Possibilities of comprehensive assessment of quality of housing

Jan Baxa, Petr Osoba

 

Abstract

Choice of housing is one of the most important decisions of inhabitants. On the one hand, the importance of the choice of housing is conditional by low willingness of the Czech inhabitants to move and on the other hand, it is amplified by the high purchase price, which usually means the greatest investment in life of households. Thus, people consider many aspects during the choice of housing. The place of future residence is one of the most important of them.

Housing research is a relatively new topic in geography. Even though systematic research on housing and quality of housing in Czechia takes place more intensively (in the social sciences, for more than two decades), there were not performed territorial differentiation of the quality of housing assessment and comparison of municipalities according to suitability for. The concept of quality of housing has appeared almost exclusively in connection with the dwelling yet, the basic unit of housing. Housing permeates all basic areas of human and social life. Therefore the evaluation of the quality of housing should consider more approaches to housing and components of housing quality: technical, positional, economic, legal-institutional, socio-cultural.

The theoretical approaches of different disciplines to housing and residential preferences are primarily discussed in this paper. The key approaches were drawn from the newly formed housing geography. The paper contributes to sorting out of the attributes which determine the choice of housing (or should determine) at the methodological level. Experts on housing in the Czechia were addressed among consultants, developers and academics. They helped to sort the attributes according to its importance.

The aim of the paper is to draft the methodology for the comprehensive assessment of quality of housing. The emphasis is on indicators, sources, quality of data and methods of evaluation, which can be used in the assessment of the quality of housing. Based on the experts´ investigation it was found out that the most important attributes for the choice of housing are housing price, the presence of medical doctors and schools in the municipality, crime, environment and transport accessibility.

 

Jan Baxa, Univerzita Karlova, Přírodovědecká fakulta, Katedra sociální geografie a regionálního rozvoje, jan.baxa@yahoo.com

Petr Osoba, Univerzita Karlova, Přírodovědecká fakulta, Katedra sociální geografie a regionálního rozvoje, petr.osoba@natur.cuni.cz

BAXA, J., OSOBA, P. (2016) „Možnosti komplexního hodnocení kvality bydlení“. Evaluační teorie a praxe 4(2): 1–34