Since the 1990s, Croatia’s public sector has played a significantly reduced direct role in housing provision. However, public policies continue to influence housing provision indirectly, operating within broader post-socialist welfare regimes. Permissive land use and development policies reflect a housing system which evolved to ensure broad homeownership based on small-scale housing provision. This paper argues that spatial governance and planning practices in Croatia serve as tools to maintain a steady supply of construction land, aimed at making homeownership affordable. While these practices offer some security in the context of diminished welfare systems, they also perpetuate inequalities and contribute to urban sprawl.

The relationship between housing systems and urban development patterns in Croatia remains understudied. This paper examines how contemporary Croatian spatial planning practices align with the broader housing system, situating these practices within housing regime theory. Croatia’s current small-scale housing provision patterns are framed as a path-dependent continuation of the socialist-era system, in which informal and formal small-scale construction existed alongside large-scale public housing. When publicly led housing provision ceased in the 1990s, small-scale provision became dominant, further stimulated by the emergence of homeownership as the only viable tenure type for households following the “giveaway privatization” of housing.

Croatia’s land use policies have evolved to support this model, stimulating individual and small-scale housing construction through generous zoning of greenfield sites and the absence of public land value capture mechanisms. Such urbanization models, however, are increasingly seen as unsustainable, contributing to land take, car-dependency and unserviceable infrastructure costs.

This paper assesses the potential impacts of evolving national and EU policies in the fields of sustainable land use, housing and environmental protection on the Croatian housing system, highlighting the difficult trade-off between the objectives of affordability and other sustainability criteria. We argue that the understanding of urbanization within the broader framework of housing systems and welfare regimes is necessary for the success of the objectives of sustainable urbanization, as the tools required for their achievement, such as stricter zoning and greater public land value capture, would entail a significant transformation of institutional arrangements between the state, market and civil society.

In post-socialist Serbia, the commodification of housing has perceptibly affected standards in residential urban planning and design, which are increasingly subordinated to profit interests. In the context of the current challenges of residential intensification and urban sprawl in the capital city, one of the key urban issues is the quality of housing and its environment. This paper discusses the sustainability of new housing complexes in comparison to those built during the socialist period. As representative cases for comparative analysis, old and new neighborhoods in the Višnjička Banja settlement in Belgrade have been selected, namely the Višnjička Banja neighborhood from the 1970s-80s, and the Sunnyville neighborhood, the construction of which began in the late 2010s. Drawing on a conceptual framework of sustainable housing which integrates desirable socio-cultural, environmental and economic characteristics in this field, the study develops the Neighborhood Sustainability Assessment (NSA) tool, based on a literature review, previously established conceptual models and an empirical approach. The materials used in the research include original data and graphic documentation from the project authors’ publications, available planning and project documentation, open-source spatial data, and photo documentation from the field. This study questions whether the new, post-socialist practice of building residential settlements is oriented towards the goals and recommendations of sustainable housing, and whether it leads to an improvement or deterioration of housing conditions, compared to those fostered during the socialist period. The general research aim is to examine the prospects of current housing practices in Serbia, and highlight their long-term and irreversible effects on urban development and the quality of life of residents. Finally, by reaffirming thorough and comprehensive reflections on housing from the socialist period, in light of contemporary sustainability requirements, the authors indicate the need for improving the existing methodological frameworks in the domain of the urban planning and design of new residential developments in Serbia.

Vienna is considered one of the most livable and greenest cities in the world. With its long-standing social policy framework and highly regulated housing market, it is also a role model for a just city, in which social inequities are assumed to be marginal. However, recent research has revealed emerging gentrification processes in various neighborhoods across the city, including those surrounding the Augarten park.

The proposed presentation investigates the overlooked relationship between the Augarten – an important inner-city provider of ecosystem services – and the gentrification dynamics in its surrounding areas. By focusing on the supply-side perspectives of real estate agents and investors, this study addresses the following research questions:

RQ1: Which specific upgrading effects of the Augarten are perceived and marketed by supply-side actors, and what other factors may contribute to gentrification in the area?

RQ2: Which opportunities exist to increase and capitalize property value, despite the constraints imposed by a highly regulated housing market?

To explore these questions, a mixed methods approach was employed. First, a spatial analysis of 308 online real estate advertisements was conducted to assess the geographic scope of commercial marketing of the park. Advertisements explicitly mentioning the Augarten (n=128) were then subjected to an inductive content analysis, which included a rhetorical and target group analysis. In the final step, semi-structured interviews with seven estate agents provided fundamental insights into sales strategies and possible profit increases.

Results indicate that the Augarten plays an influential role on the supply side of the housing market. Proximity to the park is highly sought after, translating into location premiums between 10 and 27.5 percent. This makes the park a driver of local gentrification. Despite the limitations of Austrian tenancy law, which caps rents for properties built before 1945, such premiums are still capitalizable for newer properties. Legal conversions of historic tenement houses and rooftop extensions are popular means of enhancing property value in the study area. These practices effectively close ‘green gaps’ (rent gap theory), but also accelerate gentrification processes. A deeper understanding of the interplay between urban green spaces and gentrification in highly regulated housing markets is needed.

While in Hungary the proportion of private rental housing have been growing rapidly since the aftermath of the 2008 mortgage crisis, rental housing is still unwanted and considered only a temporary solution according to our surveys and interviews. Even if the generation under 35 has seriously decreased chances of homeownership compared to older cohorts.

The current situation is an effect of historical experiences: the socialist housing policy (with 60% self-built private housing and notorious lack of maintenance in the public sector), privatisation in the post-socialist transformation (for low prices to sitting tenants, creating the superhomeownership housing system and completely residualizing renting, lacking adequate institutions), the age of cheap mortgages and the 2008 mortgage crisis, and the illiberal system with politically created dependencies from power (as for example the traditionalist, pronatalist family policy framework perversely supporting mortgages of the better off in the future decades).

All these factors combined, made renting extremely stressful in Hungary. Landlords, are often cash poor, lack knowledge and resources to deal with the risks of property management, and only sporadically pay taxes, while tenants are experiencing complete insecurity, lack of privacy and exploitation, as our interviews illustrate that.

Consequently, many apartments are simply left empty: instead of rental income capital gains are expected in a speculative spiral. A large part of the rental contracts is still made between previously related sides (family members, acquaintances), causing informal dependence and even more bitter conflicts. Therefore, some interviewees would even prefer impersonal relations as in the case of banks before 2008. However, corporate landlords are absent due to the large scale of informality and political risks. As being a tenant for life is still considered inacceptable, tenant and housing movements are also missing. Inequalities depend now more on family wealth than before, and social relations are becoming increasingly closed.