Publisher's Synopsis
This analytical book on alternative housing systems measures differences in the success and failure of different housing systems and explains how and why they occur. At the same time it moves the argument from the sterile political and ideological debates fixed on "the state" versus "the market", to the analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of the real world state/market mixes. This analysis for housing provision is given particular topicality by the move towards European integration and the emergence of a new eastern Europe. What can be learnt from the relative success and failure of actually existing alternative housing systems?;The book sets the comparison of alternative housing systems within the theoretical debate over states and markets, and selects type cases of different welfare state regimes - Britain, France and Sweden - to represent alternative state/market mixes in housing provision. It measures relative success and failure in production efficiency, allocative efficiency and dynamic efficiency. It then explains how and why these differences occur, focusing on alternative housing promotion and land supply systems and different housebuilder strategies. The authors detail real housing systems and draw conclusions about the reasons for their relative success within the debate about markets, states, and social and economic efficiency.
