Melissa Fernandez | Lancaster University (original) (raw)

Books by Melissa Fernandez

All countries aim to improve housing conditions for their citizens but many have been forced by t... more All countries aim to improve housing conditions for their citizens but many have been forced by the financial crisis to reduce government expenditure. Social housing is at the crux of this tension. Policy-makers, practitioners and academics want to know how other systems work and are looking for something written in clear English, where there is a depth of understanding of the literature in other languages and direct contributions from country experts across the continent.

Social Housing in Europe combines a comparative overview of European social housing written by scholars with in-depth chapters written by international housing experts. The countries covered include Austria, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, The Netherlands and Sweden, with a further chapter devoted to CEE countries other than Hungary.

The book provides an up-to-date international comparison of social housing policy and practice. It offers an analysis of how the social housing system currently works in each country, supported by relevant statistics. It identifies European trends in the sector, and opportunities for innovation and improvement.

These country-specific chapters are accompanied by topical thematic chapters dealing with subjects such as the role of social housing in urban regeneration, the privatisation of social housing, financing models, and the impact of European Union state aid regulations on the definitions and financing of social housing.

The writing which this volume brings together is as multifaceted as are its objects of investig... more The writing which this volume brings together is as multifaceted
as are its objects of investigation. Ranging from theoretical or
design-based perspectives to historical and politically charged
foci, the chapters reflect an amalgam of concerns with the social,
visual, political and material aspects of developed and developing
cities. While all share a passion for cities and incorporate the use
of visual material as either objects of investigation or illustrative
accompaniments to textual or ethnographic analyses, the mixed
methodologies and theoretical paradigms employed reflect
a wider academic trend towards a critical cross-breeding of
disciplines for a more expansive, and arguably more inclusive,
conceptualisation of the urban. The chapters reveal the city
through the lenses offered by different fields, and speak to the
multiple sites involved in the production, contestation and
experiences of urban spaces. Each chapter offers explorations
of the spatial and temporal scales of urban transformations,
centring on the authoritative and oppositional acts that
simultaneously make the city. In this sense, there is an inclination
towards analysing representations of urban change, and the ways
in which transformations are reflected in the fabric of city space
and life. The authors address the politics and experience of urban
change by travelling imaginatively between the past and the
present, the abstract and the specific, the global and the local,
the human and the material, and the social and the technological.
In their creative engagements with the many textures of `the
city´, they suggest the need for us, as readers, to pause, revise,
and re-envision our own sense of urban forms and futures

Papers by Melissa Fernandez

Special Issue: Institutional Feelings: Practicing Women’s Studies in the Corporate University Guest-edited by Jennifer C. Nash and Emily A. Owens, Dec 2015

We know the numbers: 76 percent of faculty in US universities is contingent. We are captivated b... more We know the numbers: 76 percent of faculty in US universities is contingent. We are captivated by the viral news pieces—“Thesis Hatement,” “Academia’s Indentured Servants,” “Death of a Professor,” and “The PhD Now Comes with Food Stamps”—and we follow hashtags on Twitter—#NotYourAdjunctSidekick. But in what ways does women’s studies’ relatively precarious place within academia fit into these conversations? How do feminists working in a variety of disciplines reconcile their feminist labor politics with the need to grow their programs and departments under the edicts of the corporate university, particularly when relying upon contingent labor to do so? These questions were at the heart of three collectively organized sessions on feminist contingency at the 2014 annual National Women’s Studies Association Conference (NWSA) in San Juan, Puerto Rico, the highlights of which are presented here. This article hopes that the lessons learned in this historic event—lessons about silence-breaking and collectivizing, but also about inequity, privilege, shame, and guilt—will be used in women’s studies classrooms, departmental meetings, and beyond, contributing to the growing conversation about this important issue, and perhaps even offering action steps toward solutions.

