The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted housing as both a source of shelter and a dimension of social stratification. Using three-wave panel data from 188 residents of a Shanghai community, this study examined mental health during the May 2022 lockdown, the November–December 2022 policy-transition period, and the May–June 2023 post-reopening period. Latent class analysis based on housing ownership, facilities, space, and household income identified top, upper-middle, and lower-middle housing strata. Linear mixed-effects models assessed depression, anxiety, and stress measured by the DASS-21. All three outcomes declined significantly over time. Wave-by-housing-strata interactions were significant for depression and stress, but not for anxiety. During lockdown, the top strata generally reported lower distress than the less advantaged strata, and these differences narrowed during the policy transition. By the post-reopening period, depression had largely converged, while the lower-middle strata showed a relative rebound in stress. None of the individual housing indicators had a significant overall association with the outcomes when considered simultaneously, indicating that the housing-strata patterns were not readily attributable to any single measured dimension. These findings are consistent with stress proliferation and support housing-sensitive emergency planning and sustained post-crisis mental health support.
The existing literature consistently suggests that gated communities are self-governing structures whose private governance is typically overseen by community-based organizations, such as homeowners’ associations (HOAs), that are established by the residents themselves. However, this article argues that the Turkish case diverges substantially from the HOA-centred model of gated community governance, as professional facility management (FM) companies have emerged as the ‘de facto managers’ of governance by extending their routine activities beyond anticipated scope. In this context, this article scrutinizes the drivers behind the increasingly central role of FM companies within a regulatory vacuum characterized by legal ambiguity and explores how this transformation has reshaped governance relations in Istanbul’s gated communities. A total of 23 semi-structured interviews were conducted with individuals including FM company executives, on-site FM managers, developers and officers from local governments. Thematic coding analysis was utilized to evaluate the interviews. The findings indicate that although the state actively promoted housing production, it largely refrained from establishing a clear institutional and legal framework for the governance of gated communities, thereby creating an institutional void. Benefiting from the room for manoeuvre created by this void, FM companies expanded their role with wide range of governance functions and filled the institutional void, resulting in a shift from resident-based self-governance to FM company-centred private governance.
Machine learning-based automated valuation models (AVMs) are increasingly used in urban housing markets, yet their performance varies substantially depending on local market conditions. This study investigates spatial variations in the accuracy of five AVMs across Greater Sydney, including ordinary least squares (OLS), geographically weighted regression (GWR), random forest (RF), extreme gradient boosting (XGB), and multilayer perceptron (MLP). Among the models, RF achieved the highest overall accuracy, followed by XGB and MLP, while OLS showed the lowest performance. GWR demonstrated competitive accuracy in submarkets with homogeneous housing and high transaction volume but performed poorly in spatially isolated or topographically complex areas. Correlation analysis revealed that AVM accuracy tends to improve in submarkets with lower mean prices, lower price dispersion, and higher sales volume. The findings suggest that model selection should be tailored to submarket characteristics rather than applying a universal model. In particular, spatial models such as GWR may offer interpretable alternatives to black-box machine learning models in stable submarkets.
Old residential areas must be renovated to meet residents’ evolving needs; however, such efforts place substantial burdens on community budgets, which are further exacerbated by urbanisation. Communities that cannot feasibly undertake large-scale renovations must prioritise renovation projects that both promote development and efficiently allocate resources. However, such prioritisation is complicated by differences in community managers’ and residents’ priorities and in residents’ perceptions according to their sense of belonging. This study uses the Ziyuangang in China as a case study to propose renovation strategies that integrate the WELL Community Standard, Importance–Satisfaction Model, and General Belongingness Scale. The questionnaire survey was conducted among 87 community residents and 28 community managers. The ANOVA results revealed significant differences between managers and residents according to the level of their sense of belonging in terms of community air quality, pedestrian walkways and waste management. Residents with low sense of belonging expressed greater demand for improvements in these areas than those with high sense of belonging and community managers. The approach offers a theoretical framework for addressing the diverse needs of old urban communities with similar characteristics, promoting sustainable community renewal and strengthening residents’ sense of belonging. It provides practical insights for the research and practice of priority decision-making in the renovation of aging residential communities.
