ABSTRACT This article explores the network of small public spaces in Nikea, a borough in Greece shaped by a century of migration and socio-spatial transformation. Established in 1923 as a settlement for Asia Minor refugees, Nikea’s initial masterplan featured shared courtyards and alleys that complemented the small housing units and served as transitional spaces, between public and private. These spaces fostered vibrant social ties and a sociable everyday life, becoming integral to the area’s identity. Over the last three decades, however, the shared spaces have declined, reflecting broader disintegration in Nikea’s social fabric despite recent regeneration efforts. Grounded in ethnographic fieldwork and spatial documentation, this study examines the potential of these heterotopic spaces to serve as more than infrastructure for social encounters. It investigates their capacity to act as thresholds – dynamic, inclusive spaces where private and public lives intersect, fostering meaningful connection and the negotiation of cultural differences. The paper explores socio-spatial, relational and cultural transformations shaping the use and perception of these spaces and their role in the neighbourhood’s evolving identity. While Nikea’s shared spaces hold latent potential to bridge divides, realizing this requires intentional, collective action to reclaim them as catalysts for togetherness in an increasingly fragmented urban landscape.

Purpose This study provides the first systematic analysis of the relationship between population aging and housing demand in an Iranian intermediate city (Shahin Shahr). This study aims to quantitatively model how demographic factors influence demand and to forecast the housing shortage through 2037. The main goal is to address the important issue of how to reduce the mismatch between housing supply and demand for the elderly in high-migration cities. Ultimately, this research intends to suggest practical, localized policy solutions to promote a more equitable urban future. Design/methodology/approach This study uses a quantitative-analytical approach, using Spectrum software (version 6.1) to project the future population of Shahin Shahr until 2037. Data were gathered from official sources, including population and housing censuses, health network records and municipal statistical yearbooks. After validating the demographic model with an acceptable margin of error of 2.1%, an exponential growth model was used to convert population estimates into household projections and assess housing demand. The statistical significance of the population aging trend was confirmed through a proportions test (p < 0.001). Findings This study forecasts Shahin Shahr’s population will grow from 202,163 in 2022 to 311,882 in 2037, with a total fertility rate (TFR) of 1.3. The share of elderly residents (65+) increases from 9.13% to 11.63% (p < 0.001), driven by declining fertility (1.1 in 2023), decreasing household size (to 2.91), rising life expectancy and migration (accounting for 78% of growth). Housing demand rises sharply, creating a cumulative shortage of 81,040 units by 2037, with an annual deficit of 2,114 units, amid 666% increase in housing prices. Persistent mismatch between supply and demand favors larger units (>100 m²) over smaller, senior-friendly options, worsening spatial exclusion. Research limitations/implications Limitations: This study relies on secondary data, which restricts a deeper understanding of the elderly’s personal preferences and subjective needs. In addition, the predictive models used are vulnerable to unforeseen economic or political shocks. Implications: The findings highlight the structural inefficiencies of the housing market and emphasize the need for targeted interventions. A five-pillar policy framework has been proposed to encourage spatial justice and sustainable development. This research offers a model for new cities in the Global South, focusing on socioeconomic and design-oriented approaches. Practical implications This study presents an integrated analytical framework to address the elderly housing crisis by combining theories of spatial justice (Fainstein, 2010), the right to the city (Lefebvre, 1991), the age-friendly city (WHO, 2007) and the life-cycle approach (Li and Zhao, 2011). Its dual-layer model examines both structural causes – such as housing commodification and land speculation – and human impacts, including spatial discrimination. The study proposes policies like land value taxation (LVT), strategic land distribution, preferential loans for small housing units (<75 m²), accessibility improvements and the formation of local councils. This model offers a transferable solution for medium-sized cities in developing countries. Social implications The housing crisis in Shahin Shahr has caused spatial discrimination and excluded the elderly from adequate housing, leading to increased domestic risks such as falls and health threats. Rising intergenerational inequality has pushed younger people out of the housing market, increasing their reliance on parental support – causing delayed marriages, lower fertility rates and greater economic dependence. This trend has divided society into “insiders” and “outsiders,” deepening the social isolation of the elderly and undermining both the right to the city and spatial justice. Without action, these social inequalities are likely to continue. Originality/value By presenting an integrated analytical framework, this study offers the first systematic analysis of the relationship between population aging and housing demand in medium-sized Iranian cities. By combining Marxist, Georgist and spatial justice theories, it addresses spatial, methodological and theoretical gaps within Iranian scholarship. Focusing on Shahin Shahr as a natural laboratory, the study provides transferable insights for developing cities. Quantitative modeling using the Spectrum software, along with the proposal of a practical policy package – such as LVT – enhances its applied relevance and offers equity-focused and sustainable solutions to the elderly housing crisis.

