Revisiting the Housing Question As a Social-Ecological Question (Part II)

Monday, 7 July 2025: 15:00-16:45
Location: FSE032 (Faculty of Education Sciences (FSE))
RC43 Housing and Built Environment (host committee)
RC21 Regional and Urban Development
RC24 Environment and Society

Language: English

Against the backdrop of climate change, the housing question has shifted from a social to a socio-ecological question. A key insight of urban political and social ecology is the interrelatedness of the built environment and nature: „the changes in the environment due to societal problem-solving", as Fischer-Kowalski and Erb (2016, p. 51), put it, such as the construction of new housing in response to a lack of affordable housing, "generate much of the problems we need to solve", such as high resource use, emissions, the sealing of soil, and heat island effects. Yet in housing politics, the standard response to the lack of affordable housing continues to be the provision of new housing. This is the case even in contexts where there is no absolute shortage of housing but a market-driven mismatch between housing supply (e.g., by the production of housing as an asset) and housing demand (e.g., the need for shelter). What are alternatives to solving the housing question by constructing new housing? Which political, legal, economic, planning and/or architectural interventions are desirable and possible to foster the reuse, repair, and redistribution of the existing building stock? What are concrete ideas for, drivers of and barriers to a socio-ecological transformation of housing? This session invites contributions that respond to these questions. It is particularly interested in submissions that engage with the housing question as a socio-ecological question not only at the micro-level of single housing projects but also at the meso- and macro-level of ‘housing systems’ and politics.
Session Organizer:
Margaret HADERER, TU Wien, Austria
Co-chairs:
Margaret HADERER, TU Wien, Austria and Kristine STIPHANY, University at Buffalo, USA
Oral Presentations
Urban Renewal and Environment: An Analysis of the Bahçelievler Neighborhood of Ankara
Cicek COSKUN, Baskent University, Turkey
Affordable Housing within "Planetary Boundaries"
Petr KUBALA, Masaryk University, Faculty of Social Studies, Department of Sociology, Czech Republic
The Greening Housing Contradiction: The UK Case
Phoebe STIRLING, United Kingdom; Sonia ARBACI, University College London, United Kingdom
Living on the Edge: Energy Poverty and Housing Inequality in Taipei's Rooftop Extensions
John Chung-En LIU, National Taiwan University, Taiwan
Energy-Efficient Renovations in Rental Housing: Exploring the Role of Ownership Regimes
Marina MIRONICA, Germany
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