House Lots Research Articles

From Utopias to Roman residential realities: the golden era of Roman social housing 1919–1932

ABSTRACT In the beginning of the twentieth century the Roman political and cultural elite collaborated with labour co-operatives aiming to realize their social utopian visions. As engineers and architects started to collaborate at the Institute of Social Housing of Rome (Instituto per le Case Popolari di Roma, [ICP]) affordable housing spread rapidly around the city centre. Innocenzo Sabbatini (1891–1983) was the most innovative and productive architect of the ICP from 1919 to 1932. Even though the ICP built cost efficiently and rapidly, it managed to create neighbourhoods with personal architectural details, green courtyards, piazzas, and pedestrian streets designed for social encounters. By analyzing Sabbatini’s projects the aim is to understand how the ICP’s strategies changed during the 1920s. Earlier research on Sabbatini’s architecture has analyzed his innovative visual language in numerous districts. However, his last project before leaving the ICP, the Pamphily I (1930–1932), has received little attention. Consequently, this article focuses especially on this enigmatic district. Additionally, the study points out Sabbatini’s importance as a garden designer so as to argue that the gardens he designed for social housing lots continue to invigorate visitors – even in their current state of preservation – not only with their beauty but also sensory-rich experiences.

Spatial Variability in the Speciation of Lead (Pb) and Other Metals Across Urban Lawns Is Linked to Post-Deposition Weathering Reactions

The historical use of lead (Pb) poses ongoing health risks via exposure to contaminated urban soils. However, there is limited information about heterogeneity in Pb speciation and distribution at the house lot scale. This study determined highly spatially resolved Pb and other metal speciation along horizontal transects and vertical soil cores from three homes in the Akron, Ohio (USA) municipal. Solid phase characterization was coupled with a sequential extraction protocol to determine operationally defined speciation (exchangeable (MEX), reducible (MRED), oxidizable (MOX), and residual (MRES)). Lead and Zn were strongly correlated across all fractions (R2 = 0.92). Total extractable Pb and Zn were found in low weight percent concentrations nearest to the homes, and speciation was dominated by MEX and MRED. High Pb in the MEX fraction was correlated with the presence of Pb-bearing paint chips in the soil. Lead in the MEX fraction in soils near the homes decreased with increasing time due to exterior renovations coupled with increases in Pb and Zn in the MRED fraction. These results suggest that homes are the dominant source of Pb and Zn due to the weathering of exterior surfaces and highlight the acute risk of exposure to more labile Pb immediately following exterior renovations and damage to home exteriors in areas of older housing stock.

Even Geography of Upzoning: How Historic Urban Layouts, Land Use and Tenure Systems Influence Densification of Established Suburbs

ABSTRACT Historic urban layouts influence subsequent development, but this is rarely acknowledged by planning strategies. This paper analyses the urban transformation of three residential blocks in Brisbane, Australia from initial delineation to 2023. Findings outline three key messages for policymakers seeking to redevelop low density residential areas to higher density. First, upzoning results in little residential densification in small, inner-city lots. Second, owners maximise individual gains through home modifications that make existing houses larger, potentially decreasing affordability. Finally, only large, house lots experience conversion to apartment buildings. Findings highlight the place-based nuance of city-wide densification strategies, and the importance of urban morphology.

Problematyka prawna działek letniskowych

During the last years, because of big urban and industrial aglomerations and other consequences of modern life, there appeared the tendency to own a land lot with a summer house and it is now more and more perceivable, This is so because it seems that a summer house gives maximum freedom to its owner. However, building of summer houses interferes with various fields of socio-economic life and since it is now a phenomenon of mass character, it is necessary to look for solutions which would allow to keep this type of building in reasonable frames and at the same time protect against taking over the land not designated for recreation purposes (e.g. farms, forests subject to specific protection because of landscape or natural values, etc.).This article presents legal problems of summer house lots; procedure of appointing parts of land for recreation purposes, alotting the lots for the purpose of individual recreation, problems of the norms of area. Also, heretofore used methods and legal grounds of acquisition of summer house lots are presented, as well as negative consequences of informal transfer of lots which constitute parts of land designated for the purpose of farming. The Author also discusses highly unsatisfactory state of binding legal rules in this domain, aimed at protecting the land against the use which is irrational or contrary to the designation.Final part of this article contains propositions concerning specific legislative changes which would subject summer house lots to the principles common for administration of land within the town limits, also as far as statutory right of pre-emption is concerned. This would eliminate elements such as spontaneity, chance, discretion and speculation from the process of acquisition and use of plots designated for construction of summer houses.