Residential structure dynamics — including building density, spatial morphology, and neighbourhood layout — are central determinants of urban environmental performance. Despite accelerating urbanisation and mounting policy pressure under the SDGs and Paris Agreement, housing policymakers and planning authorities lack a systematic evidence base for understanding where research on this relationship is concentrated, where it is absent, and where disciplinary integration is needed. This study addresses this gap through a bibliometric analysis of 1,027 Scopus-indexed articles (2000–2025), retrieved from Scopus using a Boolean search string and filtered by subject area, document type, language, and access type, reducing 1,275 initial records to the final corpus. Biblioshiny and VOSviewer were applied for performance analysis, keyword co-occurrence mapping, co-citation analysis, and collaboration network visualisation. Results show a compound annual growth rate of approximately 12
The Swedish building industry has been going through a neoliberal transformation from community building to commodity production. In this article, we employ mixed-methods research aiming at addressing what this structural transformation entails and what its (adverse) effects may be. Based on a contemporary historical materialist approach, we draw on the principal contradiction in the labor theory of value and the respective contradictions in housing commodification and production fragmentation to conceptualize an integrated framework (referred to as a triaxial threat space), which we then situate in the socio-historical context of the Swedish building industry. Finally, we employ this framework and demonstrate how the structural transformation from community building to commodity production is threatening the famed Swedish high-road model, leading, among others, to labor deskilling and exploitation, lower productivity, and production quality issues. We also posit that these phenomena are exacerbated when moving towards the extremes of fully exploiting labor for profit, universally commodifying housing production, and completely fragmenting production through multilayered subcontracting. Our contributions include integrating relevant scholarship into a coherent framework for understanding transformations in housing production and labor relations in Sweden, as well as linking labor degradation and the potential collapse of high-road production with the gradual change in the political economy of Swedish construction.
Housing discrimination remains a persistent source of inequality in access to housing and related life chances. Yet the evolution of academic knowledge on this phenomenon has rarely been examined as an object of inquiry in its own right. This article asks how research on housing discrimination has developed between 1972 and 2022, how the field is structured in thematic and geographic terms, and how these dynamics can be interpreted in relation to broader institutional transformations in housing governance. Theoretically, the article bridges housing-discrimination research and comparative housing studies by conceptualising housing discrimination as an outcome of governance arrangements shaping access to housing across market, welfare, and regulatory domains. Drawing on the concepts of housing decommodification and policy accumulation, we explain the evolution of the field through three mechanisms: centralised diffusion, institutional coupling, and epistemic accumulation, which together account for the uneven production of knowledge on housing discrimination. Empirically, the analysis relies on a curated corpus of 1,350 peer-reviewed publications retrieved from Web of Science and Scopus. Using bibliometric mapping, co-authorship network analysis, term co-occurrence and temporal analysis, the article reconstructs the intellectual architecture of the field over five decades. The results identify three enduring thematic clusters: race-based discrimination and segregation; law, education, and social rights; and health, gender, and identity. While research output has expanded rapidly since the early 2000s, particularly after the 2008 financial crisis, the field remains strongly centralised around the US and the UK. We show that thematic diversification and epistemic asymmetries closely mirror cycles of housing decommodification and fragmented institutional change. The article contributes to housing studies by offering the first systematic, global reconstruction of housing-discrimination research and by advancing a sociological explanation of how knowledge production and housing institutions co-evolve. It highlights epistemic inequality as a key, yet overlooked, dimension of housing governance.
