All over Europe, where many are used to living in 100-year-old houses and some in 700-year-old houses, a housing boom is under way. Last week the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe reported that Europeans built a record 3.3 million dwellings last year, and saw no reason why the boom should not continue: after all. Europe's population is double what it was a century ago.
Last year, for the first time since the war, said the report, the rate of housebuilding overtook the bare needs of replacement and population growth. The fastest-building countries were Norway (10.5 units per 1,000 pop.) and West Germany (10.2).* Slowest were Czechoslovakia (2.2) and East Germany (2.3). France, because it delayed so long and has so far to go. made the most dramatic acceleration (40% of French houses have officially passed the age of obsolescence—100 years). In two years, France's construction doubled to 162,000 units in 1954 (3.8 per 1,000 pop.), but the figure is still far short of West Germany's 505,000 units. Russia far outshone any of her satellites by building at a rate of 5.9 per 1,000, a little better than the European-wide average, but far shy of her needs.
* The U.S. rate in 1954: about 8.