Geoadria (Jan 2021)
The quality of life in housing estates in the context of West-european and post-socialist countries
Abstract
This paper provides a clear insight into the quality of life on the level of housing estates in European countries. In doing so, the questions of housing and satisfaction with the housing situation in the estates as well as with surrounding areas and the neighbourhood, in general, is being considered as an important dimension of a complex research concept called the quality of life. In analysing the quality of housing, we inevitably encounter an interesting division into the so-called two different versions of Europe or two types of housing estates. In the phase of planning and constructing, they shared a common idea of designing modern and functional, mixed estates that would solve the housing question of most residents, i.e. of different social classes. However, the first type is marked by the socio-historical context of Western Europe, and the second by Eastern Europe, or as some authors like to frame it, the differences in housing quality between ‘capitalist’ and ‘socialist’ cities. From that perspective specifically, it seems useful to analyse the quality of life and the possibility of renewing both types of housing estates, by now deprived and decrepit, built after the Second World War in both types of cities. This applies equally to those in Western Europe, often marked by a significantly worse image and higher levels of socioeconomic problems (crime, segregation, deterioration and other), as well as the estates in post-socialist Europe, where large housing estates built during the socialist period remain a desirable housing option, but that are increasingly facing problems related to maintenance and upkeep of buildings and built environments (both public and communal spaces). In the last decades, in both types of estates there has been an increasing depopulation of middle and higher classes of residents, which progressively causes segregation but also deterioration in the social and physical sense. All the mentioned negative aspects of the housing quality require adopting national housing strategies and renewal programs which exist and are implemented in Western European countries, while they do not exist in most post-socialist countries, and Croatia is not an exception. Housing estates renewal should be an essential part of every country’s housing policy, aimed at alleviating or preventing further degradation of the quality of life for housing estate residents.
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