The neo-liberalization of housing and the 'right to the city': The variagated experiences of New York, Amsterdam and Tokyo

Housing policy de- and re-regulation have played important parts in restructuring urban housing markets in recent decades. Transformations in housing policy and conditions have increasingly pressurized, marginalized or excluded lower income groups. In this paper the neo-liberalization of housing practices and conditions is examined in three highly differentiated global city contexts: New York, Amsterdam and Tokyo. Comparative analyses that consider both housing policy and market transformations focused at the city level have been rare, especially those that link different continents. This paper takes on three ‘world cities’ – where the deregulatory pressures have in principle been the strongest – that have demonstrated highly differentiated pathways in terms of housing policy and market restructuring. In these contexts the ‘right to the city’ has been highly mediated by local practices, institutional legacies and policy regimes. The meanings of rights and de-facto access to affordable urban housing have been transformed qualitatively and quantitatively in each city context but, as this paper examines, in remarkably different ways.