The social complexity of the public housing sector in Swedish metropolitan areas

Like many other European and North American countries, concern has been expressed recently in Sweden about the physical deterioration and social segregation of public housing, especially flats built during the Million Programme of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The major objectives of this study were to identify the specific nature of public sector bousing differentiation in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö, to determine groups of similar housing areas and to evaluate the results in the context of hypotheses that have been advanced for explaining social segregation within public sector housing. The major data source was the 1985 Swedish census. Factor analysis and cluster analysis were used to evaluate social differentiation within the public housing stock. The results indicated a high level of social segmentation in the public rental sector. Based on these results, it was possible to develop a composite spatial model of the social mosaic of public sector housing. The constrained choice hypothesis was judged to be the most plausible explanation for the observed differences.