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Housing Regimes in the East and South: National Politics and International Connections of a Global Crisis - Part 1
Abstract Submissions Closed
RC43 Housing and Built Environment (host committee)
Language: English
Session Type: Oral
From Sao Paulo to Ramallah, from Singapore to Tehran, similar residential developments are being produced by national housing systems, responding to a global ‘housing crisis’ in extremely dissimilar contexts. While housing has become a highly contested issue in urban policy, struggle and research, our understanding of how the global crisis is produced by as well as re-producing particular political conditions is still limited. This session engages perspectives from the East and South with recent debates on the causes for, implications of and strategies against this crisis. Our aim is to understand the local ideological and political determinants of deep structures of ‘housing regimes’, and their dynamic relationships with global powers.
This session is part of a larger endeavour to expand the political economy lens of housing studies beyond its necessary critique of hyper-commodification (including buildings, land, labour and property rights) and financialisation of housing. We look to the East and South to see the explanatory value of ‘housing regime’: identifying the central role of the relationship between state power and the housing sector in shaping the present conditions of enduring religious, ethnic and colonial conflicts.
Looking comparatively at various cases, we question: do different housing regimes constitute different processes of (de)commodification; and how are housing regimes shaped by social movements, indigenous groups’ relation to land, and marginalised groups’ political demands? Exploring how models of housing policy, design and struggle circulate farther and further from the West will facilitate a more particularised and therefore comprehensive understanding of the global crisis.