Confronting the Global Housing Affordability Crisis

Political Economies, Cities and Housing
1. Auflage 2026
ISBN: 978-0-367-25829-0
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 226 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 453 g

Reihe: Explorations in Housing Studies

This timely book problematises growing structural housing unaffordability and the lack of affordable housing across the advanced economic world. It offers both a historically and geographically sensitive critique of why we face these issues and struggle to adequately respond, and informed speculation towards addressing this crisis collectively, equitably, and longitudinally.

Utilising a ‘Critical-Relational Political Economy’ approach, the unaffordability dilemma is linked to converging patterns of cumulative neoliberalising and globalising developments during intense capitalist expansion from the 1970s onwards. Housing unaffordability is not explained by regulatory and planning failures but by a growth model transformation under de-industrialisation, away from labour-inclusive capitalism to city-centric, private landed property-directed political economies. Whereas residential accumulation is characterised by inflationary tendencies, households’ capacity to pay for housing largely follows deflationary dynamics. The consequence is politically stimulated, institutionally mediated, and structurally variegated housing-labour decoupling on now epic proportions.

This book will be essential reading for informed audiences interested in housing, spatial planning, economic development, and political economies, as well as questions of social, spatial, and inter-generational justice. Besides researchers, policymakers, and advocates, it will be postgraduate and undergraduate students who will benefit most from compelling crisis (re)framing and original rethinking of affordable futures for people and places.

Zielgruppe

Academic, Postgraduate, and Undergraduate Advanced

Autoren/Hrsg.

Wetzstein, Steffen

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Architektur Garten- und Landschaftsarchitektur

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. INTRODUCTION: The Critical Exploration of growing Pan-Contextual Structural Housing Unaffordability 2. CRISIS FRAMING: Facing the Toxic Legacies of the Market-Integrating Glurban Age 3. CHRONICLE: The Rise of the Global Housing Affordability Crisis 4. GROWTH MODEL TRANSFORMATION: From Urban Cognitive Capitalism to Variegated Residential Capitalism 5. THE GREAT DECOUPLING: Extractive Capitalist Development and Structural Housing Unaffordability In-The-Making 6. CONCLUSIONS: Propositions towards (universally) Affordable Futures for People and Places

Über Autor(innen)

Steffen Wetzstein is a critical social scientist and political economist with research, teaching, policy and consultancy interests relating to societal and urban transformations; especially in the areas of affordable housing, strategic planning, economic development and liveability. He draws on over thirty years of professional experience in academic, policy and private sectors across Germany, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. He holds a PhD (Human Geography) from the University of Auckland and has taught and researched at five universities. Dr. Wetzstein currently works for the University of Applied Sciences Erfurt on an international pilot green mobility project and an Interreg project concerned with reducing mobility poverty in Central European peripheral areas. He has been a Joint Working Group Coordinator 'Policy and Research' at the European Network for Housing Research (ENHR) since 2017 and is an URBACT Validated Lead Expert for strategic urban planning, housing, local economy and social innovation.