Developing solutions to face the climate crisis is becoming a challenge not to local and national governments but also to researchers and modern societies. Of these, energy efficiency of buildings is a key topic to control carbon emissions and enhance sustainability. This study contributes to the very limited literature on energy efficiency retrofitting of old buildings in urban areas, in Jordan as well as the neighboring Arab countries. The considered case study is the capital city of Jordan, Amman, with the aim of investigating possibilities and economics of selected retrofitting energy efficiency measures in old residential buildings. The analysis presents the thermal performance of different types of dwellings and energy demand based on real data obtained from official surveys and statistical reports. The developed simulation model examined the impact of each of the studied energy efficiency measures on different types and sizes of housing units under same operating conditions and comparing results with the base case. The adopted retrofitting technique of existing envelops, i.e. external walls and final roofs, depends on boosting thermal resistance, thus, the overall heat transmission coefficient will be reduced. In case of windows, the new double-glazed windows should decrease heat losses as well as the solar heat gain coefficient under different conditions. The maximum savings could be generated in small housing units, in a multi-family building, which represent the major fraction of dwellings, in Amman. This group is the most attractive and challenging due to poor performance of existing envelops and being occupied by low-income families. The stimulated results suggest that such group of houses have remarkable potential of energy savings, of about 22%, resulting from insulating external walls and replacing old inefficient windows. Unfortunately, final roof insulation and replacement of basic appliances, i.e. washing machine and the fridge, would have relatively long payback periods, which made such options not very attractive from the economic point of view. To conclude, there are good opportunities to more green residential buildings through retrofitting programs aiming to control energy demand and expansion in using available renewable energy systems.

By the end of the twentieth century, caring for vulnerable adults in the community had become a pervasive policy trend in the Western world. In this article, this policy is described in two phases: deinstitutionalisation and the ‘home turn’ that are reflected from the perspective of social inclusion. Deinstitutionalisation has meant large institutions and asylums being replaced by group homes and communal‐supported housing units in the community. In the second and current phase, the ‘home turn’ emphasises well‐developed community care, home‐based services, everyone’s right to have their own home, and having a valued place in the community. In this semi‐systematic narrative review, the widely shared incentives, premises, and criticisms of deinstitutionalisation and the ‘home turn’ are mapped from the research literature. The special focus is on the possibilities of and hindrances to social inclusion in both policy phases. The research results are mixed and conflicting concerning social inclusion, but there exists a wide consensus that small housing units and supported housing with devoted workers enhance social inclusion better than big institutions. However, the prevalent view is that deinstitutionalisation has not fulfilled its promise of social inclusion, and although the ‘home turn’ is a step in the right direction, there are still problems in strengthening service users’ involvement and creating inclusive and accepting communities.

Social housing customization in Brazil refers to the current processes of development and evolution of government-funded neighborhoods for the lowest-income population. The mass production of small housing units that do not satisfy family needs instigates a self-design and self-construction process post-occupancy to customize the units. Ultimately, these changes to the units bring unintended negative consequences for the families and the city. In this context, mass customization is seen as an alternative to address some of the problems related to unit design.

