Katrin Paadam is a Professor at the Tallinn School of Economics. She recently visited Stockholm to participate in the evaluation of a proposal for a Mistra-financed research programme – Homes for Tomorrow. Her own research area addresses the public sector and development of social systems, with focus on housing construction and ownership. Her background is in sociology, but for a large part of her career she has worked on interdisciplinary projects. “Estonia has about 1.3 million inhabitants, and the number of academics is relatively limited. We often have to work across scientific disciplines to combine our resources and our competencies. But I also believe that interdisciplinary perspectives are necessary for finding solutions to complex problems,” she says.One such complex question is how future homes in a globalized world can be designed, to fulfill people’s expected needs while at the same time radically decreasing resource and energy use. This is a question that the proposed research programme has focused on. Katrin Paadam’s role in the evaluation is to address the social aspects of future homes. “Technical solutions often meet goals with respect to the energy and resource efficiency of housing. But the aesthetic and social dimensions of our homes are at least as important to address,” she says.
The development of new social systems
Paadam’s background and experience complemented the three more technically-oriented participants in the evaluation group. Her dissertation, “Constructing Residence as Home: Homeowners and their Housing Histories,” was published in 2003 and focused on the history of housing in Estonia from a social perspective; primarily how change – from having been occupied by the Soviet Union to becoming an independent nation – effected people in a new social system. “For Estonia, independence meant a huge transformation, where almost all property was privatized. That meant, among other things, that many people became homeowners very quickly, and with ownership came responsibility for renovating and maintaining buildings that in many cases were in poor condition,” she explains. Renovating the buildings required more resources than people had access to, which lead to the establishment of tenant-owner associations that, eventually, became eligible for borrowing money. “All of this was new for most Estonians. Therefore, it was important for us to look at the history of Estonian housing from a social perspective,” she says.
Housing for the resource deprived
How people relate to buildings and how they create their homes are other questions that interest Paadam, as well as how one plans housing for the most resource deprived. How can we ensure that housing areas that are dominated by the poor don’t become slums? Katrin Paadam talks about the importance of planning for social housing construction that takes people’s different economic and social needs and conditions into account. Add to that that housing should be aesthetically pleasing. “Given that we build resource efficiently and in harmony with the environment, greater diversity in our housing is required today. Buildings must be of high quality and meet an increased need for individuality at the same time,” she says.
A common cultural history
Paadam participates in a number of international research programmes, amongst others one where all of the Scandinavian countries and Lithuania and Estonia participate. “There are so many questions and problems that we share across national borders, which is because we – despite different cultural, historical and social experiences – share a common cultural history,” she says.
One example of a common question is the trend toward an increasing number of single households. “A risk associated with this trend is that it leads to urban sprawl, which in turn leads to a dispersion of resources. At the same time, governments and government agencies are working to put policies for sustainable urban growth and housing construction into place that protect resources and the environment. One important problem to solve is, therefore, how to reconcile these different needs,” she says.