There is increased interest in the UK in cohousing as a desirable alternative for older people. T... more There is increased interest in the UK in cohousing as a desirable alternative for older people. The economics of developing cohousing differ from the normal model for residential development; in particular, the participatory nature of the process increases
the time required and there are higher risks for both resident/purchaser and developer. We examine the nature of supply and risk using the case of a new senior cohousing
community in south London. Given its evident benefits, senior cohousing may eventually become more widespread, and perceived risks will fall. However, the nature of the residential development process means that cohousing will always be at a disadvantage when competing for land in high demand areas like London, and the time
required for participatory processes increases costs. To currently increase the small number of cohousing communities in the UK and ensure affordability, targeted measures
may be necessary to enable groups to access land and mitigate the higher costs associated with longer term collaborative processes.

Bloomsbury Press, Jul 2014

Through the case of a Puerto Rican public housing project, Las Gladiolas, this article argues tha... more Through the case of a Puerto Rican public housing project, Las Gladiolas, this article argues that demolitions should be understood as long-term physical and emotional processes of home un making. It focuses on the diverse appearances of lifts and stairs in public housing representations, residents' everyday life, memories, and legal arguments to tell a nuanced story about their meaning and materiality in the un making of home. Drawing together strands from critical geographies of architecture, geographies of home, and emotional geographies, these internal building technologies are approached as active mediators in the way personal and communal life was negotiated and remembered, as well as in the anti-displacement struggle unfolding in the final throes of the buildings' existence. The loss of home through long-term deterioration and displacement is situated in its historical and cultural context, since the island's public housing trajectory has been continually framed by dominant national aspirations of homeownership.

Urban Age Newspaper , Nov 2013

Book Chapters by Melissa Fernandez

Ways of Residing in Transformation: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, 2015

Profound transformations in residential practices are emerging in Europe as well as throughout th... more Profound transformations in residential practices are emerging in Europe as well as throughout the urban world. They can be observed in the unfolding diversity of residential architecture and spatially restructured cities. The complexity of urban and societal processes behind these changes requires new research approaches in order to fully grasp the significant changes in citizens' lifestyles, their residential preferences, capacities and future opportunities for implementing resilient residential practices. The international case studies in this book examine why ways of residing have changed as well as the meaning and the significance of the social, economic, political, cultural and symbolic contexts. The volume brings together an interdisciplinary range of perspectives to reflect specifically upon the dynamic exchange between evolving ways of residing and professional practices in the fields of architecture and design, planning, policy-making, facilities management, property and market. In doing so, it provides a resourceful basis for further inquiries seeking an understanding of ways of residing in transformation as a reflection of diversifying residential cultures. This book will offer insights of interest to academics, policy-makers and professionals as well as students of urban studies, sociology, architecture, housing, planning, business and economics, engineering and facilities management.

Co-written chapters include: - General principles of government in intervention in housing - The ... more Co-written chapters include:
- General principles of government in intervention in housing
- The European Experience (Typologies and European housing policies; Financing and Subsidy; Distributional Issues; Emerging cross national trends
- The European Union and Brazil dialogue (Key areas for dialogue between Brazil and the European Union)

in Jones, H. and Jackson, E. Stories of Cosmopolitan Belonging Emotion and Location

Book Reviews by Melissa Fernandez

PhD Thesis by Melissa Fernandez

This thesis evaluates the colonial productions and contestations of Puerto Rican public housing a... more This thesis evaluates the colonial productions and contestations of Puerto Rican public housing and its residents as urban ‘others’. It combines a historical analysis of the political, spatial and material trajectory of the island’s projects with an ethnography of the resistances enacted by a group of residents- mainly women- from one such complex called ‘Las Gladiolas’ against an impending order of demolition and displacement.

I argue that while a context of socio-spatial exclusion and environmental determinism has pervaded the constructions of these postcolonial ‘projects’ in ways that have significantly discriminated against its residents, public housing has never been and can never be completed according to that limited governmental design- which today exists under the rubric of urban redevelopment- mainly because communities of solidarity, dissent and conflict emerge simultaneously with and against those formulations, taking on a life of their own in ways that collude with and escape rigid technocratic formulations of housing policy. The research presented emphasizes the symbolic struggle and material reality embedded in Las Gladiolas’s community politics which resists and disrupts a homogeneous vision of past, present and future urban space.

