User participation in housing regeneration projects

Abstract

The quality of existing residential buildings is one of the biggest problems today. There are a number of different approaches to improve the quality of existing housing stock with user participation. Regeneration policies for the existing housing stock can create opportunities for improving spatial standards, and can preserve the social-cultural and economic value of the stock. Europe is rich in terms of housing estates that were designed based on modernist ideas after the World Wars as a means of solving housing problems. European countries have developed policies for improving the quality of those neighbourhoods. Nowadays, most regeneration policies focus on design, construction methods materials and financial resources, but they should also focus on user participation issues. The methodology of this research is built on examining the approaches and implementations related to the participation in housing regeneration projects in European countries and Turkey. The kind of policies and implementations related to user participation that exist in Europe and how such participation is organized in the projects has been examined. The research consists of a literature review on European regeneration projects, plus a survey and in-depth interviews on a modern housing settlement in Turkey to discuss the potential of user participation. A research case study was conducted on a modern housing project, in the Levent District, which was built in the 1950s. Questionnaires and in-depth interviews were employed to understand the users’ attitudes to a regeneration project. As part of studying the process of the selected projects, the participation type will be analysed in order to underline the importance of user participation on regeneration projects, and user participation potential will be discussed.