Contemporary Housing Issues in a Globalized World


Book Description

The globalization of housing finance led to the global financial crisis, which has created new barriers to adequate and affordable housing. It presents major challenges for current housing law and policy, as well as for the development of housing rights. This book examines and discusses key contemporary housing issues in the context of today’s globalized housing systems. The book takes up the challenge of developing a new paradigm, working towards the possibility of an alternative future. Revolving around three constellations of writing by diverse contributors, each chapter sets out a clear and developed approach to contemporary housing issues. The first major theme considers the crisis in mortgage market regulation, the development of mortgage securitization and comparisons between Spain and Ireland, two countries at the epicentre of the global housing market crisis. The second thematic consideration focuses on housing rights within the European human rights architecture, within national constitutions, and those arising from new international instruments, with their particular relevance for persons with disabilities and developing economies. The third theme incorporates an examination of responses to the decline and regeneration of inner cities, legal issues around squatting in developed economies, and changes in tenure patterns away from home-ownership. This topical book will be valuable to those who are interested in law, housing rights and human rights, policy-making and globalization.




Contemporary Housing Issues in a Globalized World


Book Description

The globalization of housing finance led to the global financial crisis, which has created new barriers to adequate and affordable housing. It presents major challenges for current housing law and policy, as well as for the development of housing rights. This book examines and discusses key contemporary housing issues in the context of today’s globalized housing systems. The book takes up the challenge of developing a new paradigm, working towards the possibility of an alternative future. Revolving around three constellations of writing by diverse contributors, each chapter sets out a clear and developed approach to contemporary housing issues. The first major theme considers the crisis in mortgage market regulation, the development of mortgage securitization and comparisons between Spain and Ireland, two countries at the epicentre of the global housing market crisis. The second thematic consideration focuses on housing rights within the European human rights architecture, within national constitutions, and those arising from new international instruments, with their particular relevance for persons with disabilities and developing economies. The third theme incorporates an examination of responses to the decline and regeneration of inner cities, legal issues around squatting in developed economies, and changes in tenure patterns away from home-ownership. This topical book will be valuable to those who are interested in law, housing rights and human rights, policy-making and globalization.




The Housing Question


Book Description

In the wake of the Great Recession, housing and its financing suddenly re-emerged as questions of significant public concern. Yet both public and academic debates about housing have remained constricted, tending not to explore how the evolution of housing simultaneously entails basic forms of socio-spatial reproduction and underlying tensions in the political order. Drawing on cutting edge perspectives from urban studies, this book grants renewed, interdisciplinary energy to the housing question. It explores how housing raises a series of vexing issues surrounding rights, identity, and justice in the modern city. Through finely detailed studies that illuminate national and regional particularities- ranging from analyses of urban planning in the Soviet Union, the post-Katrina reconstruction of New Orleans, to squatting in contemporary Lima - the volume underscores how housing questions matter in a wide range of contexts. It draws attention to ruptures and continuities between high modernist and neoliberal forms of urbanism, demonstrating how housing and the dilemmas surrounding it are central to governance and the production of space in a rapidly urbanizing world.




In Defense of Housing


Book Description

In every major city in the world there is a housing crisis. How did this happen and what can we do about it? Everyone needs and deserves housing. But today our homes are being transformed into commodities, making the inequalities of the city ever more acute. Profit has become more important than social need. The poor are forced to pay more for worse housing. Communities are faced with the violence of displacement and gentrification. And the benefits of decent housing are only available for those who can afford it. In Defense of Housing is the definitive statement on this crisis from leading urban planner Peter Marcuse and sociologist David Madden. They look at the causes and consequences of the housing problem and detail the need for progressive alternatives. The housing crisis cannot be solved by minor policy shifts, they argue. Rather, the housing crisis has deep political and economic roots—and therefore requires a radical response.




