urban policy and planning
Living in Large Urban Developments: A Critical Understanding of the Housing Experience
This article critically reviews international literature on the social aspects of vertical living. It identifies three research approaches – the built environment effect, the differentiated built environment effect, and the human-environment interrelation – and two focal social orientations of research – suitability and experience – as well as four spatial orientations – space, design, verticality and volume, and technology. The article emphasises the need to extend the scope of future research beyond the building to the residential complex, clusters of complexes, and the entire city in order to better understand relations between volume and experience. It also calls for a more complex investigation of the vertical dwelling experience that would include residential aspirations, new neighbourly roles, and identities.
Housing Financialization and Community Wellbeing: Tenant Resistance in the Liveable City
Tenant movements are increasingly impacting urban governance and the development of housing in Canadian cities. Tenants resisting violent and ‘gentler’ forms of gentrification—through outright expulsion or being priced out of their communities—have demonstrated their unwillingness to allow financialized real estate to determine their housing futures. At the same time, tenants also have to contend with discourses of urban improvement that increasingly dominate the terrain of financialized rental housing (re)development. Community benefits agreements and other similar arrangements emphasizing neighbourhood liveability and wellbeing are increasingly deployed as devices to justify housing (re)development, but also work to facilitate gentrification. Through an examination of a struggle between tenants and a financialized real estate investment firm in Canada’s capital city Ottawa—which aspires to be North America’s most liveable mid-sized city—this article explores the implications of a Community Wellbeing Framework for a neighbourhood redevelopment project forged through tenant resistance efforts.
Fractured Mobilization: Miami’s Little Haiti Confronts Mega-Real Estate Speculation
Disenfranchised urban communities worldwide are increasingly vulnerable to land dispossession and cultural erasure as neoliberal regimes unleash intensified financial speculation within polarizing and splintering local/global class and racialized disparities. A dilemma of disenfranchised communities when confronting speculative intrusions where prospective allies have become marginalized or eliminated is whether, and to what degree, to resist such threats contentiously at the risk of zero-sum defeat versus accommodative negotiations seeking to rescue modest benefits while mitigating dislocations. The forms and intensities of community responses can be conceptualized as embedded within multiscalar state society and local politico-spatial configurations. From that perspective, I address a predominantly Black immigrant district, Miami’s Little Haiti, as it confronts mega-real estate speculation within a metropolitan political economy of corporate real estate hegemony and accelerating racialized expulsions. The contentious versus accommodative dilemma and local/supralocal political landscape fractured and neutralized the Haitian collective responses. I conclude by discussing the case’s theoretical/comparative implications.
Reframing Social Tectonics with the Sociology of Everyday Life: Insights from the Public Spaces of a Mixed Housing Neighbourhood
Social mix policies aim to integrate residents living in diverse forms of housing. While numerous studies have showcased the limitations of social mix in achieving this objective, explanations for this tendency remain incomplete. Accordingly, this qualitative case study adopts insights from the sociology of everyday life and interaction ritual theory to elaborate on academic understandings of (non)-interaction between disparate groups in mixed housing communities. It draws primarily from observational fieldwork and semi-structured interview data gathered in the public spaces of a transitioning mid-sized city in Ontario, Canada. The findings report how everyday encounters among and between the urban poor and wealthier residents (re)produce patterns of group solidarity and conflict. The continued application of micro-sociological perspectives to housing mix research can chronicle and perhaps mend the gaps between government housing policy objectives and the experiences of residents living within relevant legislative jurisdictions.
Testing Housing Price Drivers in Santiago de Chile: A Hedonic Price Approach
Hedonic modelling is an empirical analysis technique that is widely used to review the housing market and unpack the main determinants of price. A correct determination of housing price drivers allows a weighted prediction of the value of each dwelling for sale or rent. This paper reviews the fundamental determinants of housing prices that have been published in the literature to see which ones have a better predictive fit for the case of the housing market in the city of Santiago, Chile. From a record of 456,000 property transactions, a dataset composed of 11 explanatory variables is elaborated. Through a semi-logarithmic regression, 4 variables that contribute to explaining the formation of housing prices in Santiago, Chile, are identified. The results indicate that the socioeconomic characterisation of urban areas where housing is traded, the price of copper on the London Metal Exchange, the mortgage interest rate, the age of residential buildings are the main drivers for the main drivers of prices in Santiago. Given the crisis of access to housing in Chile, the article provides relevant information for decision-makers in housing policy.
Housing as a Political Tool: Gender Inequality in Student Accommodation in Iran
This paper studies the gender inequalities in university-provided student accommodation in Babolsar, Iran, in relation to the role of the dominant political power and its approach in shaping the physical form of public dormitories and the living conditions of students. Secondary data analysis based on a questionnaire survey is utilised, and the results show that in numerous physical and non-physical ways women’s public dormitories are designed and controlled in favour of the dominant political power and against the wishes of their residents. This research examines how the ideological and cultural background permeates institutional practices in housing and affects the living conditions of a disadvantaged social group, which can open a discussion on the role of housing in social exclusion.
