Housing estate

thumb|250px|right|A housing estate in [[West Kensington, with many rows of similar terraced flats.]]

thumb|upright=1.2|A housing estate in [[Camden Town, London, with two blocks of flats visible]]

thumb|A [[Modern architecture|modern housing estate in Gdańsk, Poland]]

A housing estate (or sometimes housing complex, housing development, subdivision or community) is a group of homes and other buildings built together as a single development. The exact form may vary from country to country.

Popular throughout the United States and the United Kingdom, they often consist of single family detached, semi-detached ("duplex") or terraced homes, with separate ownership of each dwelling unit. Building density depends on local planning norms.

In major Asian cities, such as Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Singapore, Seoul, Taipei, and Tokyo, an estate may range from detached houses to high-density tower blocks with or without commercial facilities; in Europe and America, these may take the form of town housing, high-rise housing projects, or the older-style rows of terraced houses associated with the Industrial Revolution, detached or semi-detached houses with small plots of land around them forming gardens, and are frequently without commercial facilities and such.

In Central and Eastern Europe, living in housing estates is a common way of living. Most of these housing estates originated during the communist era because the construction of large housing estates was an important part of building plans in communist countries in Europe. They can be located in suburban and urban areas.

Accordingly, a housing estate is usually built by a single contractor, with only a few styles of house or building design, so they tend to be uniform in appearance.

A housing development is "often erected on a tract of land by one builder and controlled by one management." In the United Kingdom, the term is quite broad and can include anything from high-rise government-subsidised housing right through to more upmarket, developer-led suburban tract housing. Such estates are usually designed to minimise through-traffic flows and provide recreational space in the form of parks and greens.

Etymology

The use of the term may have arisen from an area of housing being built on what had been a country estate as towns and cities expanded in and after the 19th century. It was in use by 1901.

Reduction of the phrase to mere "estate" is common in the United Kingdom and Ireland (especially when preceded by the specific estate name), but not in the United States.

Housing types

There are several different housing types utilized by housing developers. Each of the different housing types will have their distinctive characteristics, density ranges, number of units, and floors. namely swimming pools, tennis courts and function rooms in their more up-market developments. The most recent examples would also have cinemas, dance studios, cigar-rooms.

Uniform high-rise developments may form 'wall effect ()', adversely affecting air circulation, causing some controversy. 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.

Pakistan

Given the security situation and power shortages in 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. 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. Gated communities in Pakistan are targeted towards upper middle class and upper class, and are mostly immune from problems of law enforcement.

Europe

Czech Republic and Slovakia

thumb|250px|[[Petržalka in Bratislava, Slovakia. The largest housing estate of its sort in Central Europe.]]

Forms of housing estates may vary in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. During the Communist era of Czechoslovakia, construction of large housing estates (, ) was an important part of building plans in the country, as the government wanted to provide large quantities of fast and affordable housing for all people, as well as to slash costs by employing uniform designs over the whole country. They also sought to foster a "collectivistic" in its people.

Most buildings in Czech and Slovak housing estates are the so called paneláks, a colloquial term in Czech and Slovak for a large panel system panel building constructed of pre-fabricated, pre-stressed concrete, such as those extant in the former Czechoslovakia (now 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 such housing estate in Central Europe can be found in Petržalka (population about 130,000), a part of the Slovak capital of Bratislava.

People living in these housing estates usually own their individual apartments, mainly due to the fact that majority of the individual apartments went from being publicly owned by the state to being privately owned, as they were sold to most apartment occupants by the government for small, symbolic prices after the fall of socialism.

Britain and Ireland

left|thumb|The high-density [[Le Corbusier|Corbusian-style Broadwater Farm Estate in London N17.]]

thumb|A circa 1920s middle-class housing estate in Whitehall, Dublin [[List of Dublin postal districts|D09.]]

In Britain and Ireland, housing estates have become prevalent since the Second World War, 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.

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.

North America

United States

Forms of housing estates in the United States include tract housing, apartment complexes, and public housing.

Gallery

Park_Island_Aerial.jpg|Park Island, Hong Kong

Eunpyeong New Town, Seoul.jpeg|Eunpyeong New Town, Seoul

201806 Tianducheng Bird-eye View.jpg|Tianducheng, Hangzhou

Zhubei, Hsinchu Skyline 20231117.jpg|Different housing estates Zhubei, Hsinchu County, Taiwan

Saigon Pearl 1-2-3.JPG|A housing project Saigon Pearl in Ho Chi Minh City

Laika ac Pyongyang (7975203223).jpg|Changjon Street Apartment Complex, Pyongyang

ワールドシティタワーズ2.jpg|World City in Minato, Tokyo, it is categorized as "Big Scale Mansions" by the Japanese Building Standard Act

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