Our colleague Dr. Tamas Egedy (Budapest Universití of Economics and Business, HU) is organizing a thematic session on mass housing and high-rise housing estates.
Session Nr. 172:
Category: Urban Studies
Keywords: Mass housing, housing estates, vertical cities
Housing estates have been built worldwide, and if we look at them in Eastern and Western Europe, there are far more similarities than differences. Their origins are common, their construction was inevitable and there are no fundamental differences in their causes. They were all built to address the housing shortage in the short term. Looking at the architectural evolution of mass housing programmes after the Second World War, we find that they replicate to some extent the post-World War I situation: gradually moving from suburban neighbourhoods to large housing estates on the periphery, and the same can be said of the urban ideologies and architectural techniques used. In Europe, housing estates thus became widespread, and in many countries, they constitute an important segment of the housing market. In recent decades, the issue of high-rise housing estates has often been the focus of urban geographical, architectural, and urban planning discourses, and more recently, a new mainstream urban paradigm, the theory and practice of vertical cities have grown out of this issue. This session aims to bring together and present current research on mass housing, high-rise housing estates, and vertical cities, including social, economic, and urbanistic issues, housing market processes, and anything else.