Airbnb, Platform Capitalism and the Globalised Home
Airbnb, the most ubiquitous of the many online short-term rental platforms offering residential homes to tourists, has infiltrated local neighbourhoods and housing markets throughout the world. It has also divided policy-makers and communities over whether tourism in residential homes is a benign example of the so-called ‘sharing’ economy or a malignant practice which destroys neighbourhoods. These differing positions reflect alternative and changing notions of ‘home’ within wider processes of financialisation and platform capitalism. This paper examines these themes with reference to stakeholder statements solicited in response to government inquiries on how to regulate short-term rental housing in Australia.
Airbnb and Amenity: Is Short-Term Letting Reshaping How We Live in the City?
The popularity of short-term letting (STL) platforms like Airbnb has created housing and planning challenges for cities worldwide, including the potential impact of STL on the quality of life of nearby residents and communities. Underpinning this concern is an inherent tension in urban living between the rights and interests of individual residents, and the collective rights and interests of neighbours. Through interviews with Australian Airbnb hosts, this paper examines how STL hosts navigate this tension, including how they frame their property rights, how they seek to minimise their impact on neighbours, and how they perceive the role of regulation in balancing individual and community rights. In doing so the paper contributes to both theory and policy debates about urban property rights and how ‘compact city’ planning orthodoxies are reshaping the lived experience of urban residents worldwide.
Challenging the Discourse around the Impacts of Airbnb through Suburbs Not Cities: Lessons from Australia and COVID-19
Supporters of short-term rental (STR) platforms state that STRs represent a small fraction of the housing market of major cities, and therefore have little impact on rents. However, there is emerging evidence that suggests that STRs have highly localised impacts. In this article, we use the natural experiment of the pause in tourism caused by the COVID-19 pandemic to highlight the impact of a decrease in STR listings on rental markets in the case study city of Hobart, Australia. We find that rental affordability has improved in Hobart’s STR-dense suburbs with the increased vacancies from the underutilised STR properties. These results provide evidence of the impact of STRs on local housing markets when analysed from a finer scale than the whole of city approach. The focus on local housing markets help local communities and city governments build an argument for the impact of STRs on tight housing markets.
Conditions for the Introduction of Regulation for Short-Term Rentals
Most cities in major agglomerations in Europe started to address the rise of short-term accommodation rentals by introducing regulation designed to protect the local housing stock. The momentum behind the widespread introduction of such regulations can be attributed to qualitative and quantitative factors. This article examines selected fields related to short-term rentals in order to uncover the (structural) triggers or conditions that are necessary and sufficient for municipalities to initiate the regulation of their housing market. The study is based on the systematic examination of the effects of those triggers and their combinations using qualitative comparative analysis (QCA). With this method, we explore the implementation or non-implementation of regulation on a sample of major German cities. The results suggest a universal set of conditions covering three central fields: housing market situation, accommodation market conditions and tourism accommodation demand.
Understanding Short-Term Rental Regulation: A Case Study of Lisbon (Portugal)
Notwithstanding the positive impacts of short-term rentals (STRs), it is often their negative effects that have been raising pressing questions for urban planners and public policy-makers, including changes in housing dynamics, conflicts between residents and visitors, tourism gentrification phenomena, unfair competition practices, and tax evasion, among other externalities. Because of this, short-term rental regulation has become an important item on the political agenda of municipalities that live daily with these issues. In order to contribute to a better understanding of STR regulatory approaches, this paper investigates how Lisbon (Portugal) has been responding to the effects attributed to STRs. It can be concluded that the main negative impact of STR in Lisbon is its effects on the housing prices increase and that the main STR regulation measure is focused on zoning: definition of zones for the application of differentiated STR rules and management.
An Analysis of the Holiday Rental Issue in Spain
Holiday lets and holiday rentals have generated a major debate in recent years in Spain with regard to their regulation. Their impact, not only on tourism, but also on urban sustainability and local planning, have led to public intervention to control their expansion. This article analyses the origin of holiday lets, their problems, and how the public authorities have intervened in this regard, thus providing an overview of the impact of this type of accommodation in Spain.
Short-term Rentals, Housing Markets and COVID-19: Theoretical Considerations and Empirical Evidence from Four Austrian Cities
Prior to the onset of the pandemic, evidence on the conversion of regular rental housing into permanent holiday homes has fuelled concerns that Airbnb and other short-term rentals contribute to the shortage of affordable homes and to the displacement of regular residents in cities with high housing demand. When the pandemic set in, the media was quick to speculate that holiday homes would be returned to the regular rental market. This paper provides some theoretical reflections on the factors that are driving and impeding such a development and presents preliminary results from an ongoing research project that empirically traces the impacts of COVID-19 on the rental housing market based on an analysis of real estate listings in four large Austrian cities. We argue that a current shift to the regular rental market is likely, but that the medium- and long-term development is uncertain. Empirically, we demonstrate that such a shift has occurred in all four cities considered. We do not find evidence, however, that the increased rental housing supply has dampened rent levels.
