Substantial changes have taken place in social housing policy and practices over the last few decades. The role of the state, its relation to other agents and actors involved in housing production and provision, the levels and instruments of public intervention in housing, have all gone through considerable transformation. These changes reflect major shifts of direction in development policies and strategies and different interpretations of the place of housing in the processes of social and economic development. They are also, and very importantly, permeated by different understandings of the multiple articulations of housing and urbanism in the construction of cities and of the ways in which socio-economic and spatial/design strategies interact to reach the scale of housing needs. This course pays particular attention to the convergence of debates on informality and housing as central to a major paradigmatic shift at conceptual and policy levels which will affect the direction of housing strategies far beyond just questions of informal housing. After an initial review of the contextual and historical circumstances of the evolution of housing theories and policies, this module will then explore the social-spatial challenges of a multi-sectoral, multi-dimensional and multi-scalar approach to the implementation of housing strategies and policies as drivers of urbanism.

 

Content

The topics addressed by this module are: modernisation, industrialisation and conventional housing policies; crisis of modernisation, informality and the emergence of non-conventional housing policies; globalisation, structural adjustment and institutional reform in housing provision; the return of mass housing policies and the global financial crisis; enabling markets versus enabling communities; housing policies and poverty alleviation; social actors and the democratisation of systems of governance in housing provision; multi-sectoriality and scaling-up in housing policy; re-spatialising housing debates and housing strategies; housing policies as drivers of urbanism

 

Operation

This module will combine lectures and seminars. After the introductory lectures, seminars will be organised around students’ presentations on particular topics. All students are expected to do a seminar presentation on the basis of the bibliography provided and to read the minimum bibliography of the other seminars so as to be able to participate in the debate. It is recommended that all seminar topics are illustrated with case studies. For every presentation during this first term there will be a commentator selected among the students.

 

On completion you will have:

A good understanding of the development of housing policies and the economic and political contexts in which they have emerged;
	Knowledge of alternative approaches to social housing strategies and of their main actors and dimensions;
	Good analytical capacity and understanding of the central conceptual issues involved in the study of housing policies;
	Good understanding of the socio-spatial challenges to scaling-up of housing provision..