’ concern with rooting out sin were also crucial factors. Muurling provides a carefully evidenced explanation for how and why people used the accessible Tribunale del Torrone as a strategic means of conflict resolution in Bologna.Three of the chapters set out to find the vanishing females posited by Feeley and Little in 1991.1 Van der Heijden concludes that better living standards and welfare provision had a greater impact on female crime rates than did confinement to the domestic sphere. Jo Turner uses her study of female-perpetrated assault in Stafford to suggest that when council housing was built in 1901, it reduced shared living space and thus neighborhood conflicts. Lucy Williams and Barry Godfrey utilize population data to identify prisons, asylums, and workhouses as “locations and methods through which deviant women could be dealt with throughout the life cycle” (133).The two thought-provoking chapters about release from prison that discuss recidivism in detail reveal that the experiences of women and men were significantly different. Helen Johnston and David Cox find that re-offending was higher among female ex-prisoners because re-integration into financially productive society was more difficult for them. Alana Piper et al. use a large data set of individuals returned to prison in Queensland to reach a similar conclusion: Women were more likely to be chronic recidivists because of the wide range of socioeconomic disadvantages that they faced, whereas men had a greater variety of pathways into and out of offending.Two of the three chapters about “representations” focus on newspapers. Daniel Grey’s examination of reports about child sexual assault exposes attitudes toward the gender, class, age, and sexuality of both victims and perpetrators. Clare Wilkinson quantifies accounts of domestic violence in Dutch newspapers to explain why they functioned mainly as human-interest stories rather than as subjects of debate. Sarah Auspert et al. explore a variety of European discourses about female juvenile delinquency that show institutionalization to have been the most common “solution” for criminal and problem girls since the eighteenth century.The book contains an unfortunately sizable number of minor typographical and grammatical errors, but the use of footnotes and a collective bibliography of nearly thirty pages make the volume a useful addition to the relevant literature. Scholars of women and crime, imprisonment and reoffending, newspaper reporting, and the multiple factors that influenced these matters will find much of interest and value.

From Property-Owning Democracy to Generation Rent? Analysing Theresa May’s Housing Rhetoric from the Perspective of the Discourse Historical Approach

Since the 1920s, British Conservatives pursued the concept of property‑owning democracy, with home ownership viewed as a guarantor of social stability and personal autonomy. However, recent increases in housing costs have made the “British Dream” of home‑ownership more elusive than ever, with renting becoming a lifelong prospect for large swathes of people. Using the Discourse Historical Approach, a method falling within Critical Discourse Analysis, the article analyzes the 2019 housing speech by Prime Minister Theresa May to ascertain whether the changing situation has been reflected in the Conservatives’ housing rhetoric, traditionally driven by a property‑owning ethos. Examining May’s argumentation and language use, it concludes that May’s proclaimed commitment to renewed council house construction represents both a long‑overdue acknowledgement of the housing affordability crisis and a pre‑election strategy to win Labour voters.

The Future of the City in the Name of Proximity: A New Perspective for the Urban Regeneration of Council Housing Suburbs in Italy after the Pandemic

The concept of ‘urban proximity’, which has returned to the limelight with the promotion of the ‘15-min city’ developed and re-proposed for the post-COVID city, cannot simply be associated with the concept of physical proximity to the essential activities of daily life but must concern reinforcement of the social interactions that some places are able to activate better than others. This article focuses on the regeneration of Italian council housing neighbourhoods that lack relational proximity, even when functional proximity has been painstakingly achieved. It describes the fundamental steps of a working method that aims to strengthen the ‘relational performance’ of public spaces, using an interdisciplinary cognitive and assessment process and co-planning with the local community based on the issues of inclusiveness, safety, and climate vulnerability. The experimentation made in an economic and social housing district in a city in Central Italy revealed the need to ‘hook’ the space node onto the node of local capacities and resources, recognizing the local community as the bearer of desires, capacities, and planning will, capable of orienting and prefiguring the complex process of regeneration in the post-COVID city.

