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Are Green, dense cities more inclusive? Densification and housing accessibility in Oslo
Abstract
Planning policies in Europe and elsewhere increasingly promote urban densification as the spatial planning solution for achieving urban sustainability goals. However, examples from several cities have shown the complexity, in practice, of translating densification’s potentials for creating environmentally, socially and economically sustainable compact cities. Although extensive research is already available on the sustainability dimensions of densification, the social dimension has, in general, been under-researched. Specifically, spatial associations between densification and its potential social impacts have received little attention. This paper aims at contributing to filling this gap. The aim is twofold: first, I analyse overlapping spatial patterns of densification and housing accessibility, which I consider to be an indicator of social sustainability; second, I explore mechanisms that may hinder the possibility of combining urban densification with an inclusive housing offer. The findings are based on a mixed-method approach, consisting of a quantitative assessment of housing accessibility and a spatial and policy analysis of urban densification. Using Oslo as a case study, I argue that, in a context where the market rules the planning system and housing policies, densification may eventually compound market logics and exacerbate social exclusion dynamics.
... While the environmental and economic benefits of densification are widely accepted, its social effects are more contested. Scholars have found that objectives such as the provision of affordable housing are often bypassed, leading to the low social sustainability of densification projects (Bramley et al., 2009;Cavicchia, 2021;Lees, 2008). Densification thus produces advantages and disadvantages for different actors. ...
... As a planning objective, densification brings together environmental objectives of reducing resource use, mainly by limiting urban sprawl, and economic opportunities to profit from new rent gaps, making it an attractive objective for both urban planners and developers alike (Charmes and Keil, 2015). Densification has been shown to drive speculative housing prices, with private-for-profit actors recognizing urban redevelopments as a new and profitable investment market (Cavicchia, 2021;Conte and Anselmi, 2022;. Urban scholarship has extensively addressed how densification supports "the same old growth machine" (Logan and Molotch, 2007, p. XX). ...
... This study discusses the relationship between densification and affordability, a central issue in planning research (Teller, 2021). Many scholars find that densification projects are associated with higher prices and social exclusion (Cavicchia, 2023(Cavicchia, , 2021Debrunner et al., 2022;Shih and Chiang, 2022), and argue that densification objectives are often supported by a pro-growth coalition between public authorities and private landowners (Charmes and Keil, 2015;Logan and Molotch, 2007). Using a comparative case study approach in the Netherlands and Switzerland, this study allowed for an in-depth understanding of the negotiations taking place in densification projects and how this affects the implementation of public benefits. ...
The emerging objective to combat urban sprawl has put densification on the political agenda. Simultaneously, the complexity of planning within the existing built environment means that planning increasingly occurs on the project level. Project-based negotiations between planning authorities and landowners, in which agreements between parties are formalized in negotiated land use plans or private law contracts, thus shape the outcomes of densification projects. Considering the potential adverse effects of densification on housing affordability, it is important to understand how this shift towards project-based negotiations affects the ability of planners to secure public benefits such as affordable housing in redevelopment projects. This study uses a neo-institutional framework to analyze the negotiations between landowners and planning authorities and illuminates under which conditions affordable housing is provided. Case studies of six projects in two larger-scale redevelopment areas in the cities of Bern (Switzerland) and Nieuwegein (Netherlands) show this ability is highly dependent on (1) the existence of binding affordable housing targets, (2) landownership by non-profit actors, and (3) the direct involvement of citizens. The cases show a distinction between different types of project negotiations. In the Netherlands, contract-based negotiations can lead to the dilution of affordability targets, while in Switzerland, these targets are implemented more consistently through negotiated land use plans. The findings indicate that a project-based approach to planning may speed up the implementation of densification objectives but comes at the cost of democratic accountability. Instead, to ensure the social sustainability of urban densification projects, the scope of negotiations between planners and developers needs to move beyond cost-benefit considerations to include a broader range of public interests.