Prolonged displacement in conflict zones has led to temporary shelter needs being replaced by transitional housing needs. Despite advancements in low-cost building materials and passive design approaches, there remains a lack of studies that consider the application of stabilized earth construction materials with quantified thermal performance evaluation using controlled geometric conditions in post-conflict reconstruction. This study investigates the impact of geometric aggregation on the passive thermal performance of stabilized earthen construction materials, particularly Alker, in hot and dry Mediterranean climatic conditions. Three housing configurations were evaluated using dynamic thermal simulation software, DesignBuilder, using the Azaz region in Northern Syria as a case study. Three configurations were considered, with the same floor area, envelope characteristics, and operational assumptions, but with varying degrees of vertical aggregation. Thermal comfort was evaluated using Predicted Mean Vote (PMV), Predicted Percentage of Dissatisfied (PPD), and operative temperature under passive operation scenarios. The results suggest that geometric configuration plays a larger role in the thermal performance of buildings than the choice of materials. Results indicate that the single-storey courtyard-based configuration showed 60
Public perceptions of green facades matter because they influence the extent to which this nature-based solution will be adopted in urban areas. This study investigates whether firsthand experience with a green facade is associated with stronger perceived benefits of green facades on buildings. Drawing on a survey of residents in buildings with and without a green facade in Leipzig, Germany, the study analyzes responses using exploratory factor analysis and Bayesian linear regression. The results indicate robustly that those with firsthand experience view green facades more favorably than those without. Concerns related to maintenance of green facades were shared across the sample. Specific apprehensions, such as rent increases due to maintenance cost, were expressed mainly by respondents without firsthand experience. These findings suggest that facilitating firsthand experiences with green facades may improve how they are perceived by the public, while reliable maintenance solutions remain an essential priority. The study extends previous work by directly comparing perceptions of residents with and without frequent exposure to green facades, contributing to the understanding of how direct experiences shape attitudes towards nature in the built environment.
Housing retrofit has become a key priority in the sustainability agenda due to the importance of decarbonising the housing stock to achieve climate change goals. The importance of housing retrofit is not solely related to decarbonisation, but a range of socio-economic and technical factors such as fuel poverty, health and well-being of the occupants. Despite its importance, housing retrofits stagnate in most contexts due to poor engagement from homeowners. There are criticisms that the retrofit drives have not focused on the homeowner behaviour. They are designed as a top-down approach under technical rational models. The key questions of this study are what the constraints of resident engagement in housing retrofit are and how homeowners can be better engaged with the retrofit process. Accordingly, this study aims to understand the homeowner behaviour in the context of housing retrofit for better homeowner-centred retrofit project delivery. The study was conducted using semi-structured interviews with 40 retrofit industry stakeholders. The findings can be summarised as changing the investment focus of housing retrofit into a consumption focus, changing the property-centred retrofit approach to a homeowner-centred approach and undertaking a socially contextualised neighbourhood approach to drive housing retrofit. One specific contribution of this study is the identification of the housing retrofit strategies that already worked. The other contribution is how to change the existing strategies for better homeowner engagement. The novelty of the paper lies in the empirically strong recommendations for retrofit at scale solutions.
Poor housing conditions are linked to adverse health outcomes, particularly among older adults. Energy efficiency retrofits may reduce these risks, but evidence specific to older renters is limited. Older renters may be especially vulnerable due to age-related health risks and limited control over housing conditions. However, evidence on the health impacts of retrofit interventions in this population has not previously been synthesised. This literature review examined the health and wellbeing impacts of energy efficiency retrofit interventions among older people who rent their homes. A systematic search of PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus identified studies assessing retrofit interventions and health outcomes in renters aged 60 years and older. Screening and data extraction were conducted independently by multiple reviewers. Due to heterogeneity, findings were narratively synthesised. Seven studies met the inclusion criteria and were conducted in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Spain. Interventions ranged from window and door replacements to weatherisation programmes. Mental health outcomes showed modest improvements, while evidence for cardiovascular health was inconsistent. Cavity wall insulation without adequate ventilation was associated with worsened mental, respiratory, and general health. This review suggests that retrofit interventions were associated with health and wellbeing improvements among older renters, but that some measures can cause harm if not properly implemented. The findings highlight the need for tenant-focused approaches to energy efficiency that recognise the potential heterogeneity of resident needs and health impacts. As the first review to specifically examine older renters, we conclude that greater attention to differential effects across socio-demographic subgroups should be prioritised in future longitudinal research to strengthen the evidence base and inform safer and more equitable housing policy for ageing populations in rental housing.