The historical analysis highlights the ways in which ‘othering’ was set in place within the colonial context of Puerto Rico’s urban development in a way which has allowed for the continued stigmatization of public housing projects and for the reproduction of residents’ disadvantage according to raced, gendered and classed discriminations. Those distinctions of difference also created the conditions for particular forms of resistance to emerge. The ethnographic data tells the story of how the political and physical enactment of the buildings’ deterioration intersected with residents’ informal, institutional and legal resistance to relocation. It shows how the contemporary production, experiences and contestations over public housing are not fixed, but multiple and highly ambiguous. The complex interplay that emerges between political, social and material elements demonstrates that the boundaries separating Las Gladiolas from its urban environ, and Puerto Rican housing agencies from the American ones, are in fact open and porous, fluctuating according to use, appropriations, and political and legal transformations.

Other Publications by Melissa Fernandez

This briefing note is the outcome of a DFID-SARH commissioned research project (March 2014 - Octo... more This briefing note is the outcome of a DFID-SARH
commissioned research project (March 2014 - October
2015) on the ‘Urbanisation-Construction-Migration
Nexus in Five Cities in South Asia - Kabul
(Afghanistan), Dhaka (Bangladesh), Chennai (India),
Kathmandu (Nepal) and Lahore (Pakistan).

needs housing that provides a mutually supportive permanent home for people with mixed background... more needs housing that provides a mutually supportive permanent home for people with mixed backgrounds, needs and abilities.  IPS is financially and socially self-managed with a robust decisionmaking protocol and operates a shared resources model that offers community, health and environmental benefits. Though it originated in the 1970s, its approach is consistent with the current political agenda in terms of community self-determination, voluntary action and the integration of vulnerable and differently abled people.  Islington Park Street Community provides a model that could help those facing mental of physical challenges to sustain healthy independent living via mutual support. Housing associations should be educated in this approach.  Public and private financial support should be sought to support this innovative, alternative form of community and to allow affordable mixed needs communities and neighborhoods to continue to thrive in London's city centre.

All countries aim to improve housing conditions for their citizens but many have been forced by t... more All countries aim to improve housing conditions for their citizens but many have been forced by the financial crisis to reduce government expenditure. Social housing is at the crux of this tension. Policy-makers, practitioners and academics want to know how other systems work and are looking for something written in clear English, where there is a depth of understanding of the literature in other languages and direct contributions from country experts across the continent.

Social Housing in Europe combines a comparative overview of European social housing written by scholars with in-depth chapters written by international housing experts. The countries covered include Austria, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, The Netherlands and Sweden, with a further chapter devoted to CEE countries other than Hungary.

The book provides an up-to-date international comparison of social housing policy and practice. It offers an analysis of how the social housing system currently works in each country, supported by relevant statistics. It identifies European trends in the sector, and opportunities for innovation and improvement.

These country-specific chapters are accompanied by topical thematic chapters dealing with subjects such as the role of social housing in urban regeneration, the privatisation of social housing, financing models, and the impact of European Union state aid regulations on the definitions and financing of social housing.

The writing which this volume brings together is as multifaceted as are its objects of investig... more The writing which this volume brings together is as multifaceted
as are its objects of investigation. Ranging from theoretical or
design-based perspectives to historical and politically charged
foci, the chapters reflect an amalgam of concerns with the social,
visual, political and material aspects of developed and developing
cities. While all share a passion for cities and incorporate the use
of visual material as either objects of investigation or illustrative
accompaniments to textual or ethnographic analyses, the mixed
methodologies and theoretical paradigms employed reflect
a wider academic trend towards a critical cross-breeding of
disciplines for a more expansive, and arguably more inclusive,
conceptualisation of the urban. The chapters reveal the city
through the lenses offered by different fields, and speak to the
multiple sites involved in the production, contestation and
experiences of urban spaces. Each chapter offers explorations
of the spatial and temporal scales of urban transformations,
centring on the authoritative and oppositional acts that
simultaneously make the city. In this sense, there is an inclination
towards analysing representations of urban change, and the ways
in which transformations are reflected in the fabric of city space
and life. The authors address the politics and experience of urban
change by travelling imaginatively between the past and the
present, the abstract and the specific, the global and the local,
the human and the material, and the social and the technological.
In their creative engagements with the many textures of `the
city´, they suggest the need for us, as readers, to pause, revise,
and re-envision our own sense of urban forms and futures