... The perceived risk of exclusion is strongly associated with gentrification as densification projects take place in existing neighbourhoods. Considerable studies have shown how former working-class neighbourhoods have been redeveloped into upscale areas, diminishing housing affordability in densifying neighbourhoods (Cavicchia, 2021;Moos et al., 2018). Such exclusionary effects have been found regarding income, education level, migration background and age (Cavicchia and Cucca, 2020;Moos, 2016;Nachmany and Hananel, 2023). ...
... Additionally, there are differences between local governments regarding the degree to which they combine densification with the goal of attracting higher-income households (Quastel et al., 2012). Such land policy factors should receive greater attention when considering the conditions for achieving urban densification while maintaining an inclusive housing supply (Cavicchia, 2021). Therefore, approaches that combine empirical insights on spatial processes and land policy interventions (Jehling and Hecht, 2022) are highly promising to describe and explain the social effects of densification. ...
... While supporting earlier studies showing that households in densification projects earn more than average (Cavicchia, 2021;Re´rat et al., 2010), our study additionally explores what factors explain differences in household income between densification projects. Not surprisingly, projects in more central locations and higher-income neighbourhoods also show higher median household incomes. ...
While governments worldwide rely upon compact city policies to reduce land consumption from urban growth, recent studies have addressed the potential trade-off between densification and housing affordability. Concerns have been voiced that densification leads to a one-sided housing supply, structurally excluding low-income households. However, few studies address household income variation across densification projects, leaving us with a limited understanding of the circumstances under which exclusion occurs. To this end, we explore household incomes in densification projects between 2012 and 2020 in the Province of Utrecht, the Netherlands, where urban development is traditionally strongly regulated through active land policy. At the same time, current shifts towards a more deregulated housing market make for an interesting case. Exceptional access to detailed cadastral and census data allows us to identify densification projects and assign them a median household income each. We investigate the influence of location and transformation process on household incomes through regression analysis and conduct qualitative case studies of projects whose median income was highly mispredicted by the regression model. This allows us to integrate non-quantified factors, such as land ownership and public policy interventions, in explaining such interesting cases. For the Province of Utrecht, our study confirms that while households in densification projects earn significantly more than their neighbours, the range of incomes in densification projects is large. Project characteristics such as centrality, neighbourhood status and transformation process explain only a small share of this variance. For cases where median incomes are much lower than predicted by the model, public land ownership, in combination with inclusionary zoning, is essential in ensuring housing affordability. Our approach highlights the necessity of supplementing densification policies with measures that secure affordable housing.
... The first important aspect is location. In several contexts (Cavicchia, 2021;Giddings & Rogerson, 2021), densification is primarily developed in central areas and in proximity to public transportation (OECD 2012), where land is supposedly more costly. In this debate, also the redevelopment of centrally located brownfields plays a crucial role because they are often optimal locations for densification (Rérat, 2012;Rousseau, 2015). ...
... This argument is brought forward in particular by developers for whom the more units they can fit into a lot, the lower the sale or rental prices for those units can be (Dalton, 2016). However, the fact that many compact cities have significant affordability issues (Cavicchia, 2021;Dalton, 2016;Tretter, 2013) suggests that the relationship between densification and affordability is not straightforward. ...
... 2018) and wages, which increased by 75% in the same period. As noted in previous studies (Cavicchia 2021;, due to Oslo being a prevalent homeownership context with increasingly high housing prices (in 2021 the average price/sm was approximately 86000 norwegian kroner-Bydelsfakta, 2021), the main issue is represented by housing accessibility, which indicates the conditions of entering the housing market for housing market outsiders. ...
The topic at the centre of this work is the multifaceted relationship between environmental policies in the building sector – namely urban densification, ecological retrofitting of the existing housing stock and rules for buildings’ energy efficiency in new construction – and access to affordable housing in attractive cities. By exploring this complex relationship, the present study engages in a critical discussion about the possible effects that environmental policy instruments might have on access to affordable housing in relation to contextual housing systems and governance settings. In such a way, we do not build an argument against the mentioned environmental policies, but we question how they are planned, what goals are prioritized in their implementation and why, in relation to the effects that they might have on the ability of people to afford housing.