Residential building energy retrofits (RBER) are a key pathway to improving dwelling energy performance; yet, residents’ appraisals of retrofit remain under-measured. This study develops and validates the Residential Building Energy Retrofit Cognition Scale (RBERCS), a multidimensional instrument that captures residents’ cognition: integrated reflections and judgements about RBER. Guided by content–criteria mapping and Diffusion of Innovation (DoI) evaluative lenses, we generated items, revised them through expert review and cognitive pretesting, and purified the pool via exploratory factor analysis. The final scale comprises 18 items across five content domains: Resident Personal Status, Pre-retrofit Building Status, Retrofit Measure Performance, Retrofit Social Norms, and Retrofit Governance Mechanisms. Confirmatory factor analysis supports the proposed five-factor structure; reliability and construct validity are evidenced by satisfactory internal consistency, composite reliability, average variance extracted, and Fornell–Larcker discriminant tests. Nomological validity is supported by positive associations between the five cognition domains and attitudes toward RBER. The RBERCS offers a concise, psychometrically supported tool for profiling retrofit-related cognition among homeowners and other residential decision-makers who can provide appraisals based on available knowledge, experience, or information, informing market segmentation, programme design, and policy evaluation, and supporting research on cognition–attitude–behaviour pathways. Directions for cross-cultural revalidation, longitudinal testing, and scale refinement are outlined.
Contemporary global crises—ranging from macroeconomic shocks to public health crises—have exposed structural vulnerabilities across economic systems, effects that are particularly pronounced in housing. As a sector characterized by high capital intensity, extensive investment horizons, and strong exposure to external fluctuations, housing remains mainly sensitive to such disturbances. These vulnerabilities have been further deepened by the neoliberal restructuring and financialization of housing—processes that have intensified its integration with volatile financial markets. Within this context, developers occupy a pivotal position, not only as producers of the built environment but also as key agents shaping how the sector absorbs and responds to crises. While firm size is widely associated with differences in financial capacity, organizational flexibility, portfolio structure, and technological adaptation, comparative empirical insights into how developers of varying scales navigate crises remain limited. Addressing this gap, this study examines how firm size conditions crisis response and resilience strategies among housing developers, taking Istanbul—a dynamic and highly financialized urban context—as its empirical setting. The methodology employed in this study is based on survey data that were obtained from 140 developer firms (73 small-scale and 67 large-scale) operating on both the European and Asian sides of Istanbul. Using a set of 28 indicators capturing strategic orientations and adaptive practices, the study employs Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) to identify the underlying patterns shaping developers’ responses to crisis conditions. This methodological approach enables a comparative assessment of how firms of different scales develop resilience strategies under crisis conditions. The findings indicate that firm size plays a decisive role in shaping resilience strategies. Large-scale developers tend to rely on more diversified, resource-intensive, and institutionally embedded approaches, drawing on strategic partnerships and structured risk management mechanisms. Smaller firms, by contrast, exhibit greater flexibility and dependence on social capital, yet their adaptive practices remain constrained by resource limitations and operational vulnerabilities, including bureaucratic burdens. These differences point to distinct modes of navigating uncertainty within the housing sector. By foregrounding the role of developers as active agents in crisis response, the study contributes to a more nuanced understanding of urban resilience and offers insights relevant to both policy design and sectoral risk management.
