Paper sessions will allow participants to present their research in the urban and housing domain. Most of these sessions will be organised by the regular ENHR working groups, but a number of additional paper tracks will cluster the urban issues not covered by the existing working groups. Additional themes are the sustainable city (innercity development, city transformation), the sustainable environment/region (the metropolitan landscape) and tools to facilitate housing and urban processes (GIS, cadastres, planning games).

Regular working groups

Short introduction about the working groups that have confirmed their participation:

W01- Housing Finance
Coordinator: Christine Whitehead, Jens Lunde
The ‘Housing Finance’ working group focuses on credit market policy and praxis incl. new financial instruments and risk analysis of different lending praxis on different real estate submarkets. They are also taking a broader view, and take an interest in the effects of different financial regimes on price formation, construction and affordability.
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W02- Migration, Residential Mobility, and Housing Policy
Coordinator: Roland Goetgeluk, Maarten van Ham
The 'Migration, Residential Mobility and Housing Policy' working group focuses on how housing markets, the neighbourhood and the urban system are influenced by population mobility, and how Housing Policy can be used to influence the effects of mobility on the local housing market.
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W03- The Residential Context of Health
Coordinator: Roderick Lawrence
The concerns addressed by this working group (formerly "Housing and Health") extend beyond the long-standing interests in the links between physical health outcomes and the physical characteristics of housing to encompass the role of psychological, social and cultural factors in shaping relations between the residential context, including housing, and health in the widest sense of the word.
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W04- Housing Economics
Coordinator: Edwin Deutsch
The target of this working group is to combine economic and econometric analysis in housing. Since housing economics analysis requires a consistent theoretical framework together with testable hypotheses, it is important that the working group continues to welcome both theoretical and empirical contributions. Recent events have indeed provided a fruitful mix of model building and statistical analysis.
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W05- Poverty Neighbourhoods
Coordinators: Jürgen Friedrichs, Wenda van der Laan Bouma-Doff
The central theme in this working group is firstly to describe the living conditions of residents in poverty (or deprived) areas, and their coping strategies. Secondly, to analyse the impact of such neighbourhoods on the residents. Thirdly, to explore the dynamics of such areas and to explain why the majority of these areas have become poorer, while others have become gentrified. Fourthly, to investigate the impacts of various public and private sector policies on such neighbourhoods.
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W06- Welfare Policy, Homelessness, and Housing Exclusion
Coordinator: Isobel Anderson, Joe Finnerty, Evelyn Dyb
Homelessness is a crucial area for collaboration in both research and practice. Consequently, a working group could also focus on the broader issues of joint working - both across professions/policy areas and across academic disciplines. There may eventually be opportunities for international, cross-disciplinary working. Such activities could also link closely to the refinement of conceptual and theoretical frameworks for research on homelessness
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W07- Housing Regeneration and Maintenance
Coordinators: Vincent Gruis, Nico Nieboer
The workshop ‘Housing Regeneration and Maintenance’ is organised by the former working groups ‘Housing Renewal and Maintenance’ and ‘Physical Aspects of Design and Regeneration’, which joined forces after the previous ENHR conference. The workshop will focus on issues concerning maintenance and regeneration of the existing housing stock, on processes and strategies at the level of estates/landlords in Western and Eastern Europe. The emphasis is on physical aspects of housing management and regeneration. Specific attention will be paid to performance measurement in social housing management, management of mixed-tenure buildings and estates and decision-making in stock investment. We would also very much welcome papers exploring issues pertaining to sustainable housing regeneration and maintenance practices in different cities and/or countries.
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W08- Residential Environments and People
Coordinators: Birgitte Mazanti, Henny Coolen
This working group focuses on the relationship between people and residential environments from the perspective of the individual. People's attitudes, perceptions, preferences, values, choices and evaluations of the features and qualities of residential environments provide the working group with important information on the ways in which residential environments are used and shaped. Such information may well provide a better understanding of the mechanisms behind residential preference and choice, values associated with residential environments, residential satisfaction, the quality of residential environments, the meaning of place, and the design of residential environments.
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W09- Legal Aspects of Housing, Land and Planning
Coordinators: Jane Ball, Henk Visscher
The general aims of this working group are to promote dialogue and European research on the importance of law to all aspects of housing, land and planning.
