Confronting the Global Housing Affordability Crisis Political Economies, Cities and Housing

List of figures and tables

List of Abbreviations

Acknowledgements

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

STRUCTURE Advanced Neoliberal Political Economies and Unaffordable Growth

HOUSING Private Residential Real Estate and emerging Unaffordable Housing

PLACES Intensifying Urbanisation and the Rise of Unaffordable Cities 

SCALING Pan-Contextual Structural Interdependence and globalising Housing Unaffordability

DIVISIONS Housing as Divider between Wealth and Poverty

STAKES Implications, Repercussions and Opportunity Costs of Unaffordable Societies

RESISTANCE Growing Awareness, ‘Housing for All’-Momentum and Multi-Contextual Mobilisations     

BAND AID Good Policy Intentions, Discursive Interventions and pervasive ‘Policy-Outcome Gaps’

3. CHRONICLE: The Rise of the Global Housing Affordability Crisis

INDUSTRTRIALISATION 19^th Century Housing Affordability Crisis under Unfettered Capitalism 

ACCOMMODATION Reformist Momentum, State-Mediated Interventions and Societal Alternatives

STABILITY Keynesian Fordism, ‘Long Boom’ and the Golden Age of Affordability

NEOLIBERALISATION Privatisation, Markets and Repurposing Housing as Investment

EXPANSION Financialised Homeownership, Contextual Housing Unaffordability and the Global Financial Crisis

‘PERFECT STURM’ Economic Crisis Stabilisation, ‘Wall of Money’ and Global Housing (Affordability) Crisis 

SURVIVALISM Structuralising Housing and Living Unaffordability in the Age of Disruptive Transformations!?

4. GROWTH MODEL TRANSFORMATION: From Urban Cognitive Capitalism to Variegated Residential Capitalism

DRIVERS Meta-Processes and the Making of the Market-Integrating Glurban World

PROMISE Higher-Order Value Generation in the Global Knowledge Economy

DIVERGENCE Cognitive Capitalism and the Bifurcated Post-Fordist City

SHIFT Urban Private Landed Property Financialisation and the Sickness of successful Cities 

EMBEDMENT Accelerating Deindustrialisation and blossoming Variegated Residential Capitalism   

SHAPING Market-Aligned Policymaking and Mediation towards Exclusionary Growth   

5. THE GREAT DECOUPLING: Extractive Capitalist Development and Structural Housing Unaffordability In-The-Making

DISJUNCTION Structural Housing Unaffordability = Inflationary Residential Accumulation vs. Deflationary Return to Labour and (Most) Businesses

INEQUALITY Neoliberalising Political Economies, Long Decline and the Making of Unaffordable Societies

FAILURE Land-Finance Nexus, Needs-Blind Provision and the Making of Unaffordable Housing

EXCESS Urban FIRE Over-Accumulation, Labour-Housing Decoupling and the Making of Unaffordable Cities

FALLOUT Crisis of Socio-Cultural Reproduction, Marginalising Business and the Rise of the Residual Class

EXTRACTION Structuralising Unaffordability as Manifestation of Cannibalistic Growth, Divided Prosperity and the Ambiguous State 

6. CONCLUSIONS: Propositions towards (universally) Affordable Futures for People and Places

Index

Biography

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.