Small towns act as important spaces for the growing urban population of India. Both the population size and density in these towns are accelerating at a much higher rate compared to big metropolitan cities. Among these emerging small towns, some are located in disaster-prone coastal areas and fragile delta regions. However, the ‘sustainable development’ debate is still limited to big metropolitan cities of India, leaving these small towns out of both the academic and the policy discourses. Through an in-depth analysis of the provision of affordable housing and urban basic services (UBS) in three small towns of the deltaic region of West Bengal, this article argues that there is a need for deeper understanding of environmental crisis in the small towns of deltaic and coastal regions to avoid future catastrophic conditions in these fragile regions. The article uses a broader framework of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11 to analyze the situations of housing and three selected UBS. Based on empirical research comprising interviews using both semi-structured and open-ended questionnaires with 208 households, 21 municipal officials, and 52 councillors, the research analyzes the ground conditions as well as the policy gaps in the housing and in the provision of UBS. The research reveals a clear disconnect between policy intent and its implementation at the local level. Citizen’s feedback is a significant component of this research, which helped us to understand the concept of bottom-up sustainability at the city level. Increased rate of migration from the highly fragile and disaster-prone rural hinterland is an additional barrier in the sustainable development of small towns located in environmentally sensitive regions like deltas and coastal areas. The findings also highlight the need for integrated urban development strategy that prioritize infrastructure development, improved housing conditions, and effective service delivery in deltaic towns. The major contribution of this article is to fill the research gap on sustainable cities in the context of small towns, especially located in highly fragile ecosystem regions like deltas.
Optimizing residential space is important for supporting older adults’ physical and mental well-being. Yet the relationship between housing size and health remains unclear. Insufficient space may be linked to crowding, limited privacy, and functional constraints, whereas excessively large dwellings may bring maintenance burdens, safety risks, and psychological stress. Using data from the 2020 wave of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, this study applies XGBoost and SHAP methods to examine the nonlinear association between per capita floor area and older adults’ mental and functional health in China. The results show an inverted U-shaped association, with indicative turning points of approximately 34.7 m² for mental health and 41.5 m² for functional health. The association is more pronounced for mental health than for functional health, with mental health responding earlier to increases in floor area and declining more sharply after the turning point. Interaction analyses further show that the association varies by age, functional capacity, physical activity, living arrangement, socioeconomic resources, and housing conditions. Larger per capita space is more likely to be associated with poorer mental health among older adults who are older, functionally limited, physically inactive, or living alone for longer periods. These findings support a dual-sided housing fit framework, suggesting that both insufficient and excessive residential space may be linked to poorer health when housing size does not match older adults’ capacities, support resources, and housing quality. The study highlights the need for moderate-size, manageable, and age-friendly housing rather than a simple pursuit of more residential space.
One strategy for reducing the environmental impact of urban residential systems is the development of shared-access spaces that allow multiple households to use facilities that are typically privately owned. To date, however, cross-contextual evidence on interest in such arrangements remains limited, particularly for specific types of shared spaces. This study draws on a survey of 3077 individuals in the Netherlands, Slovenia, and Sweden to examine self-reported willingness to share three types of residential spaces: kitchen-and-dining areas, work-from-home spaces, and workshops. Using ordered logit models, we analyze how stated willingness varies with socio-demographic characteristics, prior experience, attitudes, and national context. The results indicate that responses differ across both space types and countries, with consistent positive associations observed for prior experience, environmental efficacy, and self-reported extraversion. At the same time, substantial variation across demographic groups and national contexts suggests that interest in shared-access spaces is not uniform. While a considerable share of respondents express openness to at least some forms of sharing, the findings should be interpreted as indicative of stated preferences under hypothetical conditions rather than realized demand. These results contribute to a more differentiated understanding of how interest in shared residential functions varies across populations and contexts, and provide a basis for further research on the design and feasibility of shared-access housing models.
