ABSTRACT
The problems of urban decay and housing deterioration and the need for public support for renewal are influenced a great deal by general housing market conditions in the countries. A way to combat problems of urban decay and deprived neighbourhoods could be to take action against the causes of segregation, especially against social inequality. This chapter presents an overview of general policies for traditional physical measures in the older parts of cities – urban renewal and housing rehabilitation – based on a study of nine European countries. It discusses the important question in connection with these policies. The chapter is concerned with policies against deprived social housing estates. It describes Danish policies and illustrates their effects using results from a Danish research evaluation that seems to have reached different conclusions to most other studies. Urban renewal and housing rehabilitation programmes intervene in processes of decay in neighbourhoods and change the quality and price of housing.
