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In Japan, various government authorities and public housing corporations built a huge number of dwellings for rent to reconstruct war-damaged cities and to accommodate the high concentrations of population in urban areas in the mass-housing era between 1955 and 1973. Approximately 40% of all public residential buildings for rent in Japan were constructed in the latter mass-housing era (1965-1973). These are four- or five-story reinforced concrete buildings whose building frames are sufficiently strong to withstand several decades' more use but whose interior finishings and functional systems are deteriorating. Although these houses were originally designed for nuclear families, they are now considered too small to accommodate more than three residents. There is growing demand for renovation of deteriorating public residential buildings for rent. Dwelling units of such deteriorating buildings are often enlarged by constructing extensions or by removing sections of existing partition walls and installing new partition walls. In recent years, several local authorities have started to add new elevator towers to residential buildings for the increasing number of aged residents. We have studied these regeneration projects in detail by conducting questionnaires at 60 public housing corporations and hearing investigations at 6 corporations. This paper describes the actual status of the regeneration of deteriorating public multi-unit residential buildings for rent in Japan.

Over the past three decades, a small community of eighty-four Chilean low-income families has built and improved their home incrementally, without any technical assistance, showing an impressive performance. A six square meters bathroom on a serviced plot of land with individual connection to potable water, sewerage, electricity and access roads, worked as a starting point back in 1974. However particular their rationale may seem, the individual history of their housing process reveals some general regularities in occurrence and duration of self-build activities, as well as size and allocation of the domestic spaces. A small random sample of fifteen households was selected to tell the story and explain the whys, hows, and whens of an ever-evolving housing process. Semi-structured interviews and building surveys were both combined to reconstruct the sequence of states of each housing process, with the awareness of the characteristic imprecision of oral information transfer. Alternative states were explored by constraint programming methods and spatial qualitative reasoning. Considering the hard constraints over the site morphology and services allocation, the results of the exploration stress how extraordinary lucid and intuitive the surveyed families are when making their design decisions. The article exposes a reconstructive case study on spontaneous growth patterns underlying an unassisted, incremental self-build housing dynamics.

This article aims to better understand how empowered middle manager engage in change translation? Relying on the notions of building and dwelling strategizing, the authors analyze the micro-practices of middle managers during organizational change, when middle managers are freed from time-consuming administrative activities.

This empirical study relies on a qualitative embedded case study approach that involves comparing two banking units belonging to a large French bank. The qualitative data were collected from three different sources: exploratory and semi-structured interviews, observations and secondary data. The coding analysis enables to distinguish middle managers' dwelling and building strategizing during organizational change.

The study’s findings show how managers translate organizational change relying on both building and dwelling strategizing. By doing so, managers enable to adapt the prescribed strategy to local circumstances and foster front-line empowerment.

Even though the findings are based on the analysis of a single organization, the authors provide several theoretical insights. First, the authors contribute to the recent academic debate in strategy-as-practice literature by showing the recursive relation between building and dwelling strategizing. The authors also shed a new light on middle managers' strategizing by emphasizing the idea that middle managers are not only passive change “translators” but that middle managers enact a real agency in the organizational change process.

From a managerial perspective, the study’s findings enable to enlight what empowering middle managers means in practice. Indeed, the authors show clear empirical illustrations of how middle managers can be empowered by both organizational structure and top-management support. The results also reveal how empowering middle managers enable to empower their team by three different activities: (1) federate the team spirit to facilitate collaboration; (2) develop employees' capabilities and (3) adjust managers' activity according to employees' needs.

While multiple current new ways of organizing encourage to transform organizations from inefficient bureaucracies into flatter and more dynamic project-based teams, calling into question the importance of middle managers' strategic role, this study provides an original case study of an organization that chose to run against the tide and created an additional middle management level.

Discusses the radioactive gas radon and its effects on the legal obligations of surveyors and other professionals concerned with the designing, refurbishment and appraisal of dwellings. Presents an overview of the problem of radon, concentrating on health issues and summarizing both its measurement and the way in which it enters dwellings. Outlines the protective measures needed to prevent radon entering new homes and existing dwellings, mentioning NRPB guidances. Details the legal implications for surveyors in these two separate situations, discussing suing in respect of physical injuries or death, the event of the property becoming unsaleable and for pure economic loss. Explores the surveyor′s duty in respect to radon and the implications of the Defective Premises Act 1972.

To apply path dependence theory and analysis to the regulatory framework for private-rented housing in Britain, especially affecting houses in multiple occupation (HMOs) and addressing the increased involvement of the planning system through planning use classes, permitted development rights and Article 4 directions.

This paper identifies critical junctures in primary and secondary legislation for housing and planning and analyses individual local authority responses in planning policy documents and tribunal decisions.

The rise of the HMO reflects wider changes in society leading to new forms of household and inter-generational inequalities. Local authority discretion and locked-in responses have resulted in different regulatory regimes for housing and planning, recently favouring existing communities of owner-occupiers against HMO residents, seen as transient populations not committed to the neighbourhood.

Potential for further research on demographics and household formation, and on reviewing planning and appeal decisions involving HMOs.

The research is apparently the first specifically addressing planning regulation of the HMO from a path dependence perspective, in the context of planning protection of the single-family dwelling house and marginalization of other forms of housing.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the social and functional features of micro-apartment and, based on the findings, to demonstrate the projects of modern micro-apartment designed for one or two people, which are implemented in the experimental design.

