Life on Social Housing Estates. Studying Housing Quality with an Ethnographic Approach

For the residents of social housing estates, their quality of life may suffer on the various dimensions of ‘housing hardship’. Several of these dimensions are structural (e.g. the quality of the dwelling and of communal spaces) or social (e.g. the relationships between housing quality and economic, family-related, psycho-social factors). Some social housing projects may be particularly exposed to the harmful effects of social fragmentation and isolation, as well as the loss of a sense of community. In this article we present the results of ethnographic research conducted on two social housing estates in Livorno, one of the Italian cities with the highest percentages of public housing. Using a qualitatitive approach, with participant observation and life stories, our research sought to reconstruct the micro processes: the views of residents, the meanings they gave to the quality of their lives, their actions and interactions. These are aspects that cannot be investigated with statistical data. The article discusses the complexity of the concept of housing quality, defines its dimensions, and studies it by using an ethnographic approach.