The idea of the research came from the control of real estate developers and investors in the private sector on changing the activities of land uses, contrary to the basic design of cities. This change will be in two types, but the activity will be changed completely, such as converting green areas and orchards into commercial areas such as restaurants and markets, or by increasing the intensity of the activity itself within the same use as splitting the residential areas into small or multi-story housing units. The aim of the research is to quantify this situation in the Karrada district of Baghdad, and trying to find a vision to solve this problem by assuming that this change can be directed positively forward by changing the city’s structure functionally, as one of the biggest problems is leaving the issue without question. On the other hand, the weak implementation of the law in general, and therefore the difficulty of controlling the profitability of the investment movement in changing the city’s activities. Since this phenomenon appeared clearly after the structural change of the economy and society in Iraq after 2003, the time period for the study was chosen from 2007 to 2019. Where the year 2007 was considered the beginning of assimilation of changes after 2003 and their urban appearance with their socio-economic impacts, and 2019 is the current time when this change reaches its peak.

北海道家庭学校(旧教護院・現児童自立支援施設)にみる夫婦小舎制の展開 : 建物を中心として

The main directions of the reform of the system of public administration in the Slovak Republic and Ukraine are considered. The historical aspects of theestablishment of local self-government in Slovakia and Ukraine are covered and systematic analysis of administrative and territorial reforms in the states is carried out. The peculiarities of the present stage of decentralization reforms, which resulted from a number of endogenous and exogenous factors, were analyzed. The authors analyzed in detail the positive effects of decentralization and the negative trends that accompany this process. It is concluded that the establishment of an effective system of local selfgovernment, which is capable of meeting the needs of citizens in a timely and effective manner, and promoting the realization of their rights, is crucial for the establishment of Ukraine as a democratic and rule-of-state.Decentralization of power plays an important role in self-government reform, which involves the transfer of a significant amount of tasks, functions and powers from the central level to local ones, with their proper separation between executive authorities and local self-government. Ukraine must learn not only from positive but also from the negative aspects and consequences of public administration reform.Fiscal decentralization in Ukraine has advanced significantly since 2014, which means a much larger amount of funds for local government in Ukraine. Along with municipal reform, when small housing units are merged into larger units, more efficient, effective and cost-effective municipal management costs, investment projects, and the actual implementation of municipal responsibilities in different areas are realized. However, it should not be forgotten that fiscal decentralization is an increase in self-government budgets as a result of the transfer of competences from the state to self-government. At the same time, the property of the state to be taken care of (reconstruction and overhead) is transferred to local or regional self-government; The mere inflow of funds into municipalities, cities and regions does not mean that they will automatically develop. Strategic planning and control mechanisms will play an important role in maximizing the use of resources for public benefit.

This case study examines a developer competition held in Stockholm in 2013-2014 organized by the municipal government. The objective was to develop good and affordable housing for young citizens. Fifteen design teams took part in the competition. The jury compared two different proposals in the final evaluation: one with separate rooms linked to a collective space and one that consisted of small housing units. This sorting of design proposals in two main categories had a major impact on the judging in the competition. The jury declared the solution with small housing units as the winner, which reinforced the overall category as the appropriate direction for the design solution.
 There are three typical key players in the competition: the organizer, the jury, and the design teams. The organizer was responsible for the objective and terms presented in the brief. The jury was responsible to assign a winner. Architects, builders, and developers responded to the task by organizing design-teams and producing architectural design solutions. They had to understand affordability as both cost (rent level) and architectural design (area-effective apartments).
 The competition in Stockholm was investigated in a case study. Research data was collected from archives and through questionnaires answered by jury members and design teams. Methods used for analyzing documents and design solutions were close reading and architectural criticism.
 Twenty-two architectural students studied the competition in a course. In this case study, I compare how the professional jury evaluated the proposals to jury reports from the students focusing on innovative solutions. The professional jury and the student juries used the same criteria for judging but appointed different winners. The students preferred the solution with collective living. One explanation for this difference can be found in the structure of the evaluation process.
 The results of the study can be summarized in ten conclusions that deal with sorting and ranking of design proposals, criteria for judging, marketing of the competition, uncertainty and knowledge, motives for competing, innovation, and the competition as a tool for the political ambition of the public organizers. The result produced new knowledge. There are few studies focusing on developer competition as the production of design proposals and architectural quality.

