Historical Genesis of Housing and Utilities as an Industry with the Special Mechanism of Economic Relations

The purpose of this article is to formulate common, unified definition of housing and utilities as an industry with the special mechanism of economic relations on the basis of generalization and analysis of the historical genesis of the industry and different scientific views on its structure and specific characteristics. We have reviewed the historical genesis of the housing and utilities as the separate industry. It was also summarized the existing scientific approaches regarding the separation of housing and utilities from other sectors of the national economics. In addition, it was researched and critically evaluated a wide range of definitions of the studied industry, formulated over the past fifty years. It was proved the inadequacy of scientific approaches for the identification of the sector of housing and utilities as: “city services”, “housing infrastructure”, “communal infrastructure”, “urban landscaping”, etc. Based on this, was presented a rational definition of housing and utilities as a separate industry with the special mechanism of economic relations.