Large post-war housing estates provide some of the most striking examples of the mismanagement of knowledge in recent European urban development. The symptoms are manifold. Some apparently mediocre large estates have fared well on the housing markets or have achieved a turnaround after a problematic past, while other, previously highly acclaimed, model housing estates of the second half of the 20th century were demolished after only a few decades as they had become unsustainable, ungovernable or were just no longer in demand. A third group of estates remain in constant need of refurbishment; neither the original plans nor repeated attempts at urban repair have proved able to curb physical and social decay. The question is: what constitutes the differences between these groups?

The central argument of this chapter is that it was not only the quality of the estates, their social structure and status, or a lack of means or political and professional goodwill, that led to the failure of the efforts made to improve the large estates. A partial neglect of available knowledge and, in particular, an inappropriate management of knowledge as a basis for policies of change are seen as important reasons for many obviously problematic decisions and practices.

In this chapter, knowledge management in housing is contrasted with the development practice reflected in some of the RESTATE cases. Some of the difficulties in adapting the different paradigms of knowledge management to the development of the large estates are debated and a communicative model is presented of knowledge management as a reflexive methodology to support the sustainable development and change of the estates.

Knowledge and the large housing estates

Over the years, different examples of mismanaging knowledge have emerged. Technological and engineering knowledge may clearly have been neglected during planning and building of the large housing estates (Gibbins, 1988, p 46). The evidence for this can be found in the serious deficiencies which have often only emerged a decade or so after the residents moved in (Gibbins, 1988, p 22). Second, existing knowledge about the social and economic use of built-up space seems very often to have been given scant attention in the planning phase, in the day-to-day management of the estates, and during the repeated attempts at rehabilitation that some estates have experienced.