New centralities in post-soviet Vilnius

Abstract

Giving away all the leverages of housing policy to the hands of free market created certain trends. Since profit started to play a main role in whole development scheme, high prices and short term thinking became the core issues. Market liberalization determined that real estate is produced with minimal resources and sold for the highest possible price. Despite many attempts to control quality of built environment by introducing new laws, there were no visible results achieved. This way of development comes along with lack of basic amenities, infrastructure, immense need for commuting and no sense of community. Even though in most cases quality is pretty low, high prices dissociate major part of society from affording a living place. It also became a driving force for concentrating vulnerable social groups in deprived city districts. At the same time sub-urbanization brings along another pack of problems – huge amount of people commuting everyday; immense need for road infrastructure; complete absence of everyday amenities; uncertain future of aging population