... The "land factor" is particularly relevant for disentangling the relationships between urban densification and housing affordability when considering urban geographies of densification. Indeed, in several contexts (Cavicchia 2021;Giddings and Rogerson 2021), densification is primarily developed in central and semi-central locations and in close connection to public transport (OECD 2012), where land is supposedly more costly. Considering the strong link between urban housing affordability and land rent (Peverini 2021), this might generate an intrinsic trade-off for which, under urban densification policies, the high land rent makes housing affordability very hard to accomplish. 2. The second aspect concerns housing supply, which is often used as an argument in favor of adopting urban densification to increase housing affordability. ...
... Developers often argue, for example, that the more units they can fit into a lot, the cheaper the sale or rental prices for those units (Dalton 2016). However, the fact that many compact cities have significant affordability issues (Cavicchia 2021;Dalton 2016;Tretter 2013) indicates that the relationship of densification (as increased housing supply) with better affordability is not straightforward. Two main points might be stressed here. ...
... Oslo and Austin are two examples of densification strategies implemented with the aim of saving natural areas and boosting the local economy but without attention to housing affordability (Cavicchia 2021;Tretter 2013). In both cities, exclusionary phenomena related to densification have been documented, specifically in the form of low housing accessibility for first-time buyers and vulnerable groups in Oslo and displacement of Latino communities in Austin. ...
... Despite the mounting evidence for the near-universal pattern of spatial inequality in access to urban blue-green space, there are several gaps in our current knowledge on the topic. Firstly, there is a notable lack of consensus on whether these inequalities inevitably are reinforced by urban densification or if goals of social sustainability and urban greening can be achieved within the compact city paradigm (Cavicchia, 2021;Haaland and van den Bosch, 2015;Madureira and Monteiro, 2021;Naess et al., 2020). Secondly, few studies address blue and green spaces combined (Haeffner et al., 2017;Nghiem et al., 2021;Wüstemann et al., 2017). ...
... A growing body of literature on green gentrification shows that new green infrastructure can contribute to social and racial disparities in who uses and benefits from green space, thereby increasing environmental and climate injustice (Anguelovski et al., 2022;Haarstad et al., 2022). Access to blue-green space drives up property prices which in turn excludes socio-economically disadvantaged groups from purchasing housing in those areas (Cavicchia, 2021;Łaszkiewicz et al., 2022). ...
... One possible explanation for this persistent pattern of affluence segregation is that there has been an unnuanced approach to the compact city policy paradigm combined with a blindness to socio-economic differences in matters of urban development. In a recent study of housing accessibility in Oslo, Cavicchia (2021) argues that questions of equity and social justice appear to be an almost taboo topic in Norwegian housing policies. Our results point to the same mechanism in the area of urban nature policies. ...
Poorer citizens are often more exposed to environmental hazards due to spatial inequalities in the distribution of urban blue-green space. Few cities have managed to prevent spatial and social inequality despite sustainable development strategies like compact city planning. We explore whether environmental injustice exists in a city where one would least expect to find it: a city with abundant nature, an affluent population governed by a left leaning social democratic city council, and an aggressive densification strategy; Oslo, Norway. Green space was measured with a satellite-derived vegetation index which captures the combined availability of gardens, street trees, parks and forest. Blue space was defined by the proximity of residential areas to the closest lake, river or fjord. We found that poorer city districts, often with greater immigrant populations, have less available blue-green spaces and are disproportionately exposed to hazardous air pollution levels, but not extreme heat compared to wealthier city districts. Citizens living within 100 m of a water body are likely to earn US 3000 increase in annual income corresponds to a 10 % increase in green space availability. Hazardous air pollution concentrations in the poorest city districts were above levels recommended by the WHO and Oslo municipality. Historical trends showed that districts undergoing population densification coincide with the lowest availability of blue-green space, suggesting that environmental justice has been overlooked in compact city planning policy. Despite Oslo's affluence and egalitarian ideals, the patterns of inequality we observed mirror the city's historical east-west class divide and point to spatial concentration of wealth as a core factor to consider in studies of green segregation. Urban greening initiatives in Oslo and other cities should not take spatial equality for granted, and instead consider socio-economic geographies in their planning process.
