Cities and Affordable Housing

Planning, Design and Policy Nexus

Sasha Tsenkova, Sasha Tsenkova

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000433852
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Architecture
• Categoria: Urban Planning & Landscaping

This book provides a comparative perspective on housing and planning policies affecting the future of cities, focusing on people- and place-based outcomes using the nexus of planning, design and policy. A rich mosaic of case studies features good practices of city-led strategies for affordable housing provision, as well as individual projects capitalising on partnerships to build mixed-income housing and revitalise neighbourhoods. Twenty chapters provide unique perspectives on diversity of approaches in eight countries and 12 cities in Europe, Canada and the USA. Combining academic rigour with knowledge from critical practice, the book uses robust empirical analysis and evidence-based case study research to illustrate the potential of affordable housing partnerships for mixed-income, socially inclusive neighbourhoods as a model to rebuild cities.

Cities and Affordable Housing is an essential interdisciplinary collection on planning and design that will be of great interest to scholars, urban professionals, architects, planners and policy-makers interested in housing, urban planning and city building.

1

AFFORDABLE HOUSING AND THE FUTURE OF CITIES

Sasha Tsenkova

DOI: 10.4324/9781003172949-1

Context and Rationale for the Book

The shortage of affordable housing in cities is one of the most significant global challenges. It affects 1.6 billion people (one-third of urban population) and is a key priority for policy change identified by the United Nations in the New Urban Agenda (Tsenkova, 2016). Globally, cities and central governments have championed housing strategies and action plans, with a strong emphasis on effective partnerships to ensure housing efficiency in an effort to make cities livable and sustainable. In the context of the COVID-19 public health crisis, access to affordable and adequate housing has become extremely important, providing a refuge in the midst of rapid urban transformation and collapsing urban economies. The need for a resilient housing system, capable of responding to external shocks with the inherent ability to bounce back, will indeed define the success of cities in the future. Problems of housing affordability and accessibility have become more pressing during the pandemic. Cities during lockdowns have delivered a rapid response through rent freezes, tenant protection, provision of emergency shelters, conversion of underutilised hotels and offices into affordable housing and the building of more permanent solution using modular and prefabricated technologies. In many places, the crisis has triggered political commitments and action to address the supply challenge, providing a sustainable range of affordable housing solutions. In the wake of post-pandemic recovery, the unprecedented challenges to public health in cities have demonstrated the need to consider affordable housing as a critical part of social infrastructure that requires sustained investment and support to establish a resilient ecosystem of housing providers (Tsenkova, 2021).

This stands in sharp contrast to the long-term decline in social and affordable housing investment in many contexts since the late 1970s (Angel, 2000). While there is no common definition of social housing, the book recognises the contextual differences in the structure, policies and trajectories in different countries (van Bortel et al., 2019). We use the term ‘social housing’ to recognise these differences and important nuances in interpretation to as housing systems are path-dependent. In European countries with a large share of social housing, the sector operates like a ‘social market’ in direct competition with private renting. The institutional arrangements favour ownership by not-for-profit or private landlords, rents are based on cost recovery principles and allocation extends access to a more diverse income group. Europe, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Germany and Austria exemplify the characteristics of such unitary systems (Kemeny, Kersloot and Thalmann, 2005). The United Kingdom and France have a strong legacy of public/council housing, which despite some residualisation, has seen a growing commitment to provision of social housing through mixed-income, mixed-tenure projects in the last decade (Bailey et al., 2006; Kearns et al., 2013). At the other end of the spectrum, in most countries, social housing has a residual role, and the small sector—less than 5%—operates as a safety net. Access is reserved for low-income households, allocation is rationed, rents are heavily subsidised and management is carried out by public institutions. The terminology in housing policy discourse refers to public housing as the dominant form of social housing, while more recent programmes will target affordable housing, usually in some form of mixed income. All post-socialist countries, after a dramatic privatisation of public housing in the 1990s, fall in this category, as well as Canada and the United States (Tsenkova, 2021).

Notwithstanding these path-dependent characteristics of social and affordable housing systems in different countries, housing policy reforms since the 1990s have moved away from bricks and mortar to demand-based subsidies and towards more market-oriented provision models (Sousa & Quarter, 2003; Stephens, Burns & Mackay, 2002). The growing dependence on private housing finance and the opening up of a previously sheltered systems of social housing provision have created a more entrepreneurial model with considerable changes regarding the role of social housing in cities, the way it is provided and for whom. While historically public housing played a significant role in shaping urban communities, in the era of neoliberal reforms, its future was challenged by declining investment, ageing infrastructure and design that was less conducive to social integration (Bacher, 1993; Oxley, 2000). Over time, the compositions of actors and agencies involved shifted drastically from public provision towards multi-actor/agency collaboration (Berry, 2014). Socially owned housing managed by non-profit, private and community-based organisations in ‘hybrid’ forms replaced public housing to address the needs of targeted groups (i.e., the homeless, seniors, vulnerable households), but its growth remained limited despite the increasing affordability gap in many cities (Dalton, 2009; Fraser & Kick, 2007).