Space standards and housing design: typological experimentation in England and Chile

Space standards are a deliberately technocratic translation of housing experience, use, and demand into measurable minimum floor areas and dimensions by calculating standard furniture sizes, circulation, and activity zones in a dwelling. This paper discusses how space standards register regulatory cultures and affect housing design and perceptions of housing quality from a design research perspective. The definition and enforcement of standards depend on local design governance approaches. Housing standards are of particular importance to the protection of minimum subsidised housing supply in dualist rental systems with differentiated regulations, due to greater inequalities between private and subsidised housing sectors. This is characteristic of countries with neoliberalised housing access. Two archetypical cases are discussed here: England, whose privatisation of council housing is considered exemplary for Western neoliberal housing policy; and Chile, who is seen as the main Latin American neoliberal model. This comparison explores how neoliberal processes in housing relate to space standards, wider laissez-faire housing and social welfare histories, and design experimentation in subsidised housing. It further deals with the common issues of affordable housing in market-driven contexts, such as the peripheralisation of areas with less infrastructures and services, residualisation of social housing tenure, typological stigmatisation or preferences, homeownership prioritisation, and private-sector support through subsidies. The discussion of housing design and space standards connects problems of design governance to technical, legal, and socio-spatial discourses, through which responses to cultural, social, and economic contexts, as well as changing modes of living, can be analysed.

There and Back Again

This essay explores the defining role that council housing has played in populist politics in Britain from the post-war era to the present. Central to this was Margaret Thatcher’s Right to Buy scheme – an archetypal populist policy that became totemic of her broader reconfiguration of British society. Building on the demonisation of council housing that paved the way for Right to Buy, today, it stands as the implicit foil for the present right-wing government’s populist advocation of ‘beauty’ (i.e. traditional styles) as a way of removing objections to future development. Meanwhile, the populist left argues for a return to the mass council house building of the post-war era, despite the recent success of small-scale, tactical council housing projects, such as those by Peter Barber Architects. The essay argues that the polarised and asymmetrical nature of this debate, conflating questions of aesthetics, typology and planning and tenure type, is typical of populist politics, ensuring a middle ground is by definition impossible. The essay concludes with the contention that if populist politics tends towards a monocultural architecture and urbanism, then a built environment that allows room for different forms, ideas and agendas may itself help foster a politics of pluralism.

Down the Warpath to the Cedars: Indians' First Battles in the Revolution by Mark R. Anderson

