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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Residential Change and Socio-demographic Challenges for Large Housing Estates in Riga, Latvia

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Large housing estates from the socialist era are a characteristic feature of the built environment in the cities of Central and Eastern Europe. Many urban researchers are increasingly interested in residential changes in these areas, showing how demographic and socioeconomic processes interact with the decline or upgrading of this distinct type of housing. In Europe, the debate concerning large housing estates is largely related to a declining and ageing population, as well as to housing conditions. In Latvia, the underdeveloped housing market and the massive privatisation of the housing stock to sitting tenants have contributed, since the late-Soviet period, to inherited socio-spatial structures. During the 2000s, the second decade of post-socialist transition, the increasing residential mobility of affluent people was observed. However, the issue of its impact on residential composition in the large housing estates remains ambiguous. This chapter discusses the patterns of population change and composition in the most distinctive type of housing in the capital city, Riga. We draw our empirical evidence from there due to the widely acknowledged fact that the most notable social changes and the fastest economic growth have tended to be concentrated and much more advanced in capital cities. Moreover, a significant number of city residents continue to live in mass housing built in the Soviet period.