The purpose of the study1 on the patterns of shrinking was to use data from electricity consumption and population register to find out the places and types of buildings in Estonia that are emptying, and to encourage discussion about the possibilities and responsibilities of property owners and municipalities in adapting the housing economy.
This discussion, which still lies largely ahead, needs to be considerably more nuanced than presenting a simple choice between investing and demolishing, contracting and spreading out.
Population decline and ageing is a Europe-wide trend that brings along sparse settlements and empty buildings. A special feature of and challenge with the built environment in Estonia is that despite our declining and ageing population, we are still continuing to introduce more and more new living spaces—outside the urban areas of Tallinn and Tartu, these are mostly stand-alone houses.
According to the data from electricity consumption, Estonia had over 50,000 vacant living spaces in 2019, three fifths of which were located in apartment buildings. The smaller and older the building, the more likely it is to be empty or emptying, which is why older and human-scale housing is suffering the most.
The data suggests that boroughs and villages have the highest risk of emptying, but we also need to take care of and invest in central towns. There might not always be enough attention and resources to go round. The same diligence that we apply in planning the growth of housing stock should be applied also in learning (and wanting) to give some spatial direction to shrinking. The alarm bells are already ringing, as the current energy crisis is likely to give even more momentum to the shrinking processes.
KRISTI GRIŠAKOV, DAMINAO CERRONE
HEADER photo by Paco Ulman
PUBLISHED: Maja 109-110 (summer-autumn 2022) with main topic Built Heritage and Modern Times
1 Kristi Grišakov, Damiano Cerrone, Lauri Lihtmaa, John Hadaway, Kristjan Männigo, Panu Lehtovuori, Targo Kalamees, ‘Üleriigiline uuring elamute kasutuse väljalangevusest ja tühjenemise mustritest’, [transl. ‘Nationwide study of housing vacancy rates and shrinking patterns’], https://eehitus.ee/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Tuhjenemise-mustrid_lopprapprt_2022_compressed.pdf