BURGLARS’ ATTACK IN DETACHED HOUSE (PART 1): CASE STUDY ON REGIONAL CHARACTERISTICS OF POSITIONAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN STREETS AND DAMAGED WINDOWS AND DOORS

This paper surveys position of repairments damaged by burglars’ attack. The pattern of hotspots are mainly two types. In Tokyo metropolitan and Kanagawa, attacks are found mainly at back of the house, where lack of natural surveillance from pedestrians. In Chubu, attacks are often found at the front of the house where looking from streets easily, though back is attacked as well. Case studies show the possibility that burglars drive cars into housing lots in Chubu with wide front carparking space, while pedestrians prevent burglary attack on doors and windows getting natural surveillance in Tokyo and Kanagawa area.

Material Culture and Structural Violence: Reframing Evidence of the Social Gradient in Industrial Contexts.

Coal mining is an industry that historically has exposed laborers to a variety of environmental and occupational health hazards that have resulted in injury, illness, and/or physical disability. These health hazards, however, did not impact all laborers involved in coal mining equally. As a coal-mining company town organized with four distinct housing areas that correlate historically with the socioeconomic statuses of the jobs held at the colliery, Eckley Miners' Village provides a case study to explore how these health disparities were lived with and treated by residents of the industrial company town. Through an analysis of health-related material culture from house lots in two different sections of Eckley Miners' Village, evidence of the social gradient can be seen in the quality and quantity of medical ephemera present in the archaeological record. By utilizing archaeology, scholars can develop a longitudinal study of health disparities in the coal-mining towns of northeastern Pennsylvania. Examining contemporary health disparities requires tracing the historical foundations of these inequities, providing a critical space for archaeologists to contribute meaningful insights into the implications of social, political, and economic factors on exposure to health hazards and access to treatment materials.

Between God and Satan: Thomas Thornton, Witch-Hunting, and Religious Mission in the English Atlantic World, 1647–1693

Between God and Satan: Thomas Thornton, Witch-Hunting, and Religious Mission in the English Atlantic World, 1647–1693

The Plat of Zion and Urban Development in Salt Lake City

The Plat of Zion and Urban Development in Salt Lake City

Ancient Hawaiian house lots and their flora: a review of Great Māhele plant claims with a special focus on Pritchardia (loulu) palms

A review of Foreign Testimony records of the Native Register from the mid-19th century Hawaiian land division program known as the Great Māhele (~1846-1854) has led to a better understanding of ancient Hawaiian house lot plantings. While a great deal is known about the management and use of indigenous, endemic and Polynesian-introduced plants and their distribution within wild and domesticated Hawaiian landscapes, the floristic composition of the plants cultivated close to residences is poorly documented. This is true for the period immediately after Western contact (1778) and for the decades following the arrival of American and European missionaries in the 1820s and 1830s, and indeed for the 19th century generally. The results of this review are presented here, with those plants claimed in the Native Register and those explicitly claimed near dwellings identified and described. Perhaps the most remarkable finding is the prominence of endemic Pritchardia (loulu) palms grown near mid-19th century Hawaiian residences, not only in terms of the number of claims made for loulu (63) and the actual number of individual loulu plants claimed (272), but also their distribution within the Hawaiian archipelago. Hypotheses are offered to account for these patterns. The value of using archival materials and ancient texts in ethnobiological research is underlined.