... Libertarian justice, then, follows market mechanisms of supply and demand or land rents as the guiding indicator for the allocation of densification (Jehling et al., 2020). Allocative justice conflict arises from strategic choices steering the allocation of densification and its implications, such as the distribution of negative and/or positive externalities of densification between strategic actors (municipal residents and tenants, municipality, landowners) (see e.g., Cavicchia, 2021), and also from the formation of demographically divided submarkets as a result of urban redevelopment via densification (Easthope and Randolph, 2018). ...
... Land policy is only one of the policy spheres contributing to wider municipal strategic objectives (e.g., Needham et al., 2018: 91-92;Götze and Hartmann, 2021). Other, sometimes overlapping policies include social, economic, and environmental policies (e.g., Gerber et al., 2018;Debrunner and Hartmann, 2020;Cavicchia, 2021;Götze and Hartmann, 2021). The policy outcome conflict concerns the mismatch between the objectives and outcomes of different policies. ...
... In policy outcome conflicts, the main strategic actors involved are policy setters in the municipality. For example, the financial investments made in order to stimulate housing supply through densification may have the effect of driving housing prices in the area, creating affordability challenges and so working against the policy objectives of social equity and sustainability (Debrunner and Hartmann, 2020;Pinnegar et al., 2020;Cavicchia, 2021). Moreover, the pursuit of net land take objectives as an environmental goal may undermine social justice, both by affecting housing affordability in densified areas and increasing deprivation in peripheral areas (Jehling et al., 2018). ...
Densification is being promoted in urban areas globally because of its many economic, environmental, and social benefits. The concept itself remains ambiguous, however, which is hampering the pursuit of densification as a strategic land policy objective. In this paper we construct literature-based land policy conflict profiles for different types of densification in order to reach a more nuanced understanding of the complexities involved in promoting densification through land policy. To that end we use a hermeneutic approach to critically review the literature and develop a typology of different densification types with relevance to land policy and categorize land policy conflicts specific to each type. As a result, we distinguish four densification-type-specific land policy conflict profiles: 1) policy-driven large-scale brownfield development, 2) policy-driven large-scale densification of strategic areas, 3) owner-driven medium-scale densification of individual high-rise sites, and 4) owner-driven incremental-scale densification of low-rise sites. The land policy conflict profiles address factors hindering the efficiency and effectiveness of the policy, the allocative, distributive, and procedural justice of densification, and conflicting policy outcomes. These unique conflict profiles allow for a detailed recognition of gaps, weaknesses, contradictions, justice and/or political indecisiveness in land policies promoting densification. The paper contributes to a deeper understanding of the challenges faced by land policy aimed at promoting densification. In addition, the conflict profiles will be helpful for practitioners in drafting municipal densification strategies.
... Throughout the last 30 years, several industrial sites have been converted through densification in mixed-use areas, largely for residential purposes and with transit-oriented approach (Finsnes et al., 2018). Meanwhile, little or no attention has been paid to housing affordability, with negative implications on socio-spatial inequalities (Cavicchia, 2021). ...
... Generally speaking, densification in Oslo has contributed to the city's increasing attractiveness (Andersen & Røe, 2017), but has also had important limitations concerning both environmental (Naess et al., 2020) and social sustainability (Cavicchia, 2021;Cavicchia & Cucca, 2020). Densification has been planned without attention to housing affordability, which emerges as an important topic only in the last municipal plan from 2018 (Cavicchia, 2021). ...
... Generally speaking, densification in Oslo has contributed to the city's increasing attractiveness (Andersen & Røe, 2017), but has also had important limitations concerning both environmental (Naess et al., 2020) and social sustainability (Cavicchia, 2021;Cavicchia & Cucca, 2020). Densification has been planned without attention to housing affordability, which emerges as an important topic only in the last municipal plan from 2018 (Cavicchia, 2021). This is due to several contextual factors. ...
