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Building on the conclusions and individual agency highlighted in the last chapter, this chapter uses examples of the clashes between local government and inhabitants on the social housing estates of Manchester and Hull to show how the practices of everyday life could subvert and challenge the spatial practices of urban governance, shedding light on the lived experience and agency of the inhabitants of mid-twentieth-century social housing. Expectations about how certain spaces should function, what it was appropriate to do in them and the beneficial outcomes they were supposed to produce meant mapping certain expectations about how societies and individuals interacted onto places like parks, grass verges or community centres. Corporations’ and planners’ perceptions of how space should function is thus used here to demonstrate how spatial policies evidenced governmental anxieties over working-class association, concerns about suburban anomie and a growing disquiet about youth and delinquency.

This chapter focuses on housing regulation in Scotland. Regulation, in the form of limitations on what may be done by property owners, has a long history in relation to property. The old limitations were principally restrictive and did not require property owners to do anything other than abstain from unlawful action. Modern forms of regulation now require owners and landlords to play an active role in meeting certain standards and tests. The chapter first considers the common law basis of tenancy before turning to relevant provisions of the Anti-social Behaviour etc (Scotland) Act 2004 concerning the registration of private landlords on a register of approved landlords as well as exemptions from this requirement; criteria for a ‘fit and proper person’; criminal offences; antisocial behaviour notices; rent income suspension; and management control order. It then examines the regulation of social renting, with particular emphasis on performance assessment of social landlords and the Scottish Social Housing Charter.

Comparing the housing situation of European city-regions is complicated by the large differences between social-economic and institutional conditions. In the first part of the chapter, a global indication is given of the different tenures, the differences of accessibility, and the recent tendencies of housing conditions. Social and private rent appear to be the most common arrangements for low- and middle-income groups; these are provided by different public and private sector agencies. The second part of the chapter discusses recent experiences of articulating the commissioning role of tenants vis à vis the public sector, the market and the established developers in a number of significant cases.

During the second half of the twentieth century, Ecuador went through an intense rural-urban migration that drove a significant increase in the demand for housing units. Insufficient government response resulted in great housing deficit in all the cities. Later, this triggered the formation of pro housing organizations across the country, which looked for quick solutions for the poorest working class. Since the 70s, economic changes driven by the oil boom also contributed to said housing deficit increase along with the growth of urban informality in many cities. Although self-build and self-management housing production fostered urban sprawl over unserved peripheral land, cooperativism became an alternative to tackle the growing scarcity. However, the case of Alianza Solidaria Housing Cooperative stands out among the numerous social organizations that aimed for better living conditions. It developed an alternative for housing production in the periphery of Quito based on a comprehensive vision about habitat, self-management, solidarity-based economy and cooperativism.