Heritage and its role in revitalising the housing market

Due to the demise of traditional industry large industrial estates, often at central locations, become available for reuse. Municipalities have reacted by trying to attract new users who would need a lot of space, like big shopping centres, while strengthening the urban economy. However, these attempts have not always been successful. Also, local people may feel alienated if all remnants of the past, in which they lived and worked, are ignored. In the recent past, some attempts were made to re-use buildings in a way more connected to the history of the area. The IBA Emscher Park (in the German Ruhr area) experimented in the 1990s with a less intensive use of industrial estates, while at the same time keeping many of the buildings standing and involving the local communities. The Ruhr area cities now are something of a tourist attraction, something that no-one could have predicted during the age of smoke and dust. Less well known is the fact that the refurbishment and new building of 30 garden cities was also part of the IBA. Chimney Pot Park in the English city of Salford (Greater Manchester) also built on local traditions. Facades of terraced houses were kept, but behind them new homes with uncommon layouts were created: an attempt to reconcile the traditions of a working class estate with ‘new urban living’ (including alternative household formations) to the area. In this paper, the increased role of heritage as a way to help revitalising the housing market of shrinking of cities will be explored.Architectur