Making Room for People: Choice, Voice and Liveability in Residential Areas Qu, Lei (Ed.); Hasselaar, Evert (Ed.)
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www.ssoar.info Making room for people: choice, voice and liveability in residential areas Qu, Lei (Ed.); Hasselaar, Evert (Ed.) Veröffentlichungsversion / Published Version Sammelwerk / collection Zur Verfügung gestellt in Kooperation mit / provided in cooperation with: OAPEN (Open Access Publishing in European Networks) Empfohlene Zitierung / Suggested Citation: Qu, L., & Hasselaar, E. (Eds.). (2011). Making room for people: choice, voice and liveability in residential areas. Amsterdam: Techne Press. https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-273916 Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Dieser Text wird unter einer CC BY-NC-ND Lizenz This document is made available under a CC BY-NC-ND Licence (Namensnennung-Nicht-kommerziell-Keine Bearbeitung) zur (Attribution-Non Comercial-NoDerivatives). For more Information Verfügung gestellt. Nähere Auskünfte zu den CC-Lizenzen finden see: Sie hier: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/deed.de MAKING ROOM FOR PEOPLE CHOICE, VOICE AND LIVEABILITY IN RESIDENTIAL PLACES MAKING ROOM FOR PEOPLE CHOICE, VOICE AND LIVEABILITY IN RESIDENTIAL PLACES EDITED BY LEI QU AND EVERT HASSELAAR TECHNE PRESS Scientific Committee: Prof. Vincent Nadin, Delft University of Technology Drs. Andre Mulder, Delft University of Technology Drs. Frank Wassenberg, Nicis Institute Dr. Christien Klaufus, Centre for Latin American Research and Documentation (CEDLA) Dr. Harald Rohracher, Alpen-Adria University of Klagenfurt Sean Tumber, The Institute for Multicultural Affairs FORUM Rein Sohilait, The Institute for Multicultural Affairs FORUM Making Room for People: Choice, Voice and Liveability in Residential Places Keywords: community empowerment, neighbourhood involvement, citizen participation, self-construction, co-housing, participatory planning ISBN-978-90-8594-032-6 (p-version) ISBN-978-90-8594-044-9 (e-version) Editors: Lei Qu and Evert Hasselaar Language editing: Lauren Abrahams Lay-out: John Steenbergen, Lauren Abrahams Published and distributed by Techne Press, Amsterdam, The Netherlands www.technepress.nl Copyright © 2011 by the contributors, unless otherwise stated. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, photo print, microfilm or any other means without written permission from the copyright holder and the publisher. Acknowledgements The editors and authors wish to acknowledge the financial assistance of Delft University of Technology through the Delft Centre for Sustainable Urban Areas. The editors thank Christien Klaufus and Marco van der Land for their initiative to launch this SUA project, and thank Julia Robinson, David Varady and the members of the scientific committee for their valuable com- ments. Table of Contents 1 Introduction 9 Lei Qu and Evert Hasselaar 2 Politics, Practices and Constraints of Socio-spatial Restructuring through 27 Citizens’ Active Engagement Gabriela Rendón 3 Neighbourhood Design Ateliers, Social Innovation and Sustainable 55 Development Edward Hulsbergen and Paul Stouten 4 Market Dominance and Participatory Planning in New Housing 75 Developments Evert Hasselaar 5 Possible Futures of Self-construction: Post-structural Reflections on Ten 103 Years of Experimentation with (C)PC Luuk Boelens and Anne-Jo Visser 6 Collective Client Controlled Development of Space: Examples from an 129 Amsterdam Practice Hein de Haan 7 Self-managed Co-housing: Assessing Urban Qualities and Bottlenecks in 153 the Planning System Lidewij Tummers 8 Conclusions 177 Evert Hasselaar and Lei Qu Index 189 About the Contributors 195 1. Introduction Lei Qu1 and Evert Hasselaar2 ‘Above all, we have to make room for people to decide how they want to live and dwell, and enable them to materialise these thoughts.’ Adri Duivesteijn, alderman of Almere, The Netherlands (translation by the editors) 1. About the book This book elaborates on preferences in housing. It explores how users, occupants, and citi- zens can express their needs, searching for the enhancement of individual choice and con- trol over their residential environment, and the predicted positive spin-offs for urban collec- tives. The central question is: What are the conditions under which an increase of people’s choice and voice over the places they inhabit contribute to more liveable urban areas? In other words, are there examples that can demonstrate that a policy focus on individual citizens results in better functioning communities? Related are sub-questions on citizenship and the functioning of democratic societies: Does the creation of active citizenship and the deregula- tion of bureaucratic procedures improve a collective responsibility over neighbourhood space, or more durable housing