In the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis, the cracks in the models of affordable housing delivery highlighted the vulnerability of the system. The crisis also provided an opportunity to reconsider the policy support and alignment of financial, fiscal and regulatory instruments to build resilience (Tsenkova, 2014). Given the devolution of government involvement in affordable housing, consensus emerged that an effective response requires a multi-sectoral approach, including all levels of government, the private for-profit and non-profit sectors, as well as local communities. This is perceived as the most effective way of producing affordable housing to meet growing local needs within limited resources and capacity (Scanlon, Whitehead & Arrigoitia, 2014; van Bortel et al., 2019). The last decade has seen large cities across Europe and North America join their efforts with non-profit and private organisations to provide affordable rental housing in mixed-income, mixed-tenure projects. In some cases, the model had a strong legacy, and it was ‘business as usual’ in countries with unitary social housing systems. In other places, the shift triggered a range of experimental strategies to redevelop large-scale public housing complexes or to reinvent brownfield sites in cities into inclusive neighbourhoods emphasising social mix and integration (Tsenkova, 2019). Such solutions to the affordable housing challenge in cities demonstrated a viable alternative to address vulnerabilities in the housing market as well as make cities more inclusive and competitive.

This book focuses on these solutions and provides comparative perspectives on partnerships for mixed-income affordable housing as a model of neighbourhood revitalisation and city building. Focusing on the nexus of planning, design and policy, it explores good practices in 15 cities in Europe, Canada and USA using a strong conceptual approach and multidisciplinary methods of analysis. This richly illustrated collection of case studies includes contributions from 25 world-class scholars, architects, city leaders, planners and housing experts committed to innovative approaches to socially inclusive cities.

Conceptual Approach

The future of affordable housing requires a different approach to socially inclusive cities based on partnerships, people-centred design and innovative planning. The mixed-income model is globally recognised as the best practice in many cities in the UK, France, the Netherlands, Austria, Germany and the USA, where the provision of mixed-income housing in different forms is a normative requirement (Scanlon, Whitehead, & Arrigoitia, 2014). The overall goal of mixed-income housing is to establish better quality of life and adequate living conditions for all residents. There is ample research conducted on the efforts, rationale and importance of mixed-income housing (Bailey et al., 2006; Livingston, Kearns, & Bailey, 2013). However, the theoretical framework, conceptual clarity and empirical justification are underexamined. We have adopted a conceptual approach that focuses on place-based and people-based outcomes of mixed-income affordable housing delivered through partnerships (Tsenkova, 2014). The framework is applied to explore a variety of city-led strategies in seven European countries, USA and Canada by using original, multidisciplinary research methods of analysis. The nexus of housing policy, planning and design is a critical lens for these multi-scalar explorations at the level of cities, neighbourhoods and specific projects. The conceptual approach in the book brings a sustainability perspective to the exploration of partnership models by emphasising the need for equity and social inclusion through social mix and environmental sustainability of the built forms through design.

Efficiency through Partnerships for Affordable Housing

Recent housing reforms respond to the ‘market failure’ in affordable housing defined by Berry (2014) as lack of stable and consistent policies, absence of planning mechanisms that regulate affordable housing and a failure in governance to coordinate and strategise. On the policy side, a renewed commitment of governments, complemented with city-based strategies and municipal programmes, demonstrates a transformative change in the supply of affordable, adequate and secure rental housing (Kemeny, Kersloot, & Thalmann, 2005; Tsenkova, 2019). National and city-led housing strategies provide municipalities with a significant opportunity to realign resources, land and infrastructure investments, as well as leverage the capacity of the housing industry and the not-for-profit providers to support partnerships in mixed-income, mixed-tenure projects (Moore & Skaburski, 2004; Smith, 2002). This is the most efficient way of producing affordable housing to meet growing local needs, particularly in the context of inner-city neighbourhood rebuilding.

The theoretical framework for housing partnerships is based on collaborative planning, consensus-based decision-making, non-hierarchical structures and processes, synergistic interactions among par...

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Contributors
• 1 Affordable Housing and the Future of Cities
• Part I Cities and Affordable Housing
• Part II Mixed-Income Affordable Housing and Community Building
• Part III Affordable Housing Partnerships in Practice
• Part IV Design Innovation in Affordable Housing
• Part V Perspectives on Policy Design for Affordable Housing
• Index