The Spatial Correlation between the Spread of COVID-19 and Vulnerable Urban Areas in Santiago de Chile
This article identifies the spatial correlation between the social determinants of health in the housing area (housing prices, overcrowding, poor-quality building materials, and household socioeconomic vulnerability) and the spread of COVID-19 in Santiago de Chile. The research used data from the 2017 Census conducted by the National Institute of Statistics of Chile and data on confirmed cases of COVID-19 (PCR) by communes provided by/obtained from Chile’s Ministry of Health. The article provides a two-fold examination/analysis of the spatial correlation using the Pearson measure to observe how the virus spread from areas with high-quality housing in the early stage of the contagion to then become concentrated in areas with low-quality of housing. The second examination/analysis is a multiple linear regression to identify the housing factors that inform virus propagation. The test results show that of the four social determinants of health relating to housing assessed here, housing prices is the variable that best predicts how the social determinants of health based on housing explain the progress of the pandemic for the Santiago case, following the collinearity factors according to the data used in this study. The conclusions suggest that public policy should treat housing quality as a factor in public health and health risks that needs to be addressed with a transdisciplinary approach to urban planning in Chile.
How to Support Social Resilience in Tsunami-Devastated Communities: Iwanuma Case Study
This paper describes the post-disaster reconstruction in the Tohoku region after the 2011 earthquake. Nine years have passed since the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami occurred, and many efforts have been made since to rebuild the devastated territories. Some Japanese architects and urban planners have seen the recovery as a window of opportunity to aim for more resilient cities. Nevertheless, building disaster-resilient communities remains a challenging task. This short paper presents the initiatives made to improve refugees’ social conditions in disaster-relief housing, using the case study of Iwanuma’s relocation project. Concluding remarks suggest that many efforts have been made to improve the social aspect of disaster-relief housing in Japan, for example through the development of community spaces or the pursuit of friendlier dwellings.
Financialised Privatisation, Affordable Housing and Institutional Investment: The Case of England
Historically, public and affordable housing has been provided by the state in close conjunction with local authorities, public housing developers, and other social housing providers. Yet, affordable rental homes are now increasingly being managed, produced, or acquired by private equity firms and other institutional investors. In this contribution, we argue that ‘financialised privatisation’ is a helpful concept for understanding these shifts in state-finance compromises within the post-crisis affordable housing sector. Drawing on the case of England, we first discuss the major mechanisms of financialised privatisation and examine how an increasingly polymorphous affordable housing sector has emerged with a focus on multi-tenure and mixed-income housing tenures. We then discuss the possible challenges of this transformation and conclude that it remains very much a question whether a privately funded housing system will emerge that provides genuinely affordable housing and reduces inequalities.
Correlation of Homeowners Associations and Inferior Property Value Appreciation
North to south migration in the U.S. and housing developers’ claims of benefits led to exponential growth in neighbourhood homeowners associations during recent decades. Sanctioned by state laws, association rules governing homeowners are usually initiated by developers who claim that the rules protect property values. But the claim is not supported by empirical analysis. Inflation adjusted annual percentage returns in consecutive sales of a sample of 900 most recent home sales in Duval County Florida, Pima County Arizona and St. Louis County Missouri during late 2017 and early-2018 were examined. The results revealed that the annual percentage returns on homes sold in homeowners associations were significantly less than those of homes in other neighbourhoods statistically controlling for property characteristics and prevailing economic conditions at the time of the original purchase. Correlates of home prices at any point in time are not predictive of percentage return from purchase to sale.
Independent Evaluation of Social Housing Operations: Challenges and Lessons to Be Learned
In recent years, the Evaluation Department of the Council of Europe Development Bank has conducted a series of independent evaluations of CEB-financed operations in the social housing sector targeting special vulnerable groups. Building on evaluation evidence and experience, two strategic issues are presented: the high level of complexity of such operations and the various facets of their sustainability. This paper underlines the significant learning and accountability potential of evaluations of social housing operations. At the same time, it underscores the added value of a holistic approach to evaluation, in the face of a simplistic, but currently predominant, output-oriented focus during monitoring.
Nature-Home-Housing: Greening and Commoning of Urban Space
Editorial
Public Gardening and the Challenges of Neighbourhood Regeneration in Moscow
The popularity of public gardening in post-Soviet countries has arisen quite recently along with the penetration of neoliberal ideas. Public gardening not only visually improves the environment, but it also creates a range of public spaces and “other” places in which urban citizens can come together; eventually it could help to enhance the image of distressed neighbourhoods. Such community initiatives can be divided into sanctioned intervention and unauthorised intervention (“commoning”); unauthorised intervention is when residents are displeased with their surroundings and attempt to improve their environment in their own way. This paper explores the limitations of the practices of commoning as a source of regeneration and compares its cultural dimensions. In this paper I discuss the initial results of an ongoing research project focused on the expectations of people involved in these forms of participation. During this process, the differing typical understandings and perceptions of urban gardening in public and semi-public spaces will be applied.