Reviewed by: Down the Warpath to the Cedars: Indians' First Battles in the Revolution by Mark R. Anderson Loren Michael Mortimer (bio) Down the Warpath to the Cedars: Indians' First Battles in the Revolution mark r. anderson University of Oklahoma Press, 2021 306 pp. At the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War in 1775, the Continental Army prepared to invade Canada, and the British military government took concurrent measures to defend the province. Patriot and Loyalist leaders alike recognized the strategic importance of the Indigenous confederation known as the Seven Nations of Canada. Composed of eight sovereign Native American towns along the upper St. Lawrence River, these multiethnic communities guarded key river confluences connecting Canada to the rebellious Anglo-American settler colonies to the south. In the military contest for Canada, the Seven Nations could tip the balance of power in favor of the Patriots or the Crown. Likewise, the Seven Nations feared the despoliation of their lands amid the crossfire of a civil [End Page 599] war within the British Empire. As historian Mark R. Anderson shows in Down the Warpath to the Cedars, the Seven Nations proved decisive in the defeat of the Continental Army at the Battle of the Cedars in late May 1776. Although historians on both sides of the US-Canada border have largely overlooked or intentionally disremembered the significance of the Cedars, Anderson offers a timely intervention recovering histories of Indigenous autonomy and racialized violence during the American Revolution, as well as the affair's aftermaths in Native American council houses, Patriot assemblies, and imperial corridors of power. In the summer of 1775, the Seven Nations of Canada had thrived in proximity to European settler population centers along the St. Lawrence River for more than a century. Although the Seven Nations had intimately entangled connections of trade and kinship with the Haudenosaunee Six Nations Iroquois, it remained a politically autonomous Indigenous polity. The Seven Nations traced their origins to Catholic converts who relocated to Francophone mission communities during the late seventeenth century. Between 1701 and 1754, these mission towns gradually coalesced into a confederation rooted in shared connections to the St. Lawrence River, Catholicism, extended family networks, and mutual defense. Although steadfast allies to the French before 1759, each constituent community maintained their sovereignty and distinctive cultures. The Seven Nations Council convened at Kahnawake, the largest town with a decidedly Mohawk-Iroquois demographic composition. But this diverse confederation included Hurons from Wendake, the Wabanaki peoples from Odanak and Wolinâk, Mohawks and Nipissings from Kanesatake, Mohawks from Akwesasne, and Oneidas and Onondagas from Oswegatchie. With careful attention to multidimensional Indigenous politics at the confederation, village, and factional levels, Anderson argues that Native Americans created a "strategic environment" at the Battle of the Cedars that aligns with Ojibwe historian Michael Witgen's concept of an "infinity of nations" (1). Indeed, the framework of an "infinity of nations" proves apposite for this study, particularly as political affiliations remained fluid for colonists and Indigenous peoples alike during the early phases of the conflict. Despite the military invasion of their homelands during the American Revolution, the Seven Nations of Canada largely avoided the internecine warfare and dispossession endured by larger and better-known Indigenous polities like the Six Nations Haudenosaunee. Yet the author notes that in "contrast to the reasonably well developed Six Nations Revolutionary War [End Page 600] narrative, the Seven Nations of Canada lack significant historical treatment for the era. The Cedars and its 1775 precedents clearly reveal the complexity of Laurentian Indian politics" (155). While Anderson observed that the Seven Nations "were far from a unified polity" (4), Native American emphasis on local autonomy and factional consensus within councils rendered their confederation no more or less united than the Six Nations or the ad hoc Patriot delegations at the Continental Congress during the summer of 1775. Given Patriot sentiments among Anglo-American colonists in Montreal as well as disaffection with British rule by factions within the Seven Nations, Canada's participation in the rebellion remained an open political question for British officials, Loyalists, Patriots, and Native Americans alike. To make sense of an ethnic and political milieu that defied nationality or a strictly Patriot vs...

Per una didattica della geografia sociale: sopralluoghi ed esplorazioni urbane

This article analyses a didactic experience in the Borgo Ulivia neighborhood (Palermo), which originates from a research on council housing’s requalifying as a planning laboratory. In particular, its aim is to answer three questions: which choice guides the research in the field? What kind of didactic approach can we use? What kind of didactic restitution should be used? Within the didactic framework, answering these questions has three roles. First of all, we identify places capable of talking about tensions present at the local level but also in other geographical areas. Secondly, we reflect on the possible methods of research. Finally, we show how teaching is practiced both in the reflective approach and in the process of sharing with the class.

Dispersed privatization of council housing: Some structural effects in the municipal housing stock in Olsztyn, Poland

Council (public) housing privatization, as the basic instrument for transforming housing systems, has significantly affected the tenure structure and created millions of new owners across Europe. In Poland, the concept of the dispersed privatization was adopted and implemented in the long term primarily through preferential sales of council dwellings from the municipal housing stock to sitting tenants. The aim of the study was to analyze the effects of the dispersed privatization of municipal dwellings in the spatial and ownership structure of the municipal housing stock of the city of Olsztyn in Poland. The results showed that poorly controlled processes of the dispersed privatization of municipal housing caused unfavorable structural effects in the surveyed housing stock. The stock has shrunk significantly, losing buildings in better locations and conditions and the undesired fragmentation of municipal ownership and its mixing with private ownership has increased. The results and proposals are important to other cities and countries facing the challenge of slow privatization of public housing.