Affordable Housing within "Planetary Boundaries"

My research called "Affordable Housing within "Planetary Boundaries": Theories, Practices, Infrastructures" focuses on the tension between the provision of affordable housing and the objectives of environmental sustainability. The global urban housing affordability crisis is a pressing issue that has significant social, economic, or spatial implications. The mitigation of the housing crisis often means a strong extension of the housing infrastructure (public or private). The housing crisis is accompanied by an environmental crisis, which forces the transformation of today's socioeconomic systems to fit within the "planetary boundaries". The main aim of the project is to advance the understanding of this tension: 1) empirically by examining the socio-material infrastructures of "new social housing" in Vienna that tries to reconcile the tension between "the social" and "the environmental," and 2) theoretically by rethinking the question of the "housing crisis" in the context of the Anthropocene. The research outcomes will further develop housing and degrowth studies influenced by the urban assemblages approach and thus help them to cope with current theoretical as well as practical trends. The main aim of my presentation is to describe and discuss first results from the research field focused on the socio-material infrastructures of "new social housing" in Vienna.