Inner-city development for middle income households

Abstract

Cities within the most populated part of the Netherlands called the Randstad have to provide housing for a growing amount of households by building within the city. Because the housing market has changed from a supply driven market to a demand driven market, developers and municipalities cannot develop any type of housing they prefer but have to adapt their development plans to the current and expected demand of new houses. To stimulate development for the desired middle income households within the city that matches the current demand, financial, institutional and co-operational constraints need to be taken into account to realize successful inner-city development. The main question of this research therefore is: “which type of housing could the cities in the Randstad plan to develop to attract middle income households into the city and how should this inner-city development be stimulated while taking the institutional, financial and co-operational constraints into account?” To attract or preserve desired households cities within the Randstad could plan to develop affordable ownership apartments, rental apartments with less but larger rooms and affordable rental houses in green urban areas because the preferences of these households are currently not realized because of availability and affordability. To tackle the institutional and financial constraints the municipality should try to stimulate co-operation between the stakeholders and couple their powers and resources to increase the total investment capacity, improve the knowledge of specific demands (on a local and a project scale), increase the efficiency of the planning process and decrease the entry barriers of inner-city developments by risk sharing.