Besides their political, social, and economic implications, housing, land and planning are profoundly influenced by different legal environments in every nation. This group hopes to promote exchange between people in the same area as well as promoting understanding of the interaction of public and private law in Europe. Sociological empirical work on the implementation of law and theoretical work on the legal, economic, sociological and philosophical theories affecting this most applied of subjects are welcome. This ground-breaking work should create a useful network, improve the accuracy of other social and economic studies, comparative studies generally lead to ground breaking work including publication, and improve European understanding in some fundamental areas.
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W10- Home Ownership and Globalisation
Coordinators: John Doling, Marja Elsinga
This working group is partly established on a group of researchers who have participated in two EU projects: Home Ownership, Social and Economic Problems (HOSE) and Origins of Security and Insecurity: the interplay of housing systems with jobs, household structures, finance and social security (OSIS). Central issues were concerned with how it is possible to understand and explain relationships between globalisation and home ownership markets as they are emerging in Europe. Research has been conducted on mapping some of the main developments in labour and financial markets, social security systems and housing markets. Attention was also given to security and insecurity within home ownership and their wider implications for individuals and society.
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W11- Metropolitan Dynamics: Urban Change, Market and Governance
Coordinators: Ivan Tosics, Ronald van Kempen
This new ENHR working group aims to analyse the relationship between cities and their urban regions, which shows substantial changes over time, marked by growth (urbanisation) or decline (deurbanisation) of the whole area, or by processes of inter-regional restructuring (suburbanisation or re-urbanisation). The changes, either gradual or more sudden, influence to a great extent the functioning of the housing market within these urban regions. Causes of changes can usually be found in macro-developments, such as economic growth/decline, changes in incomes and preferences and, at least in some countries, also in specific policies on different spatial scales.
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W12- Housing Market Dynamics
Coordinator: Richard Turkington
Following 3 successful workshops held in Cambridge, Reykjavik and Ljubljana, we are proposing to hold a fourth workshop to address themes relevant to the creation of sustainable housing markets. Whilst we would be pleased to receive papers dealing with methodological approaches, housing supply and demand, the impact of housing policies, and government intervention, including the role of spatial planning in the European region, we would very much welcome papers that address the implications for housing markets of:
• Demand and supply in regeneration areas;
• Shrinking or growing cities; and
• Housing supply in growth areas.
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W13- Housing and Minority Ethnic Groups
Coordinators: Gideon Bolt, Sule Ozuekren
The central themes of this working group are: Housing conditions, housing preferences and residential mobility of minority ethnic groups; Concentration and segregation of minority ethnic groups; Living in multicultural neighbourhoods.
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W14- East European Housing & Urban Policy
Coordinators: József Hegedüs, Raymond Struyk, Sasha Tsenkova
The central focus of this working group has been on rental housing, privatisation, housing indicators and recently as well on urban issues, including surveying the urban restructuring of the Central and East European cities.
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W15- Housing and Urban Sustainability
Coordinators: Montserrat Pareja, Laure Itard, Eli Stoa
The working group deals with research on sustainability applied to different fields and from different perspectives. The working group is organising two workshops at this conference:
- Sustainable home cultures;
- Changing housing and leisure-time cultures: a threat to sustainable development? Challenges for European practices and policies.
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W16- Institutional and Organisational Change in Social Housing Organisations in Europe
Coordinators: David Mullins, Mary Lee Rhodes
The overall objective of the working group is to explore and develop concepts for analysing institutional and organisational change in housing provision in Europe, with a particular focus on social/public housing provision. Government policies, management reforms and rapidly changing social and economic contexts have placed new expectations on social and public landlords. To date, two main themes have emerged from workshops and collaborations. They are: Housing as a system / network and The dynamics of organisational change.
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W17- Housing and Sustainable Urbanisation in Developing Countries
Coordinators: Chris Watson, Jaap Zevenbergen
Half the world's population lives in urban areas. Future population growth (more than 80 per cent of it in urban areas) will be concentrated in developing countries. Yet the growth of urbanisation in the developing world has not been matched by a commensurate growth in the supply of decent housing nor by effective urban policies to cope with the adverse impacts of rapid urbanisation on the urban environment and the functioning of cities.
The shortcomings of policy, lack of political will, limitations of housing finance, poor land management in urban areas, lack of security of tenure, lack of infrastructure and services and the multiplication and persistence of informal settlements are just some of the issues that confront citizens and policy-makers in developing countries, and provide a strong theme for research, analysis and action. More information
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W18- Housing and Social Theory
Coordinator: Mark Vacher


