spaceforfuture.org—House it going? We need to talk

Spatial planners can't escape from engaging with the major crises of living environments any longer: the climate emergency, scarcity of housing and land, and accelerating global inequality are core aspects of what Adam Tooze calls policrisis. We can't continue to think about isolated problems while we experience more obviously than ever before what global network dynamics mean.

COVID19, broken supply chains, closed building sites, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, skyrocketing energy prices, the ECB increasing the key interest rates, rising rents and the announcements of unreachable 400.000 new apartments to be built while the building sector is responsible for 37% of global, energy-related greenhouse gas emissions.

These seemingly unconnected occurrences have a direct interdependent influence on building activities, resources we extract and human beings that can’t afford a home. The emergent global crisis of urban housing affordability is so far under-recognised and under-researched. Key academic debates in housing & urban studies do not translate to real-life (policy) changes. How do we collectively take action?

The current public debates reflect simplified binaries and often cement polarized debates (see build more vs. expropriate in Berlin) without integrating realities complexity. We need to listen and learn from each other, to collaboratively develop ways on a European level to face the common problem; ways which build on the specific contexts but do not leave the big picture out of sight.

Through a series of interviews, we will build upon already existing knowledge, collect more relations and map them out, to make hidden relations more accessible to everyone. Researchers, analysts, activists, educators, economists, non-experts, as well as policy-makers from cross-European contexts will share their points of view with us which we translate into actionable recommendations — to map out space for future.