Tenure Mix in the Compact European City - a Comparision between Brussels and Viennas Approach to Enhance Social Inclusivity in Densification
Tenure Mix in the Compact European City - a Comparision between Brussels and Viennas Approach to Enhance Social Inclusivity in Densification
Thursday, 10 July 2025: 19:45
Location: FSE023 (Faculty of Education Sciences (FSE))
Oral Presentation
This research contributes to the ongoing debate on the role of compact city policies in promoting social cohesion through housing innovation in rapidly growing cities. The study examines tenure mix as a social cohesion strategy in compact European cities, with a comparative focus on Brussels and Vienna. Based on a typology of housing regimes that distinguishes between 'dualist' and 'unitary' systems, the research adopts a 'politics of housing' perspective to explore housing policies aimed at promoting social inclusion. It seeks to integrate housing issues into broader social imaginaries of urban coliving, exploring how housing interacts with other policy domains and how these interactions shape the boundaries between collective and private spaces.
Using a multiple case study approach, my research examines specific housing projects that serve as examples of innovative urban development, illustrating how both cities pursue social inclusion through tenure mix driven social mix policies. While Brussels and Vienna use social mix as a tool to address the housing needs and tenure distribution of their growing populations, the findings suggest that tenure mix alone is not sufficient to address the challenges of affordable housing and inclusion. Influenced by cultural paradigms and path dependencies, tenure mix is complemented by other measures, including the recognition of more informal social spaces organised around well-being and mutual aid.
In this context, I argue that social infrastructure, along with other concepts such as 'Third Place' (Oldenburg), is an evolving policy idea and missing link to support tenure mix policies such as social mixing. I will argue that by facilitating community interaction and improving access to essential services, social infrastructure could enhance the effectiveness of tenure-mix-based social inclusion strategies by improving the overall quality of neighbourhoods, precisely because it can go beyond the often dominant middle-class orientation of projects.
Using a multiple case study approach, my research examines specific housing projects that serve as examples of innovative urban development, illustrating how both cities pursue social inclusion through tenure mix driven social mix policies. While Brussels and Vienna use social mix as a tool to address the housing needs and tenure distribution of their growing populations, the findings suggest that tenure mix alone is not sufficient to address the challenges of affordable housing and inclusion. Influenced by cultural paradigms and path dependencies, tenure mix is complemented by other measures, including the recognition of more informal social spaces organised around well-being and mutual aid.
In this context, I argue that social infrastructure, along with other concepts such as 'Third Place' (Oldenburg), is an evolving policy idea and missing link to support tenure mix policies such as social mixing. I will argue that by facilitating community interaction and improving access to essential services, social infrastructure could enhance the effectiveness of tenure-mix-based social inclusion strategies by improving the overall quality of neighbourhoods, precisely because it can go beyond the often dominant middle-class orientation of projects.