Suburbanscapes

Urban districts built after World War II were normally unable to offer forms of social relations and community life due to the degradation of their communal spaces. One of the main problems of these developments is the lack of attention given to people’s social and cultural backgrounds and to their traditions. A lack of infrastructure, social services and good urban standards encourages petty crime and alienation, a characteristic already provided by the repetitiveness and anonymity of the buildings simply providing mass housing accommodation. This volume contains the contributions from 22 European Countries that participated at the Action COST TU0701, a research project aiming to address the increase in value of suburban housing through the improvement in the quality of life of inhabitants. This was achieved through a series of objectives namely to investigate, compare, define and disseminate common knowledge concerning methods, procedures and technologies for the renovation and revitalization of suburban housing settlements. The first part is an overview of policies and strategies for improving the quality of suburban areas in the European countries. The second part refers to the assessment of quality in the suburban building stock and quality standards for suburban housing. In the third chapter, methods and tools for quality assessment are examined and tested with respect to a common case study. This book aims to propose a first step for the evaluation of suburban building quality in Europe. The comparison between the experiences of different countries provides an overall survey of the functional and technical quality of European post-war multi-family housing stock, and cooperation between countries will encourage an integrated building refurbishment strategy. Hence this report, complemented with other parallel publications, should serve as a valuable tool for the improvement of suburban building stock. It should truly be the key to providing a leap in the quality of life of the inhabitants.