Sustainable communities? A comparative perspective on urban housing in the European context

This paper examines the sustainability of urban housing in the European Union. It outlines a number of key criteria for assessing the sustainability of urban housing including mixed use developments, higher residential densities, high quality dwellings and neighbourhoods, affordability and food production. Utilising the 2007 tranche of the European Quality of Life Survey, it finds significant variations between countries in the sustainability of urban housing and communities and highlights the leaders and laggards in this regard. The relative success of urban areas in Denmark and Finland deserves some additional research, although there is scope for considerable improvement even in these ‘leader’ countries. The paper highlights significant problems with housing and communities in some Southern and some Eastern European urban locations, in particular Portugal, Hungary and Poland and Greece.