Land acquisition methods and housing construction agents for prompt housing supply: A long-term comparative case study of Seoul Metropolitan Area, South Korea

The structure of the development project for housing supply should be chosen carefully because each structure has specific advantages and disadvantages. Because the provision of housing lots does not always lead to housing construction, assessment of each structure is required from viewpoint of actual housing provision. This study investigates usage approval dates of housings in Land Readjustment and Housing Site Development projects designated between 1937 and 1999 in Seoul Metropolitan Area, South Korea, to examine the difference between land readjustment and expropriation method for methods of land acquisition, and between individual landowners and developers for agents of housing construction. The event history analysis reveals that among all housings constructed over a 20-year period, apartments constructed by developers in Housing Site Development projects required a median of 8.44 years for 90% of those to be completed, while low-rise housings constructed by individuals in Land Readjustment projects took 18.50 years. This study reveals the trends in the provision of actual housing in each project type for housing policymakers to refer to.

The Causes of Unauthorized Residential Plots Development and Implication for Government Agencies

Rising house prices, particularly in emerging areas, have prompted some people to look for new ways to buy a home by purchasing residential plots of land. Additionally, because the city's development is more oriented toward strata development, some people want to possess a landed house, which is more comfortable. Bungalow lots, lot lidi, tiny plots, and house lots are all terms used to describe land sold as a residential plot. However, problems arise when residential plots are developed that do not adhere to the law's standards and guidelines, resulting in the creation of residential plots without permission becoming more common. The purpose of this study was to determine the causes of the rise in unauthorized residential plot development, as well as the ramifications for government agencies. Mukim Ijok and Mukim Jeram in Kuala Selangor were chosen as case studies using a qualitative approach. The interview session included a total of 13 respondents, chosen by purposive sampling. According to the findings of this study, there are four (4) major causes that contribute to the rise in the development of unauthorized residential plots: high profit margins for landowners, rising house prices, the desire to own a house on their own land for a lower price, and a lack of knowledge about land among owners and buyers. While, the implications of these issues for government authority were economic, social, and environmental in nature. Finally, the study's findings are likely to improve community awareness of the detrimental implications of unauthorised residential plot development.

Property tax and farmland use in urban areas: Evidence from the reform in the early 1990s in Japan

It is often said that farmland conservation in urban areas (i.e., cities and inner suburbs) is not desirable because it hinders the conversion of farmland into residential areas, thereby deterring urbanization. To solve such a problem, the Japanese government rectified the property tax preferential treatment of urban farmland in the 1990s. We utilize this reform as a natural experiment and examine its impact on land use. The empirical results show that the reform did not encourage the conversion of urban farmland into housing lots. This is one of the reasons concerning the shortage of housing supply in urban areas in Japan.

The residential characteristics of indigenous families in the eupchies in the late Joseon era: cases from the Yeonsan and Hansan eupchies

ABSTRACT Spatial research on the eupchi is an important area of traditional Korean urban research. Previous studies generally focused on the spatial arrangement of the chiso in the eupchi. However, to understand the eupchi, we need to study different types of spaces in the eupchi and their functions. Thus, this study focuses on housing spaces rather than chiso. The purpose of this study is to investigate the residential characteristics of indigenous families who comprised the top local officials. In analyzing the spatial distribution of housing lots according to their attribution, the result derived as follows. First, less than two percent of the social class to which the aristocrats called yangban belonged lived in the eupchi at the end of the Joseon era. This two percent consisted of only representative indigenous families. Second, unlike other families, they also clustered on one side of the chiso and had the largest space for a community and the greatest housing density in the eupchi. This likely reflects the power of indigenous families in the local towns in a physical form. The primary merit of this study is that it sheds light on the socio-spatial characteristics of indigenous families in the eupchi in the late Joseon era.

