Navigating Housing Approaches: A Search for Convergences among Competing Ideas (original) (raw)

Navigating among Housing Approaches: A Search for Convergences between Competing Epistemologies

Housing, Theory and Society, 2017

Since the late nineteenth century, researchers, policy-makers and planners have searched for housing solutions. Nowadays, housing projects are closely connected to global socio-spatial challenges, such as urban equity, vulnerability and resiliency. In the context of these urban challenges, housing emerges as a local, national and global concern influenced by shifting globalized economies and dynamic real estate markets. Thus, housing can no longer be understood as a one-dimensional problem that can be solved by providing more housing units through a top-down mechanism, nor can it be perceived as personal space distinct from national and global contexts. But most studies in housing focus on one issue and explore it from a single perspective, contributing to a complex, specialized and fragmented body of knowledge. This specialization and fragmentation result in the loss of the ability to see the whole picture from its parts. By responding to these issues, this paper aims to establish the importance of (1) becoming familiar with the varied levels of housing studies as well as their underlying premises and paradigmatic boundaries and (2) exploring convergences or expansions among these levels as an initial step in establishing possible paths for a research synthesis that can support new research agendas and action strategie.

Introduction: Housing and Human Settlements in a World of Change

Housing and Human Settlements in a World of Change

The housing challenge is becoming increasingly recognised in international policy discussions 1 ; however, its broader links to the processes of migration, climate change, and economic globalisation are not yet fully understood. Despite the fact that, in principle, housing is recognised as a basic human right and is essential for human development, in practice, securing safe and adequate housing for everyone remains a major global development challenge of the 21 st centuryas pointed out in the two forewords by respectively El Sioufi and Rolnik. Issues associated with housing, such as its scarcity (including the lack of accessible land), affordability and quality, are persistent but changing in magnitude, over time. This book aims to situate housing in relation to the processes of global transformation. In this sense, it highlights the processes of economic globalisation, migration, and climate change as three major dynamics in relation to the global housing crisis. Obviously, there are also further global transformations in place but they are either not yet as widely discussed in terms of their effects on housing (such as information and communication technology) or they include very particular local forms and effects (such as demographic changes). This book is an attempt to identify the influencing dynamics of the three key transformation processes. As such, it does not discuss housing in isolation but rather 1 International agreements address housing and its role in urban development and call for systematic approaches to the housing challenge (Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development, with goals to reduce extreme poverty, the Sendai Framework for Disaster

Housing - A Critical Perspective

2015

and the scholarly journal and research group Architecture_MPS. It forms part of a UK based broader program of international events and publications organized around this theme by Architecture_MPS called Housing-Critical Futures. Running over three years from 2015-2017 further events are planned in the UK, Spain, Cyprus, Mexico, the United States, Australia and elsewhere. These will be accompanied by publications and other related activities. This conference in Liverpool represents the first of these academic events.

Towards a relational and comparative rather than a contrastive global housing studies

Housing Studies, 2022

Poststructuralist and postcolonial critiques have led to a necessary corrective in the social sciences, but arguments about difference and incommensurability are also mobilised to put the idea of internationally comparative housing studies into question. This paper argues for a relational and comparative global housing studies that goes beyond global north/south and east/west binaries and dichotomies. I mobilise the concept of 'common trajectories' (as opposed to both convergence and divergence) to illustrate how difference is constructed at multiple dimensions rather than primarily along a north/south or east/west axis. The aim is not to argue against postcolonial theory but rather to show how the misuse of these ideas has stifled theoretically-embedded empirical research in general and internationally comparative research more specifically. Finally, I explore the idea of a relational global housing studies that would focus on transnational actors, regulation and markets, as one route out of the dead-end of contrastive housing studies. Key words: global urbanisms, comparative research, global south, relationality, transnational regulation, postcolonial critique

The House: The Global Age of Housing

A Cultural History of the Home in the Modern Age, edited by Despina Stratigakos (London: Bloomsbury) , 2020

During the twentieth century, the world's population increased more than in any other period in history, from about 1.6 billion in 1900 to over six billion in 2000. 1 The number of new dwellings needed to accommodate this increase is almost impossible to fathom. The sheer variety of dwelling types and styles across the world parallels the diversity of contemporary ways of life. What history accounts for the myriad social practices and materialities of dwelling that emerged in this period? To begin answering this question, this chapter will focus on the major kinds of housing that accommodated the past century's unprecedented population growth and that, in doing so, shaped the vast expansion of our urbanized world.

About Housing Systems and Underlying Ideologies

Housing, Theory and Society, 2020

This contribution is a reflection on the critical analysis of Mark Stephens of the theoretical work on housing systems by Jim Kemeny. It concludes that the analysis of Stephens is a great incentive to continue the debate on housing and welfare started by Kemeny. The core of the review is that Stephens focusses on the so-called maturation of social rental housing as a replacement of government subsidies: can non-profit housing compete with commercial housing under smart conditions for social sustainability? Stephens is right that this maturation thesis does not hold and he provides convincing evidence for this. However, Stephens contribution neglects an important part of Kemeny's work: the link between housing and more in particular the role of home ownership in welfare states. Here is work to be done! This contribution concludes with emphasizing the link between housing and welfare systems and its underlying ideologies. Rules of the games such as laws for social rental housing are important, but even more important than laws are day to day beliefs among citizens and professionals of what is right and wrong in housing practice. In other words it needs further research to explore the role of housing in practice of populism and COVID19. How do underlying housing ideologies play a role in current practice and how do and can they change policies and practices in housing in different continents? ARTICLE HISTORY