This year the theme of the Housing and Social Theory Workshop will be Gender and Generation. Often policies and planning regarding housing and households are implicitly considering families as more or less homogeneous core entities and gender dimensions are invisible or taken for granted. The aim of this workshop is to explore and discuss the impact and consequences of the complexity of gender and family relationships ( families consist of different social, cultural and biological membership, positions and categories). Furthermore the aspect of generation indicates temporal dimensions (for example heritage, growing up, socialization, housing carriers etc) that could be considered as important factors in relation to policies and planning.
Examples of ideas which could be discussed are co-ownership of housing, intergenerational housing, housing for families of choice. We are also interested in re-vitalising the debate about gender and housing and any papers exploring this would be very welcome.
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Additional workshops

W19- The Sustainable City
Coordinators: Willem Korthals Altes, Yawei Chen

Cities are being transformed. Urban networks are being created. The built environment must cater for the varied demands of humans and the environment both now and in the future. Integrated knowledge of the development of urban areas helps to create a place worth living in. In an urbanising world, the challenge is to ensure that this process does not endanger the quality of life, economic vitality, social cohesion and mobility of our environment. We therefore have to create the right conditions for the future and plan sustainable urban areas where people can live, work and entertain themselves. This workshop focuses on several aspects of the sustainable city; how does the city transform and what are the right conditions for housing and urban development?

Themes that may be addressed are:
o Sustainable urban form
o Growth management
o Compact city
o Urban sprawl
o Transformation of the city
o Urban renewal
o Mobility and Transport
o Water in the city

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W20- Spatial planning and governance at the regional level
Coordinators: Wil Zonneveld, Edward Hulsbergen, Terry van Dijk

Spatial planning for urban areas has clearly become a regional issue. In many parts of Europe, urban functions are scattered over vast spaces, loosely connected by congested infrastructure and interspersed with remnants of former rural areas. Against this background the workshop explores the linkages between urban development on the one hand and infrastructure development, water management and the management of ecological structures and green belts on the other. Is it possible, for instance, to arrive at forms of land-use planning and infrastructure development that stimulate sustainable forms of transport? Can the living conditions within urban regions be improved through careful planning of the amenities provided by public space, greenbelts and rural areas? As sustainable urban planning seeks to improve the linkages between various sectoral interests, what kind of new forms of governance are needed?

Themes that may be addressed include:
o Structure planning and urban design
o Transportation and mobility
o Urban networks and network cities
o Polycentricity
o Density and urban pattern
o Regional governance
o Green and blue structures
o Land-use policy

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W21- Tools to facilitate housing and urban processes
Coordinator: Peter van Oosterom

The sustainable development of urban areas is complex in many respects: it involves many disciplines and a great number of actors, the constraints for decision-making are high, especially in already built-up areas. This calls for suitable tools to support the organisation and management of urban development processes. This workshop focuses on tools such as cadastres, geographic information systems, planning games and other similar tools. How can these tools be applied and improved to facilitate housing and urban processes?

Themes that may be addressed include:
o Communicative/collaborative planning
o Planning games
o GIS and urban development
o The role of cadastres

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