Marginal and average prices of land lots should not be equal: A critique of Glaeser and Gyourko’s method for identifying residential price effects of town planning regulations

Glaeser and Gyourko’s method of measuring the gap between marginal and average land prices of housing lots has become a popular way of demonstrating the degree to which planning controls, or ‘regulatory taxes’, increase residential land prices. This has led policy-makers across the globe to focus on town planning as a critical determinant of rising home prices. We show, however, that Glaeser and Gyourko’s method shows no such thing. Instead, the price gap is a product of the location premium of land, diminishing returns to buyers of residential land size, and historical city development patterns. Numerous shortcomings are identified in their theoretical model, including that (a) they ignore that development happens over time; (b) their ‘regulatory tax’ is simply the location value of land; (c) they reason inconsistently about the source of land prices, arguing that land at the margins is scarce but locations for whole housing lots are not; and (d) there are no optimal lot sizes nor subdivision incentives in their model. Standard price-taking models of residential land markets that recognize that locations are scarce contain none of these limitations and provide a better interpretation of land price patterns. Empirically, we show that Glaeser and Gyourko’s method finds a high ‘regulatory tax’ even in the absence of regulatory constraints using both simulated suburb development scenarios and historical land sales data from colonial Australia and ancient Mesopotamia. In short, there is no information regarding the effect of planning controls on the supply of new dwellings in a comparison of marginal and average land prices, and this method should not be relied upon to inform planning and housing policy decisions.

Spatial composition and premise arrangement of traditional Manchu village in Northeast China

AbstractThe aim of this study was to elucidate the spatial composition and premises arrangement of a traditional Manchu village by a case study on Shengli Village. In Shengli Village, settled areas were consolidated by the government during the 1960s. Therefore, we attempted to use a statistical analytic method to examine the road contact condition, shape of the house lot, homestead area, and premises arrangement before and after compactification of the residential area. The results revealed different spatial characteristics due to the period of building land development.

Development and divergent post-disaster trajectories in a mountain village: Temporal dynamics of differentiation after the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake

Abstract Following the massive and devastating 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake, the Chinese state called for major reconstruction to be completed within three years. Reconstruction was subsequently folded into longer-term development goals, an approach often considered ‘building back better.’ However, few studies have examined long-term trajectories of household recovery following the earthquake and reconstruction-as-development. We conducted a case study of long-term trajectories in a mountain village in Pengzhou City, Chengdu Municipality, which was severely impacted by the earthquake. Based on in-depth qualitative methods, including semi-structured interviews conducted with 59 villagers and local leaders between September 2018 and May 2019, we analyze a variety of distinct post-earthquake trajectories, including different patterns of recovery and experiences of development for villagers in a concentrated settlement and those who chose owner-driven reconstruction on their pre-earthquake house lots. We find that concentrated settlement created significant barriers to income generation and problems of inadequate housing to accommodate demographic growth and family reproduction. For those who chose in-situ reconstruction, differentiation happened over a span of a decade, as a result of changing development visions and construction regulations, as well as secondary earthquake hazards. These processes have both exacerbated existing inequalities in a small, relatively homogenous village, and created new ones. Some households experience the post-earthquake period as an acceleration of development, whereas others experience a sense of moving backwards in time to a less-developed status. Our study demonstrates that earthquake recovery cannot be considered a single, discrete event, but must instead be understood through long-term trajectories that intersect with both political processes and place-based events. Moreover, we show how qualitative, in-depth studies can shed light on processes otherwise obscured when earthquake recovery and development are conceptualized as apolitical, technical problems.

Mapping Spanish settlement at Santa Elena, 1566–1587: An integrated archaeogeophysical approach

AbstractSanta Elena, located on Parris Island along the coast of South Carolina, was the first capital, and northernmost permanent settlement, of Spanish La Florida. Over two decades of occupation (ad 1566–1587), five forts were successively built while by ad 1569 a burgeoning Spanish settlement of over 200 people, complete with artisans, farmers, and Jesuit missionaries, flourished. Here, we articulate the results of recent, full‐coverage ground‐penetrating radar and magnetic gradiometry surveys with over 40 years of extant archaeological data to elucidate organizational characteristics of the Spanish settlement at Santa Elena. In particular, we use geophysical data to identify the potential locations of buried Spanish wells across the site. We identify roughly 200 potential well locations and compare these locations to the distribution of Spanish artifacts across the site yielded through a full‐coverage shovel test survey, the arrangement of Spanish structures known from large‐scale block excavations, and the likely position of roadways and house lots. This new data is used to contextualize and refine extant understandings of Santa Elena's town plan while also contributing to a broader research program devoted to exploring Spanish colonial life and settlement in 16th‐century North America (The Santa Elena Landscape Project). As Santa Elena is a National Historic Landmark currently threatened by rising sea levels, this work contributes to an efficient, minimally invasive research program devoted to exploring the Spanish settlement at Santa Elena and to documenting the range of cultural resources present at the site for the purposes of protection and remediation in the context of significant, ongoing shoreline erosion.