This article examines the long-run stock elasticity of housing supply and factors associated with their cross-city variation across 22 Finnish cities, a context characterized by strong municipal control over land use. We adopt a two-step approach. First, using time-series econometric methods on quarterly data from 1988 to 2020, we find that the long-run stock elasticity varies substantially across cities, ranging from 0.3 to 2.2. Second, drawing on novel city-level indices constructed to capture differences in land-use policy restrictiveness, we examine how the local land-use policy environment relates to supply elasticity. Our cross-sectional analysis indicates that cities with more restrictive land-use policy interventions—especially those associated with higher indirect costs of housing development—exhibit lower supply elasticities. Together with city size and geographical constraints, these interventions are associated with approximately 70
Eco-villages have emerged as laboratories of alternative socio-spatial organisation, generating practices that may inform the retrofitting of mainstream low-density housing settlements. This paper examines how principles developed in Danish eco-villages can be translated into settlements that share comparable spatial typologies, such as suburban areas, peri-urban districts, and small towns characterised by dispersed morphology and limited shared infrastructure, but differ in their underlying socio-spatial conditions. Based on fieldwork in three communities—Andelssamfundet i Hjortshøj, Karise Permatopia, and Svanholm—the study draws on semi-structured interviews, spatial observations, and GIS-based geo-surveys. Using an analytical framework focused on community, built environment, and ecology, it identifies strategies linking collective agency with everyday resource stewardship. While the three cases share sustainability-oriented values, they differ in governance and socio-ecological organisation: Hjortshøj emphasises informal collaboration, Permatopia integrates family-oriented permaculture routines, and Svanholm represents structured collectivism and agricultural production. The paper argues that retrofitting requires translation rather than replication. Because social organisation and spatial form are mutually constitutive, selective adaptation must extend beyond spatial typologies to the governance routines and participation infrastructures that sustain collective life. Such translation is enabled by sustained institutional support and shared spatial resources, but is constrained by self-selection dynamics, unequal access, and volunteer dependency.
Housing is among the basic necessities of life after food and clothing, particularly in urban areas. This study examined the sustainability of housing affordability in the medium-sized town of Fitche, the seat of the North Shoa Zone in the Oromia Region, Ethiopia. Primary data was collected from 364 respondents of two residential neighbourhoods: Commando and Fitche-Gora. The study adopted a multi-criteria decision-making technique to investigate sustainable housing affordability by taking into account the sustainability pillars: economic, social, and environmental factors. The results revealed that the pillars of sustainability were the factors determining housing affordability, although conventional economic criteria also played a significant role. The study results revealed that Commando was identified as a better residential alternative based on economic and socio-environmental factors, including the house price in relation to income, house rent in relation to income, housing quality, access to employment, schools, and transportation services. The study informs local governments and stakeholders to consider the mutual relationship between sustainability and housing affordability. It contributes towards addressing the ambitious goal of Sustainable Development Goal 11, which aims to ensure sustainable cities and communities.
Under the national goals of Carbon Peak and Carbon Neutrality, the Chinese government has set higher requirements for energy efficiency renovation (EER) of existing residential buildings in its Northern Heating Region. The decision-making support of homeowners plays a crucial role in achieving these renovation targets. This study investigates the barriers and motivations influencing homeowners’ decisions to participate in government-led EER programs. In addition to socio-demographic factors and building characteristics, particular attention is given to homeowners’ previous renovation experiences. Based on a questionnaire survey conducted among homeowners in the region, the study identifies the main barriers as high capital costs, perceived unfairness in financial planning, an inefficient renovation process, concerns about decreased comfort, and a lack of incentives. Conversely, motivations include the desire to improve comfort levels, reduced capital costs, a transparent and well-organized renovation process, financial incentives, and trust in government authorities. Homeowners with prior renovation experience report overall lower levels of perceived barriers and motivations compared to those without such experience, with significant differences in several factors. Semi-structured interviews provide further insights into these findings. In addition, the study examines homeowners’ willingness to engage in EER. Policy recommendations are proposed based on the results.