Developing an optimized strategy achieving design flexibility in small-area units: Case study of Egyptian economic housing

La estrategia de densificar para ocupar menos suelo de alto valor ecológico y de biodiversidad implica un desarrollo de vivienda en altura, determinando comúnmente condiciones definitivas en el tamaño de las mismas; si a lo anterioradicionamos la escasez de recursos y el alto déficit de soluciones de vivienda social, los resultados son unidades habitacionales definitivas muy pequeñas para sostener la evolución y crecimiento de una familia con sus necesidades y aspiraciones básicas. Este fenómeno se hace evidente con el inconformismo de las familias usuarias con respecto a la unidad de vivienda asignada y claramente es una situación que no aporta a los aspectos de sostenibilidad con el que se quieredesarrollar la vivienda social. Por esta razón, la unidad básica de vivienda social en altura que es económicamente viable en nuestro país debe poder crecer en área, evolucionar y permitir la permutación funcional de sus espacios, lo cual, mejora lascondiciones de capacidad, confort y funcionalidad en una dinámica de apropiación que es diversa. La necesidad generada por el dinamismo arquitectónico requiere una estructura que también se pueda adaptar a estos cambios evolutivos, porlo tanto se desarrolló una estructura que consiste en un módulo básico al que se pueden unir módulos estructurales en voladizo con uniones articuladas.

PurposeThere is a tremendous growth of housing stock with subsequent resource consumption due to rapid urbanization. Most of the existing small-scale constructions have no planning, leading to both environmental degradation and negligible resilience to hazards. The contemporary sustainability and green building concepts are difficult to apply to small individual housing units but a collective regional assessment can be made. The regulatory bodies need to assess regions for resiliency and sustainability to prioritize fund allocation. Due to varying housing typologies and unaccounted resource consumption, reliable spatial information/data are not available to quantify risks and sustainability. The paper aims to discuss these issues.Design/methodology/approachThe fuzzy logic approach has been used here to propose a regional assessment factor to give a coarse relative status of each region (and not individual houses). The criterion considered incorporates both hazard safety and environmental aspects.FindingsA model of fuzzy technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution based on experts’ linguistic opinions has been designed with appropriate negations for prioritizing regions.Originality/valueThis paper anticipates that apart from pressing the need for increasing resilience to hazards, this simplified opinion-based tool will assist the government and administrators to prioritize and strategize their funds/efforts toward achieving safety and sustainability. Depending on the evaluation and assessment, specific retrofits can be planned and executed. The assessment may be used by NGOs working in housing sector and architects and engineering professionals or academicians.

The micro-units, efficiency units, and group-housing, collectively referred to as small-housing units in this thesis, and the Single Room Occupancy (SRO) units have been, and are continually developed to cater to the demand for affordable housing in urban core regions suited to house the increasing number of single-adults, students, the homeless population, etc. As the proportion of single-adults rises exponentially in cities in the US, it is only logical to assume a commensurate rapid development of these small-housing units. However, the supply of these small-housing units is much less as compared to its supposed demand from a growing population of single-adults. Hence, there is an observed mismatch between the actual demographic trend (that can be measured), and the ‘apparent’ demand for small-housing units in the urban core regions. Some blame the intensity of the underlying regulations, others blame the NIMBYistic attitudes of neighbors, yet, certain predict that the development of the efficiency-unit type is simply a hype and may soon die down (Infranca, 2014), (Urban Land Institute, 2014), (Beyer, 2016). The thesis identifies issues that impede the commensurate development of the small-housing unit type, which has been cited as holding a solution to provide reasonably priced housing opportunities for single adults in high-value markets (Rack, 2016), (Potikyan, 2017). The research identifies those issues in two sequential parts. First, the unpleasant experiences with the SROs in the mid-twentieth century that continue to stunt the development of similarly sized small-housing units in the US. Second, to avoid the recurrence of such a condition, the regulations build in redundancies that further restrict the development of cost-effective housing that small-housing units aim to provide. These issues are then analyzed in further detail to derive key factors that impede the development of small-housing units, and to understand if the unit type holds a sustainable solution to cater to the housing demand of a changing demography. These concerns are addressed through a series of case-studies, demographic analyses, and interviews with city agency officials and subject experts, in select cities such as Atlanta, Boston, Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco. By systematically answering the questions in the outline below, the thesis answers the larger research question about the implications of regulations and policies that are adopted to govern the development of small-housing unit apartments in selected major cities in the US.