solutions? Does a ‘bottom up planning’ strategy justify diminishing governmental involvement in urban planning and housing? The book is not about the housing market, although conditions on the market are impor- tant: is the market booming or in decline; is there a shortage of dwellings or a high vacancy rate; are buyers enthusiastic about future value prospects or do they postpone moving out, afraid of declining prices? This book is not studying policy either, although it considers the fact that policy matters form the framework for urban and building performance; for instance, the shift from rental houses to privately owned houses and recent discussion on tax reduction based on mortgage-rent, which influence ‘emotions’ and the market. The chapters mainly fo- 1 Faculty of Architecture, Delft University of Technology, Department of Urbanism, PO Box 5043, 2600 GA Delft, The Netherlands. 2 OTB Research Institute for the Built Environment, Section of Housing quality and process innovation (DWK), P.O. Box 5030, 2600 GA Delft, The Netherlands. Introduction 9 cus on Dutch cases that individually address the outcomes of relatively new policy measures, such as the promotion of self-provided housing, new packages of rent and ownership options in social housing, and alternative forms of participation of ethnic minorities in design and deci- sion making processes. Some case studies provide specific insight in non-participation and symbolic forms of protest, while others highlight dwelling preferences and people’s influence over their residential environment in relation to neighbourhood change. Based on the brief comparisons with other European cases, the book offers an overview of various attempts in western societies to ‘make room for people’ in housing and urban planning, shedding a fresh light on the possibilities and limitations of bottom up or middle ground policy approaches for sustainable urban areas. The options to make choices and to have a say in urban design and housing matters are used as a conceptual framework. ‘Choice’ and ‘voice’ are the main con- cepts that structure our empirical material. The combination of authors from both research and practice backgrounds is an advantage of this book. Some authors are deeply involved in participatory planning and have been for many years. They are the promoters of citizen involvement, of cooperative development, of integrating living with work and other facilities. Other authors are involved in planning issues and are more critical of current practices. The authors share the ambition to present an over- view of experiences with the building industry and to show housing associations, commercial developers, architects and students what is possible, why participatory planning and coopera- tive housing is pursued by dozens of groups and how it can be viewed as a reflection of the preferences of people that are not rewarded, unless through self-determined processes. The idea of this book is not to present a set of separate cases, but rather to look at them system- atically towards a better understanding of the different approaches. Due to the fact that the cases presented in each chapter vary greatly, and are very much related to the specific situ- ations, it is more feasible to use varied approaches to set frameworks. Most of the chapters explain their own contextual framework to embed the cases; some have their own theoretical frameworks for understanding the transformation processes, and others introduce evaluation frameworks that could be used to define the level of participation within their case. For the book as a whole, we are not seeking a common framework that could be positioned on top of all the study cases, but trying to define the conditions under which the increase of people’s voice and choice could contribute to liveable urban areas. 2. Concepts of ‘choice’, ‘voice’ and ‘citizen participation’ In Article 25 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, housing is considered to be a right for everyone, which points to housing as an area of concern for welfare state policy (Bengtsson, 2001). Housing preferences, along with housing satisfaction and expectations, have been the major topics in housing research during the last three decades (Beamish et al., 2001), which can be defined as the expression of the quantity and quality of housing features that residents would like to have (Dillman et al., 1979; Morris and Winter, 1978). Housing preference studies have been used to help researchers and developers understand the current trends in housing. This is a consumer-oriented approach to understanding the housing situation from the users’ view as compared to other market-oriented approaches. In this sense, the work of this book is very much based on housing preference studies; however more emphasis will be given to 10 Making Room for People