Making Room for People: Choice, Voice and Liveability in Residential Places

Making Room for People explores the conditions under which the choice and voice of residents contribute to more livable and sustainable urban areas. A number of Dutch cases illustrate the outcomes of recent policy measures, participatory design processes, novel projects, as well as the effects of non-participatory behavior. While the book shows certain drawbacks within participatory processes, it ultimately promotes more citizen control over housing preferences and makes its case by the varied and numerous examples. Table of Contents......Page 8 1. Introduction......Page 10 2. Politics, Practices and Constraints of Socio-spatial Restructuring through Citizens’ Active Engagement......Page 28 3. Neighbourhood Design Ateliers, Social Innovation and Sustainable Development......Page 56 4. Market Dominance and Participatory Planning in New Housing Developments......Page 76 5. Possible Futures of Self-construction: Post-structural Reflections on Ten Years of Experimentation with (C)PC......Page 104 6. Collective Client Controlled Development of Space: Examples from an Amsterdam Practice......Page 130 7. Self-managed Co-housing: Assessing Urban Qualities and Bottlenecks in the Planning System......Page 154 8. Conclusions......Page 178 Index......Page 190 About the Contributors......Page 196 Making Room for People elaborates on preferences in housing. It explores how users, occupants, and citizens can express their needs, searching for the enhancement of individual choice and control over their residential environment, and the predicted positive spin-off's for urban collectives. The central question is: What are the conditions under which an increase of people's choice and voice over the places they inhabit contribute to more liveable urban areas? The options to make choices and to have a say in urban design and housing matters are used as a conceptual framework. 'Choice' and 'voice' are the main concepts that structure the empirical material