Small and Medium Multifamily Housing Units: Affordability, Distribution, and Trends

The fiscal externality of multifamily housing and its impact on the property tax: Evidence from cities and schools, 1980–2010

This paper considers the importance of age in delineating urban space, the latter operationalised as high-density living. Many cities have experienced an increase in inner city living contributing to gentrification. Today, inner cities contain more amenities, public transit and housing options than in the past but there are also growing affordability concerns owing to rising prices. Especially young adults, sometimes dubbed Millennials, are making location decisions in a context of lower employment security, higher costs and continuing high-density re-development that now extends into suburban areas in some cases. The analysis in this paper shows evidence of a youthification process that results in an increasing association of high-density living with the young adult lifecycle stage. The higher density areas remain young over time as new young adults move into neighbourhoods where there are already young people living, and they move out if their household size increases. Youthified spaces have become characterised by small housing units that are not generally occupied by households with children. Additionally, some areas are exhibiting generational bifurcation as both older and younger adults live in some higher density areas. Youthification is driven by a combination of lifestyle, demographic, macro-economic and housing market changes that require further investigation. The youthification process is not replacing, but occurring alongside, gentrification and points to young age as a delineator of high-density living becoming more important over time. However, immigration, measures of social class and household size still remain the most important explanatory variables of high-density living.

Bu yaz, stanbul'da, kk konut retimindeki yeni gelimeleri; alternatif/kk hanehalklar ile ilgili demografik deiimler zerinden ve mekansallk kavram evrevesinde gelitirilen kuramsal yaklam nda

Assessment of large scale brackish water desalination plants in the Gaza Strip

The Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs has announced a policy which can enable the building of urban type housing with the use of a prefabrication method 2010. However, such may possibly be at standstill owing to the prefabrication methodology that has not been currently developed in Korea. Moreover, small households of consisting of one or two family members have been steadily increasing, but the small housing units in which they reside has been decreasing. Due to this situation, urban type housing has been proposed. To expand the propagation of such urban type housing and to promote prefabrication methods, the top priority project is to develop a technology that is able to reduce construction costs, as well as to shorten the actual construction period. In consideration of this prefabrication system for an avenue to solve such problems, a series of systems and policies for the fostering of prefabricated urban type housing has been proposed. This study is to review a series of methods, technologies and policies that are required for such urban type housing and henceforth, to utilize such as preliminary data for further prefabricated urban type housing.

High-rise Mixed-Use Housing (HMUH) buildings have favorable urban location conditions, innovative technology, and diverse urban cultural functions to efficiently and compactly enhance urban dwellers' spatial accessibility. This study aimed to evaluate the quality of life of urban dwellers with regard to the semipublic spaces of HMUH complexes in order to propose a planning direction for sustainable HMUH complexes. The research methodologies that were used involved examining relevant past studies to derive subjective quality of life indicators of urban dwellers, as well as studying the design drawings of HMUH buildings to conduct qualitative and quantitative analyses of the semipublic spaces therein. Moreover, urban dwellers' satisfaction with their quality of life was surveyed in order to analyze differences in levels of satisfaction according to various types of HMUH complexes. In conclusion, the physical quality of the semipublic spaces in HMUH complexes correlated with the quality of life of urban dwellers, created a general linear model between the semipublic spaces, and was varied according to the HMUH building types. In the case of HMUH complexes, the dwellers' preference for social interaction was found to be lower than their preference for other indicators, with a high preference for safety and security. Further, in the case of small housing units equipped with double loaded corridors, the semipublic spaces negatively influenced the quality of life of the dwellers, and the sporting amenities in the semipublic spaces were the most frequently used for health and leisure activities and social interaction.