Special Issue: Institutional Feelings: Practicing Women’s Studies in the Corporate University Guest-edited by Jennifer C. Nash and Emily A. Owens, Dec 2015

We know the numbers: 76 percent of faculty in US universities is contingent. We are captivated b... more We know the numbers: 76 percent of faculty in US universities is contingent. We are captivated by the viral news pieces—“Thesis Hatement,” “Academia’s Indentured Servants,” “Death of a Professor,” and “The PhD Now Comes with Food Stamps”—and we follow hashtags on Twitter—#NotYourAdjunctSidekick. But in what ways does women’s studies’ relatively precarious place within academia fit into these conversations? How do feminists working in a variety of disciplines reconcile their feminist labor politics with the need to grow their programs and departments under the edicts of the corporate university, particularly when relying upon contingent labor to do so? These questions were at the heart of three collectively organized sessions on feminist contingency at the 2014 annual National Women’s Studies Association Conference (NWSA) in San Juan, Puerto Rico, the highlights of which are presented here. This article hopes that the lessons learned in this historic event—lessons about silence-breaking and collectivizing, but also about inequity, privilege, shame, and guilt—will be used in women’s studies classrooms, departmental meetings, and beyond, contributing to the growing conversation about this important issue, and perhaps even offering action steps toward solutions.

There is increased interest in the UK in cohousing as a desirable alternative for older people. T... more There is increased interest in the UK in cohousing as a desirable alternative for older people. The economics of developing cohousing differ from the normal model for residential development; in particular, the participatory nature of the process increases
the time required and there are higher risks for both resident/purchaser and developer. We examine the nature of supply and risk using the case of a new senior cohousing
community in south London. Given its evident benefits, senior cohousing may eventually become more widespread, and perceived risks will fall. However, the nature of the residential development process means that cohousing will always be at a disadvantage when competing for land in high demand areas like London, and the time
required for participatory processes increases costs. To currently increase the small number of cohousing communities in the UK and ensure affordability, targeted measures
may be necessary to enable groups to access land and mitigate the higher costs associated with longer term collaborative processes.

Bloomsbury Press, Jul 2014

Through the case of a Puerto Rican public housing project, Las Gladiolas, this article argues tha... more Through the case of a Puerto Rican public housing project, Las Gladiolas, this article argues that demolitions should be understood as long-term physical and emotional processes of home un making. It focuses on the diverse appearances of lifts and stairs in public housing representations, residents' everyday life, memories, and legal arguments to tell a nuanced story about their meaning and materiality in the un making of home. Drawing together strands from critical geographies of architecture, geographies of home, and emotional geographies, these internal building technologies are approached as active mediators in the way personal and communal life was negotiated and remembered, as well as in the anti-displacement struggle unfolding in the final throes of the buildings' existence. The loss of home through long-term deterioration and displacement is situated in its historical and cultural context, since the island's public housing trajectory has been continually framed by dominant national aspirations of homeownership.

Urban Age Newspaper , Nov 2013

Ways of Residing in Transformation: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, 2015

Profound transformations in residential practices are emerging in Europe as well as throughout th... more Profound transformations in residential practices are emerging in Europe as well as throughout the urban world. They can be observed in the unfolding diversity of residential architecture and spatially restructured cities. The complexity of urban and societal processes behind these changes requires new research approaches in order to fully grasp the significant changes in citizens' lifestyles, their residential preferences, capacities and future opportunities for implementing resilient residential practices. The international case studies in this book examine why ways of residing have changed as well as the meaning and the significance of the social, economic, political, cultural and symbolic contexts. The volume brings together an interdisciplinary range of perspectives to reflect specifically upon the dynamic exchange between evolving ways of residing and professional practices in the fields of architecture and design, planning, policy-making, facilities management, property and market. In doing so, it provides a resourceful basis for further inquiries seeking an understanding of ways of residing in transformation as a reflection of diversifying residential cultures. This book will offer insights of interest to academics, policy-makers and professionals as well as students of urban studies, sociology, architecture, housing, planning, business and economics, engineering and facilities management.

