Housing estate

Due to dense population and government control of land use, the most common form of residential housing in Hong Kong is the high-rise housing estate, which may be publicly owned, privately owned, or semi-private. Due to the oligopoly of real-estate developers in the territory, and the economies of scale of mass developments, there is the tendency of new private tower block developments with 10 to over 100 towers, ranging from 30 to 70 stories high.

Public housing provides affordable homes for those on low incomes, with rents which are heavily subsidised, financed by financial activities such as rents and charges collected from car parks and shops within or near the estates. They may vary in scale, and are usually located in the remote or less accessible parts of the territory, but urban expansion has put some of them in the heart of the urban area. Although some units are destined exclusively for rental, some of the flats within each development are earmarked for sale at prices that are lower than for private developments.

Private housing estates are usually characterised by a cluster of high-rise buildings, often with a shopping centre or market of its own in the case of larger developments. Mei Foo Sun Chuen, built by Mobil, is the earliest (1965) and largest (99 blocks) example of its kind. Since the mid-1990s, private developers have been incorporating leisure facilities, including clubhouse facilities,[4] namely swimming pools, tennis courts, and function rooms in their more up-market developments. The most recent examples would also be equipped with cinemas, dance studios, cigar-rooms.

There is currently some controversy over the "wall effect" caused by uniform high-rise developments, which adversely affect air circulation.[5] In-fill developments will tend to be done by smaller developers with less capital. These will be smaller in scale, and less prone to the wall effect.

Given the security situation and power shortages in the South Asia, 'gated communities' with self-generated energy and modern amenities (24-hour armed security, schools, hospitals, a fire department, retail shopping, restaurants and entertainment centres ) such as Bahria Town and DHA have been developed in all major Pakistani cities. Bahria Town is the largest private housing society in Asia.[6] Bahria has been featured by international magazines and news agencies such as GlobalPost, Newsweek, Los Angeles Times and Emirates 24/7, referred to as the prosperous face of Pakistan.[7][8][9][10] Gated communities in Pakistan are targeted towards upper middle class and upper class, and are mostly immune from problems of law enforcement.

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  Park Island, Hong Kong
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  Eunpyeong New Town, Seoul
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  Tianducheng, Hangzhou
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  Different housing estates near Xinglong Road, Hsinchu, Taiwan
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  A housing project Saigon Pearl in Ho Chi Minh City
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  Changjon Street Apartment Complex, Pyongyang
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  World City in Minato, Tokyo, it is categorized as "Big Scale Mansions" by the Japanese Building Standard Act

Petržalka in Bratislava (Slovakia)

Forms of housing estates may vary in Czech Republic and Slovakia. In the former Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic and Slovakia) during the communist era in Czechoslovakia, a construction of large housing estates (Czech: sídliště, Slovak: sídlisko) was an important part of building plans in the former Czechoslovakia. The government wanted to provide large quantities of fast and affordable housing and to slash costs by employing uniform designs over the whole country. They also sought to foster a "collectivist nature" in people. People living in these housing estates can either usually own their apartments or rent them, usually through a private landlord. There's usually a mix of social classes in these housing estates.[11]

Most buildings in Czech and Slovakian housing estates are so called "paneláks", a colloquial term in Czech and Slovak for a panel building constructed of pre-fabricated, pre-stressed concrete, such as those extant in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and elsewhere in the world. Large housing estates of concrete panel buildings (paneláks) now dominate the streets of Prague, Bratislava and other towns. The largest housing estate central Europe and Slovakia can be found in Petržalka (population about 130,000), a part of the Slovak capital of Bratislava.

Broadwater Farm Estate in London. Civil unrest in 1985 left two dead.

Redcastle Furze, Thetford, Norfolk

In the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, housing estates have become prevalent since World War II, as a more affluent population demanded larger and more widely spaced houses coupled with the increase of car usage for which terraced streets were unsuitable.

Housing estates were produced by either local authorities (more recently, housing associations) or by private developers. The former tended to be a means of producing public housing leading to monotenure estates full of council houses often known as "council estates". The latter can refer to higher end tract housing for the middle class and even upper middle class.

The problems incurred by the early attempts at high density tower-block housing turned people away from this style of living. The resulting demand for land has seen many towns and cities increase in size for relatively moderate increases in population. This has been largely at the expense of rural and greenfield land. Recently, there has been some effort to address this problem by banning the development of out-of-town commercial developments and encouraging the reuse of brownfield or previously developed sites for residential building. Nevertheless, the demand for housing continues to rise, and in the UK at least has precipitated a significant housing crisis.