The first quotation refers to the 1930s-1960s, the second to the 1980s. What happened in between? Why did so many large housing estates change from celebrated urban innovations into problem areas no longer liked by their residents? Are the origins of the problems of housing estates internal to the estates themselves or are they simply spatial concentrations of more general problems of society? How widespread are the problems of large housing estates? What are the chances that large estates, developed in haste and proliferating across Europe, will disappear with the same speed?

Large housing estates in European cities: an historical note

All over Europe huge numbers of people live in large housing estates built after the Second World War. The philosophy according to which these estates were built was socially progressive and common to the different European countries involved. The origin of the estates can be traced back to the poor housing situation of the majority of the working classes at the turn of the 20th century. The principal period of construction for the large housing estates, however, came after the devastation of the Second World War, when massive building programmes were needed to replace the dwellings that had been destroyed or damaged in the war, to make up for the lack of housing production during the war, and to house the millions of people searching for a home. Demand for housing was high and further inflated by an unprecedented natural growth of the population in the early post-war years.