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Ahousing estate (or sometimeshousing complex,housing development,subdivision orcommunity) is a group ofhomes and other buildings built together as a single development. The exact form may vary from country to country.
Popular throughout theUnited States[1] and theUnited Kingdom, they often consist ofsingle family detached,semi-detached ("duplex") orterraced homes, with separate ownership of eachdwelling unit. Building density depends on local planning norms.
In major Asian cities, such asHong Kong,Kuala Lumpur,Shanghai,Shenzhen,Singapore,Seoul,Taipei, andTokyo, an estate may range from detached houses to high-densitytower blocks with or without commercial facilities; in Europe and America, these may take the form of town housing, high-rise housing projects, or the older-style rows ofterraced houses associated with theIndustrial Revolution, detached orsemi-detached houses with small plots of land around them forming gardens, and are frequently without commercial facilities and such.
InCentral and Eastern Europe, living in housing estates is a common way of living. Most of these housing estates originated during thecommunist era because the construction of large housing estates was an important part of building plans in communist countries in Europe. They can be located insuburban andurban areas.
Accordingly, a housing estate is usually built by a single contractor, with only a few styles ofhouse orbuilding design, so they tend to be uniform in appearance.
A housing development is "often erected on a tract of land by one builder and controlled by one management."[2] In theUnited Kingdom, the term is quite broad and can include anything fromhigh-rise government-subsidised housing right through to more upmarket, developer-ledsuburbantract housing. Such estates are usually designed to minimise through-traffic flows and provide recreational space in the form of parks and greens.
The use of the term may[original research?] have arisen from an area of housing being built on what had been acountry estate as towns and cities expanded in and after the 19th century. It was in use by 1901.[3]Reduction of the phrase to mere "estate" is common in the United Kingdom andIreland (especially when preceded by the specific estate name), but not in the United States.
There are several different housing types utilized by housing developers.[4] Each of the different housing types will have their distinctive characteristics, density ranges, number of units, and floors.[4]
Due to dense population and government control of land use,Hong Kong's most common residential housing form is the highrise housing estate, which may be publicly owned, privately owned, or semi-private. Due to thereal-estate developersoligopoly (sometimes called real estate hegemony,Chinese:地產霸權) in the territory, and theeconomies of scale of mass developments, there is the tendency of new privatetower block developments with 10 to over 100 towers, ranging from 30 to 70 stories high.
Public housing provides affordable homes for those on low incomes, with rents which are heavilysubsidised, financed by financial activities such as rents and charges collected from car parks and shops within or near the estates. They may vary in scale, and are usually located in the remote or less accessible parts of the territory, but urban expansion has put some of them in the heart of the urban area. Although some units are destined exclusively for rental, some of the flats within each development are earmarked for sale at prices that are lower than for private developments.
Private housing estates usually feature a cluster of high-rise buildings, often with its ownshopping centre or market in the case of larger developments.Mei Foo Sun Chuen, built byMobil, is the earliest (1965) and largest (99 blocks) example of its kind. Since the mid-1990s, private developers have been incorporating leisure facilities including clubhouse facilities,[5] namely swimming pools, tennis courts and function rooms in their more up-market developments. The most recent examples would also have cinemas, dance studios, cigar-rooms.
Uniform high-rise developments may form 'wall effect (Chinese:屏風效應)', adversely affecting air circulation, causing some controversy.[6] In-fill developments will tend to be done by smaller developers with less capital. These will be smaller in scale, and less prone to the wall effect.
Given the security situation and power shortages in South Asia, 'gated communities' with self-generated energy and modern amenities (24-hour armed security, schools, hospitals, a fire department, retail shopping, restaurants and entertainment centres ) such asBahria Town andDHA have been developed in all major Pakistani cities. Bahria Town is the largest private housing society inAsia.[7] Bahria has been featured by international magazines and news agencies such asGlobalPost,Newsweek,Los Angeles Times andEmirates 24/7, referred to as the prosperous face of Pakistan.[8][9][10][11] Gated communities in Pakistan are targeted towards upper middle class and upper class, and are mostly immune from problems of law enforcement.
Forms of housing estates may vary in theCzech Republic andSlovakia. During theCommunist era ofCzechoslovakia, construction of large housing estates (Czech:sídliště,Slovak:sídlisko) was an important part of building plans in the country, as the government wanted to provide large quantities of fast andaffordable housing for all people,[12] as well as to slash costs by employing uniform designs over the whole country. They also sought to foster a "collectivistic" in its people.[citation needed]
Most buildings in Czech and Slovak housing estates are the so calledpaneláks, acolloquial term in Czech and Slovak for alarge panel systempanel building constructed of pre-fabricated,pre-stressed concrete, such as those extant in the former Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic & Slovakia) and elsewhere in the world. Large housing estates of concrete panel buildings (paneláks) now dominate the streets ofPrague,Bratislava and other towns. The largest such housing estate inCentral Europe can be found inPetržalka (population about 130,000), a part of the Slovak capital of Bratislava.
People living in these housing estates usually own their individual apartments, mainly due to the fact that majority of the individual apartments went from being publicly owned by the state to being privately owned, as they were sold to most apartment occupants by the government for small, symbolic prices after the fall ofsocialism.[12] People can also rent apartments, usually throughreal estate agents and private landlords, although some apartments are still owned by the state and are usually used forsocial housing.[citation needed] There's usually a mix ofsocial classes in these housing estates.[12][13][14]
InBritain andIreland, housing estates have become prevalent since theSecond World War, as a more affluent population demanded larger and more widely spaced houses coupled with the increase of car usage for whichterraced streets were unsuitable.
Housing estates were produced by eitherlocal authorities (more recently,housing associations) or by private developers. The former tended to be a means of producingpublic housing leading tomonotenure estates full ofcouncil houses often known as "council estates". The latter can refer to higher endtract housing for themiddle class and evenupper middle class.
The problems incurred[clarification needed] by the early attempts at high density tower-block housing turned people away from this style of living. The resulting demand for land has seen many towns and cities increase in size for relatively moderate increases in population. This has been largely at the expense of rural andgreenfield land.[citation needed] Recently, there has been some effort to address this problem by banning the development of out-of-town commercial developments and encouraging the reuse ofbrownfield or previously developed sites for residential building. Nevertheless, the demand for housing continues to rise, and in the UK at least has precipitated a significant housing crisis.
Forms of housing estates in the United States includetract housing,apartment complexes, andpublic housing.[citation needed]
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