Co-written chapters include: - General principles of government in intervention in housing - The ... more Co-written chapters include:
- General principles of government in intervention in housing
- The European Experience (Typologies and European housing policies; Financing and Subsidy; Distributional Issues; Emerging cross national trends
- The European Union and Brazil dialogue (Key areas for dialogue between Brazil and the European Union)

in Jones, H. and Jackson, E. Stories of Cosmopolitan Belonging Emotion and Location

This thesis evaluates the colonial productions and contestations of Puerto Rican public housing a... more This thesis evaluates the colonial productions and contestations of Puerto Rican public housing and its residents as urban ‘others’. It combines a historical analysis of the political, spatial and material trajectory of the island’s projects with an ethnography of the resistances enacted by a group of residents- mainly women- from one such complex called ‘Las Gladiolas’ against an impending order of demolition and displacement.

I argue that while a context of socio-spatial exclusion and environmental determinism has pervaded the constructions of these postcolonial ‘projects’ in ways that have significantly discriminated against its residents, public housing has never been and can never be completed according to that limited governmental design- which today exists under the rubric of urban redevelopment- mainly because communities of solidarity, dissent and conflict emerge simultaneously with and against those formulations, taking on a life of their own in ways that collude with and escape rigid technocratic formulations of housing policy. The research presented emphasizes the symbolic struggle and material reality embedded in Las Gladiolas’s community politics which resists and disrupts a homogeneous vision of past, present and future urban space.

The historical analysis highlights the ways in which ‘othering’ was set in place within the colonial context of Puerto Rico’s urban development in a way which has allowed for the continued stigmatization of public housing projects and for the reproduction of residents’ disadvantage according to raced, gendered and classed discriminations. Those distinctions of difference also created the conditions for particular forms of resistance to emerge. The ethnographic data tells the story of how the political and physical enactment of the buildings’ deterioration intersected with residents’ informal, institutional and legal resistance to relocation. It shows how the contemporary production, experiences and contestations over public housing are not fixed, but multiple and highly ambiguous. The complex interplay that emerges between political, social and material elements demonstrates that the boundaries separating Las Gladiolas from its urban environ, and Puerto Rican housing agencies from the American ones, are in fact open and porous, fluctuating according to use, appropriations, and political and legal transformations.

This briefing note is the outcome of a DFID-SARH commissioned research project (March 2014 - Octo... more This briefing note is the outcome of a DFID-SARH
commissioned research project (March 2014 - October
2015) on the ‘Urbanisation-Construction-Migration
Nexus in Five Cities in South Asia - Kabul
(Afghanistan), Dhaka (Bangladesh), Chennai (India),
Kathmandu (Nepal) and Lahore (Pakistan).

needs housing that provides a mutually supportive permanent home for people with mixed background... more needs housing that provides a mutually supportive permanent home for people with mixed backgrounds, needs and abilities.  IPS is financially and socially self-managed with a robust decisionmaking protocol and operates a shared resources model that offers community, health and environmental benefits. Though it originated in the 1970s, its approach is consistent with the current political agenda in terms of community self-determination, voluntary action and the integration of vulnerable and differently abled people.  Islington Park Street Community provides a model that could help those facing mental of physical challenges to sustain healthy independent living via mutual support. Housing associations should be educated in this approach.  Public and private financial support should be sought to support this innovative, alternative form of community and to allow affordable mixed needs communities and neighborhoods to continue to thrive in London's city centre.

Debate around Puerto Rican migration and political-economic problems heralds the emergence of a n... more Debate around Puerto Rican migration and political-economic problems heralds the emergence of a new ‘crisis-citizen’, compelled to lead the way into a better future, one individual at a time.

British Politics and Policy at LSE, Oct 8, 2014

Alternative housing logics and forms of accommodation can provide London with a partial solution ... more Alternative housing logics and forms of accommodation can provide London with a partial solution to its housing supply crisis, but their individual contexts, prospects and constraints within the capital city need to be better known and understood.

Bienal Iberoamericana de Arquitectura y Urbanismo, 2008

with Andrea Bauzá, short-listed community-based architectural installation proposal.