Broken Cities


Book Description

From Britain’s ‘Generation Rent’ to Hong Kong’s notorious ‘cage homes’, societies around the world are facing a housing crisis of unprecedented proportions. The social consequences have been profound, with a lack of affordable housing resulting in overcrowding, homelessness, broken families and, in many countries, a sharp decline in fertility. In Broken Cities, Deborah Potts offers a provocative new perspective on the global housing crisis arguing that the problem lies mainly with demand rather than supply. Potts shows how market-set rates of pay and incomes for vast numbers of households in the world’s largest cities in the global South and North are simply too low to rent or buy any housing that is legal, planned and decent. As the influence of free market economics has increased, the situation has worsened. Potts argues that the crisis needs radical solutions. With the world becoming increasingly urbanized, this book provides a timely and urgent account of one of the most pressing social challenges of the 21st century. Exploring the effects of the housing crisis across the global North and South, Broken Cities is a warning of the greater crises to come if these issues are not addressed.




Global Housing. Dwelling in Addis Ababa


Book Description

Global Housing: Dwelling in Addis Ababa' is the first book in a new series about Global Housing, edited by Nelson Mota and Dick van Gameren, published by Jap Sam Books in cooperation with the Delft University of Technology.00'Global Housing: Dwelling in Addis Ababa' brings together essays and architectural projects that discuss housing as a key component in the social and urban development of Addis Ababa, the capital city of Ethiopia. Over the last two decades the urban landscape of Addis Ababa has been changing at a fast pace, with disruptive consequences for the physical and social fabric of the city. Housing has been one of the key factors for this transformation, affecting job creation, craftsmanship, social and spatial equity, and dwelling practices, to name but a few.00The edited volume brings together twelve architectural projects developed by graduation students from TU Delft?s Global Housing educational program that explore alternative approaches to housing design, dwelling on the challenges brought about by Africa?s urban revolution.00Divided into two sections, this richly illustrated book offers reflections on the city of Addis Ababa, its different types of traditional and contemporary housing and its recent evolution in Part 1; and portfolios of the projects designed by the students enrolled in the program in Part 2. Each portfolio is structured around a theme or issue encountered by the participants in the studio, which is developed upon in a short study. A final essay based on interviews conducted with local actors and examining the challenges set by the city?s rapid urbanization concludes this fascinating contribution to innovative architectural thought in an increasingly urbanized world.




Squatting and the State


Book Description

This book offers a fresh theoretical approach and methodology for tackling the most pressing property problems of our time.




Rights and the City


Book Description

Rights and the City takes stock of rights struggles and progress in cities by exploring the tensions that exist between different concepts of rights. Sandeep Agrawal and the volume's contributors expose the paradoxes that planners and municipal governments face when attempting not only to combat discriminatory practices, but also advance a human rights agenda. The authors examine the legal, conceptual, and philosophical aspects of rights, including its various forms—human, Indigenous, housing, property rights, and various other forms of rights. Using empirical evidence and examples, they translate the philosophical and legal aspects of rights into more practical terms and applications. Regionally, the book draws on municipalities from across Canada while also making broad international comparisons. Scholars, policy makers, and activists with an interest in urban studies, planning, and law will find much of value throughout this volume. Contributors: Sandeep Agrawal, Rachelle Alterman, Sasha Best, Alexandra Flynn, Eran S. Kaplinsky, Ola P. Malik, Jennifer A. Orange, Michelle L. Oren, Renée Vaugeois. Afterword by Benjamin Davy




The Universal Declaration of Human Rights


Book Description

The adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) on 10 December 1948 by the United Nations General Assembly marked a groundbreaking moment in the field of international law. Not only would it start to move away from its original conception as an exclusively State-centered domain: it would also mark the progressive transformation of international law into a law for humankind. This instrument started a codification and institution-building process that would slowly evolve into a complex framework of treaties, bodies and procedures revolving around the protection of the human being against the actions – or omissions – of the State. This commentary provides a specific analysis and reflection of how each one of the rights enshrined therein have evolved over time.




Loss of Homes and Evictions across Europe


Book Description

The loss of a home can lead to major violations of a person’s dignity and human rights. Yet, evictions take place everyday in all countries across Europe. This book provides a comparative assessment of human rights, administrative, procedural and public policy norms, in the context of eviction, across a number of European jurisdictions. Through this comparison the book exposes the emergence of consistent, Europe-wide standards and norms.