Time Is Money: How Landbanking Constrains Housing Supply

Landbanking (land hoarding), where land able to profitably developed for housing is withheld from development for future gains, undermines housing policies that aim to increase supply and reduce prices through rezoning. We shed light on the problems with the static economic models of housing supply that inform these policies by looking at the degree to which landbanking behaviour is consistent with the predictions of these models. A new dataset of home sales and landbanks from the annual reports of Australia’s publicly-listed residential developers, and complete state-level planning approvals and lot production data in Queensland, Australia, are used. In contrast to the static model prediction that landbanks function as inventories, and are hence minimised, we find that (1) over 200,000 housing lots, or 13 years of new supply, are held in landbanks owned by developers, that (2) nine years of landbanks are held in housing subdivisions that are approved and already for sale, meaning planning delays are not the reason landbanks are held, that (3) the total zoned supply in a region is unrelated to the rate of new housing supply, and (4) that housing developers routinely delay housing production to capitalise on market cycles. A dynamic model that accounts for capital gains of undeveloped land, including an option premium, is consistent with these empirical patterns. In this dynamic model there is an incentive to delay development when prices are rising to earn landbank value gains, which includes the value of the option to develop to higher densities.

Marginal and Average Prices of Land Lots Should Not Be Equal: A Critique of Glaeser and Gyourko's Method for Identifying Residential Price Effects of Town Planning Regulations

Glaeser and Gyourko’s (2003) (henceforth G&G’s) method of measuring the gap between marginal and average land prices of housing lots has become a popular way of demonstrating the degree to which planning controls, or “regulatory taxes”, increase residential land prices. This has led policy-makers across the globe to focus on town planning as a critical determinant of rising home prices. We show, however, that G&G’s method shows no such thing. Instead, even according to their own model, the price gap is a product of the location premium of land, diminishing returns to buyers of residential land size, and historical city development patterns. Additional flaws and contradictions identified in their model are (1) that they confuse total lot supply with land supply per lot, (2) that minimum lot size restrictions will increase the marginal land value compared to the average rather than decrease it, (3) that the economic incidence of taxes on land matters to the outcome whereas they claim it does not, and (4) that there are no subdivision incentives for landowners. Standard price-taking models of residential land markets contain none of these flaws and provide a better interpretation of land price patterns. Empirically, we show that G&G’s method will find a high “regulatory tax” even in the absence of regulatory constraints using both simulated data and historical land sales data from colonial Australia and ancient Mesopotamia. This exercise demonstrates that G&G’s method cannot differentiate between planning-constrained and unconstrained development patterns. In short, there is no information regarding the effect of planning controls on the supply of new dwellings in a comparison of marginal and average land prices and this method should not be relied upon to inform planning and housing policy decisions.

Let’s build a waterfall!


 “Let’s build a waterfall!” is about the continuous struggle to maintain a rural community. The village Bleik in North Norway seems to stand strong in this struggle; contrary to most fishing villages, Bleik experiences growth. There are waiting lists to get housing lots and children to the local school. With strong traditions of voluntary work, Bleik has numerous local groups, a new sport arena, golf course, community center, local shop, café and pub. Being called Bleik Indians, ‘the savages behind the mountains’, is turned from stigma to pride. This documentary explores the processes of resilience and mobilization. Bleik is characterized by proud traditions of local story telling. Facing new challenges, old stories are reactivated, like the one about being the first village to have a power station; “What do we do in Bleik when we don’t have a waterfall? We build one!” The film tells stories of a vital village with strong traditions of mobilizing, but also of the drama coastal communities are facing. When the harbour is threatened, will they manage to mobilize to maintain the fishing community?