RESTATE
Restructuring Large-scale Housing Estates in European Cities:
Good Practices and New Visions for Sustainable Neighbourhoods and Cities
Contract No. EVK4-CT-2002-00085
Official homepage: www.restate.geog.uu.nl

This EU-funded project commenced November 1st 2002, and will run for three years. The Institute for Housing & Urban Research is one of twelve partners. Prof. Roger Andersson functions as a senior researcher, supervising the research in Stockholm. One more researcher (Irene Molina) and one assistant (Emma Holmqvist) take part in the project. The project has established an official homepage where results are made public.

Problems to be solved
Cities are the dynamos of the European economy, enabling the EU (and potential member states) to maintain a strong position in the global economy. When these cities contain large areas that are not faring well or, even worse, hinder the economy, it is important to find out how best to change these areas in order to remove the dysfunctional characteristics. Large-scale post-war housing estates can be seen as problematic areas in many cities all over Europe. Economic decline goes hand in hand with physical and social decline in these areas. The focus of this project is on the circumstances in these large post-war estates, on policies to counteract negative trends and on activities which stimulate positive developments. If the problems of these areas will not be solved they will increasingly hinder cities to function well in an economic sense.

Scientific objectives and approach
The project has the following objectives (1) to identify and to clarify the social and economic changes which have occurred in large post-war estates and particularly to identify general and specific factors influencing emerging problems and patterns of decline in these areas; (2) to develop a checklist of items that have proved to be important in successful and less successful policy responses with respect to these estates; (3) to draw conclusions about the potential for cross-national transfer of knowledge and experience and for co-operation in strategic planning for these areas and in area and estate management; (4) to produce a comprehensive handbook in which forward looking scenarios and new visions for large post-war estates in Europe will be coupled with examples of evidence based best practice to achieve sustainable future development of these areas; (5) to build an easy to use database for practitioners and researchers containing details of the nature, successes and failures of present policies aimed at improving the position of large post-war estates and their inhabitants; (6) to consider whether and how European level policy could contribute to more effective responses to problems associated with these estates. Methods used in the research are literature research, statistical overviews, interviews, a survey and discussion with urban representatives.

Expected impacts
The primary objective of RESTATE is to produce a comprehensive, evidence based handbook which draws on the experience in different European cities and sets out alternative, forward looking scenarios and new visions for large-scale post-WWII housing estates in Europe (East and West). This handbook will also set out best practices for future sustainable developments of these areas and for effective policy implementation. The results can be used by policy makers to find out in which context which measures have been and can expected to be successful with respect to improving large-scale housing estates in cities.

The following principal research question will be answered:

What structural and other factors explain why some large post-war estates are relatively successful and others are associated with a range of problems? How do current policies for these estates in different Western and Eastern European cities contribute to increasing social inclusion, social cohesion, sustainability, well-being, housing quality and access to services? How do these policies combat the negative aspects of the neighbourhoods (such as crime, poor environmental quality, run-down appearance, stigmatisation, increasing out-migration, residualisation of the housing stock, increasing conflicts between groups)? What are the main advantages and disadvantages associated with different policies? In what ways and under what circumstances can these policies be improved for future use in different kinds of Western and Eastern European cities? What forward looking scenarios and visions for these areas and the cities in which they are located can be formulated and how can policies contribute to achieving the most positive results?

The following cities are included in the project: Amsterdam (NL), Barcelona (ES), Berlin (GE), Birmingham (UK), Budapest (HU), Jönköping (S), Koper (SL), Ljubljana (SL), London (UK), Lyon (F), Madrid (ES), Milan (I), Stockholm (S), Utrecht (NL) and Warsaw (PL).
The Swedish cases are: Tensta and Kista in Stockholm and Råslätt and Oxnahaga in Jönköping.
The Restate reports will be published on the project's homepage. At the end of 2003, all national background reports were published and they are also available as printed versions (the Swedish report is no. 50 in the list of publications).

The consortium

The consortium comprises the following partners:
P1 Faculty of Geographical Sciences, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands (Project Co-ordinator) (UUtrecht)
P2 IRS, Institute for Regional Development and Structural Planning, Erkner, Germany (IRS)
P3 UMR 5600 "Environment-Ville-Société", Institute des Sciences de l'Homme, Lyon, France (ISH)
P4 Metropolitan Research Institute, Budapest, Hungary (MRI)
P5 Dipartimento di Sociologia e Ricerca Sociale, Universita' degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy (UNI-BIC)
P6 AME Amsterdam study centre for the Metropolitan Environment, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands (UvAmsterdam)
P7 Department of Urban and Population Studies, Institute of Geography and Spatial Organisation of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland (IGSO)
P8 The Urban Planning Institute of the Republic of Slovenia, Ljubljana, Slovenia (UPIRS)
P9 Centre de Recerca en Economia del Benestar - Centre for Research in Welfare Economics (CREB), Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain (BCN)
P10 Institute for Housing & Urban Research, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden (UUppsala)
P11 Department of Spatial Planning, Blekinge Institute of Technology, Karlskrona, Sweden (BIT)
P12 Centre for Urban and Regional Studies, School of Public Policy, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom (CURS)

Results

The Restate project has so far generated three research reports (no 50, 54 and 60) dealing with the Swedish case studies. Parallell reports exist for the other nine countries. In november 2005 an edited volume was published, containing four chapters with Swedish contributors (including 61, 62 and 64). More output will follow.