Urban densification is often advocated as one of the most desirable ways to develop sustainable communities. However, gentrification scholars have criticized densification, linking it to housing inequalities and displacement. As conceptualized by Peter Marcuse in 1985, displacement can occur through various forms. Some are more evident than others and have received greater attention in gentrification studies (e.g. direct displacement). Others (e.g. displacement pressure and exclusionary displacement) are more subtle and under-researched, both empirically and theoretically. Yet, a nuanced view of displacement is of great relevance, enabling better engagement with contextual diversity when dealing with gentrification-like dynamics. Through this article, I place critical attention on this matter. Drawing upon Peter Marcuse's definition of exclusionary displacement, I elaborate the concept of exclusionary pressure-a process involving exclusionary housing markets and social and spatial filtering up within a neighborhood-and I use it as an indicator of possible emerging processes of gentrification around recently densified areas in Oslo.
... Selv om det er store materielle og sosiale forskjeller internt i en bydel som Gamle Oslo, med områder som Ensjø, Grønland, Tøyen og Sørenga, ser vi også at flere av våre respondenter i disse fire områdene opplever det vi under omtaler som «urban uro» (jamfør Eriksen, 2019). Dette er områder som fortettes og transformeres gjennom omfattende leilighetsbygging, i tråd med ideene bak kompakt byutvikling (Naess, 2021, s. 20) eller fortettingsstrategier (Mete & Xue, 2020, s. 14), som igjen kan kobles til baerekraftvisjoner (Andersen & Skrede, 2017;Cavicchia, 2021;Skrede & Andersen, 2022). Vi hevder derfor at det er fornuftig også å inkludere et område som Ensjø i en diskusjon av urbanisme versus suburbanisme som bostedsvalg (jf. ...
... Det samme mønsteret ser man i bydeler som Grünerløkka, St. Hanshaugen, Frogner og Sagene. Når byen vokser, er det stort sett gjennom oppføringen av flere leiligheter i blokker og leiegårder (se også Cavicchia, 2021;Kalsås, 2020). Dette kan ses i lys av Oslo kommunes vektlegging av en kompakt byutvikling, som igjen kan kobles til et mål om baerekraftig utvikling (Andersen & Skrede, 2017;Cavicchia, 2021). ...
... Når byen vokser, er det stort sett gjennom oppføringen av flere leiligheter i blokker og leiegårder (se også Cavicchia, 2021;Kalsås, 2020). Dette kan ses i lys av Oslo kommunes vektlegging av en kompakt byutvikling, som igjen kan kobles til et mål om baerekraftig utvikling (Andersen & Skrede, 2017;Cavicchia, 2021). På denne bakgrunnen kan man spørre seg om boligtilbudet treffer barnefamiliene. ...
Oslo kommune har som uttalt mål at indre by skal være et attraktivt bosted for barnefamilier. Flere kommentatorer, inkludert forskere, har hevdet at reurbanisering er en tydelig trend. Det vil si at bylivet er populært, særlig for middelklassen inkludert barnefamilier. Likevel viser forskning at denne gruppen er ustabil, da en stor andel barnefamilier flytter ut før barna når skolealderen. Samtidig som de store boligbyggerne i Oslo bygger nye leiligheter, finnes det i hovedstadens omland veletablerte småhusområder som tiltrekker seg mange av de tidligere urbane barnefamiliene. I denne artikkelen drøfter vi ulike faktorer som kan tenkes å påvirke barnefamiliers valg av bosted.
... Even if "densification" is often understood as physical transformations (e.g. Cavicchia 2021), drawing on Wirth's (1938) classical essay, we are also examining how the density of other people can be experienced by individuals, thereby supplementing investigations of "the subjective measures of density" (Larimian et al. 2020, 758). We want to conceptualise the dimensions of social processes that are complex, unpredictable and uncontrollable as messy and elusive (see also Askins and Pain 2011, 809). ...
... In fact, while government plans assert that several areas within the city are suitable for "densification", there are no references to research, reports or surveys that could substantiate the claim or inform the reader about how the existing neighbours and neighbourhoods will be affected (the list of relevant documents includes only "technical" reports, The Municipality of Oslo 2018, 5). Moreover, though policymakers stress that "social sustainability," "residential quality" and "residential stability" are something to aim for (The Municipality of Oslo 2018, 64-66), they have not considered whether densification could have a negative impact on these aims (see also Cavicchia 2021). ...
