Urban heritages: how history and housing finance matter to housing form and homeownership rates

Contemporary Western cities are not uniform but display a variety of different housing forms and tenures, both between and within countries. We distinguish three general city types in this paper: low rise, single-family dwelling cities where owner-occupation is the most prevalent tenure form; multi-dwelling building cities where tenants comprise the majority and; multi-dwelling building cities where owner occupation is the principal tenure form. We argue that historical developments beginning in the nineteenth century are crucial to understanding this diversity in urban form and tenure composition across Western cities. Our path-dependent argument is twofold. First, we claim that different housing finance institutions engendered different forms of urban development during the late-nineteenth century and had helped to establish the difference between single-family dwelling cities and multi-dwelling building cities by 1914. Second, rather than stemming from countries’ welfare systems or ‘variety of capitalism’, we argue that these historical distinctions have a significant and enduring impact on today’s urban housing forms and tenures. Our argument is supported by a unique collection of data of 1095 historical cities across 27 countries

Regional landscape strategies and public participation: towards implementing the European Landscape Convention in Sweden

Sweden has recently decided to ratify the European Landscape Convention (ELC). Methods for implementation have been discussed for both the ELC and related national environmental objectives. Thus, the Swedish Government decided that seven County Administrative Boards should undertake pilot studies for Regional Landscape Strategies (RLS) during 2006–2007. The RLS pilot projects aimed at a new and more effective approach for conservation and sustainable land use at regional level. Additionally, RLS should also function as a method for implementing the ELC and other environmental objectives. One specific focus of the pilot studies was on developing methods for public participation. Other important issues were to involve different administrative sectors, municipalities and regional authorities in the process, as well as attaining a good balance between conservation and profitable land use. This chapter presents some of the results from the RLS case study in Vellinge municipality, Scania (Skåne), Sweden’s southernmost province. The focus of the study was on public participation in particular by equestrians and landowners. The first ‘bridleway organization’ of its kind in Sweden was established as a direct result of the project