Based on the analysis of the study of theoretical scientific works on the research topic and from the standpoint of an interdisciplinary discourse the social and economic prerequisites for the demand for such a dwelling are determined and the categories of citizens for whom a micro-apartment is an advantage are identified. Particular attention is paid to the typological boundaries of the study, the generalization and synthesis of sources which is reflected in identifying the features of the functional zoning of a micro-apartment in connection with the needs of residents and determining modern ways to improve the comfort of living.

At the examples of experimental design of micro-apartment for the city of Almaty we substantiated the expanding the existing typology of residential buildings by adding a new type of urban dwelling – a micro-apartment which occupies a niche between apartment housing for permanent residence and traditional hotels.

The content of the study is devoted to the analysis of a micro-apartment as a new type of modern urban dwelling for a single and small-family population. Urban residents’ interest in economical, affordable small-area dwellings as well as the need to study and design micro format dwellings for the modern urban environment is a topical issue.

Rents are both a very important cost variable in the housing market, having large welfare and distributional implication, and one of the most important variables in house price research. The aim of this paper is to construct rent indices for Norway's capital, Oslo.

This paper uses a unique dataset with 24,257 housing for rent advertisements, creating hedonic indices using the time dummy variable method.

In this paper, the author presents annual rent indices for Norway's capital, Oslo, over the period from 1970 to 2008. In addition to an aggregate index, they construct hedonic rent indices for different flat types.

Existing Norwegian rent indices start around 2000 or are constructed with the purpose of being a part of the CPI, and are therefore adjusted for change in quality. Since the author's indices are not adjusted for quality, they give new information about Norwegian rent for the past 40 years.

The chapter aims to discuss the social housing history and urban renewal experiences in Turkey while pointing out similarities to and variegations from the urban policy trends in the global north in the postwar era. To carry out these discussions, the chapter focuses on the Karapınar Project in Eskişehir.

The chapter is built on an anthropological case study and a self-funded video documentary research that includes insights from local inhabitants, projects’ authorities, urban experts, and planners in order to show contesting claims and views about the renewal, new housing conditions, and economic consequences.

The Karapınar Renewal Project is a Mass Housing Administration (TOKİ) project which claimed to be a ‘welfare oriented’, ‘renewal on-site’, ‘social housing project’ aiming to turn gecekondu – squatter settlements – into a healthy neighborhood. Yet, these claims fail to meet their promises and only appear to mask the actual rent-seeking motivations of the project.

The chapter shows that large economic profits of the authorities create a significant contrast with economic burdens and dispossessions of the poor residents. The locals’ fears about the payments and concerns about changing living conditions are in sharp contradiction with the welfare claims of the state institutions.

The Karapınar Project uses the concepts of ‘social housing’ and ‘welfare state’ which are normally associated with policies of social democratic ideology. Yet, when looking into the reality, it becomes clear that the Karapınar Project shifted the meanings of these concepts and utilized them to create a space for legitimacy.

In this study, it was aimed to determine the changes made by users in kitchens of social housing units of Nicosia Göçmenköy and to determine the user satisfaction with a questionnaire survey.

This study was carried out in two stages. In the first stage, the renovations in the residential kitchens were determined by on-site observation. Revisions in the kitchens compared to the standard kitchen are expressed by drawings. In the second stage, 49 people who lived in these dwellings and accepted to participate were asked questions to determine the satisfaction levels of the users of existing kitchens through a questionnaire.

As a result of on-site observations, it was seen that changes and enlargements in kitchen spaces did not add value to the spaces in terms of function in many examples, but rather they made a negative impact on the kitchen activities. It is also a fact that random and optional additions and enlargements cause the creation of architecturally useless areas and extended circulation areas instead of the expected benefits. According to the results of the questionnaire survey, it was determined that the users of the kitchens who renovated their kitchens were very satisfied with the current kitchens.

When the recent studies in world literature are examined, it can be seen that research on kitchen spaces is not so much. There is no detailed study on the transformation of social housing kitchens in Cyprus so far. This study aims to determine the transformations in Göçmenköy social housing kitchens, which are the first social residences built by the state in the Nicosia Göçmenköy region. Since the studies on social housing kitchens are very limited, this study is very valuable in terms of shedding light on future researches.

Meeting human needs is considered as fundamental to sustainable human settlement. However, in micro level developments particularly in respect of a housing unit, for example, an operational definition of sustainability which will be useful in its practical implementation, has yet to be developed. To address this, the author posits that theories on the relationship between the environment and the person can be taken as a conceptual frame of reference. One of them is the theory of Person-Environment Congruence (PEC). This theory conceptualizes “congruence” as the favourable outcome of the person-environment relationship. Achieving PEC is considered as the most important criteria that supports the concept of housing sustainability. In the context of housing, the author considers that PEC is achieved when the dwelling place can offer its inhabitants a place which meets their basic needs. In order to operationalize this concept in terms of housing unit design, the author propagates the use of the Means-End Chain (MEC) research model to explore the relationship between a person and his or her environment. The combination of the two concepts facilitates the identification of those housing attributes emphasized in the home-making process, together with the users' perceptual orientation towards those attributes. To experiment with the application of the MEC research model in respect of exploring the concept of PEC, a case study was conducted on 15 renovated and personalized houses in a mass housing scheme in Malaysia. The traditional MEC methods were maintained with some modifications to accommodate the various housing characteristics. The results suggest that the MEC research model is able to link the relevant housing unit attributes to user values, and it is potentially applicable in the design of a housing unit. The results also indicated that user participation is essential in home making process, in order to achieve and maintain sustainability.