... Well-being, belonging and social cohesion are frequent topics in urban and housing research. Moreover, the financial aspect of "housing accessibility" has been argued to be of great importance when considering densification and social sustainability in a city like Oslo (Cavicchia 2021). We claim that it could also prove useful to include an emotional element in the research on densification and urban social sustainability. ...
In this paper, we will delve into a somewhat unexplored element of urban densification - namely, people's emotional responses to physically and socially densified neighbourhoods. Undoubtedly, there is a vast amount of scholarship on the advantages of dense and compact environments over urban sprawl. While scholars tend to highlight the environmental benefits, few studies scrutinise how people living in areas marked for intense urban development respond emotionally to densification strategies. Interviews with residents from urban neighbourhoods in Oslo demonstrate that densification can evoke emotions like insecurity, fear, anger and sadness over lost homes or altered place identity. This gap in scholarship calls for stronger academic and political engagement with people's feelings about their urban surroundings, also when discussing the social dimension of sustainability.
... The "land factor" is particularly relevant for disentangling the relationships between urban densification and housing affordability when considering urban geographies of densification. Indeed, in several contexts (Cavicchia 2021;Giddings and Rogerson 2021), densification is primarily developed in central and semi-central locations and in close connection to public transport (OECD 2012), where land is supposedly more costly. Considering the strong link between urban housing affordability and land rent (Peverini 2021), this might generate an intrinsic trade-off for which, under urban densification policies, the high land rent makes housing affordability very hard to accomplish. 2. The second aspect concerns housing supply, which is often used as an argument in favor of adopting urban densification to increase housing affordability. ...
... Developers often argue, for example, that the more units they can fit into a lot, the cheaper the sale or rental prices for those units (Dalton 2016). However, the fact that many compact cities have significant affordability issues (Cavicchia 2021;Dalton 2016;Tretter 2013) indicates that the relationship of densification (as increased housing supply) with better affordability is not straightforward. Two main points might be stressed here. ...
... Oslo and Austin are two examples of densification strategies implemented with the aim of saving natural areas and boosting the local economy but without attention to housing affordability (Cavicchia 2021;Tretter 2013). In both cities, exclusionary phenomena related to densification have been documented, specifically in the form of low housing accessibility for first-time buyers and vulnerable groups in Oslo and displacement of Latino communities in Austin. ...
... An interesting result from these studies was that pedestrian activity increased in green open spaces that lie within built-up areas. Although Oslo is possibly one of the greenest cities in Europe and with the largest area of semi-natural forests in the surroundings (Venter et al., 2022;Łaszkiewicz et al., 2022), the access for the residents to urban green spaces within the city was crucial during the pandemic , 2021. However, in Oslo there has been limited recreational research on the urban forests within the city border that are important as an everyday recreational environment for public health, and crucial as green shelter and resilience during crises (Massoni et al., 2018;Suárez et al., 2020). ...
... The availability of green spaces within the city is crucial for the green transformation and for the new ways of living in cities, e.g. new digitized and electrified forms of mobility, the distinction between home and work levelled by the digital technology, and the change of housing preferences towards greener environments, in general (Samuelsson et al., 2018;Cavicchia, 2021). This applies to easier access to green areas and recreational areas (e.g. ...
... Without exception, the concept of complete communities is closely linked with advocating higher residential densities: what Cohen (2014, online) called "the density fetish". In the contemporary neoliberal environment, where real estate development is integral to the growth agenda (McFarlane, 2016;Naess et al., 2020;Robin, 2018;Valzania, 2022), faith in the benefits of densification has become hegemonic (Cavicchia, 2021;Charmes & Keil, 2015): a form of roll-with-it neoliberalism that caters to market priorities (Keil, 2009). Density is seen as a means to urban efficiency, vitality, and sociability, but simultaneously as an end in itself, reinforced through targets set by governments (Charmes & Keil, 2015;Churchman, 1999). ...
... Those on the political right appreciate arguments that higher densities prove cost-effective while enhancing development potential (McFarlane, 2020;Weber, 2010). Those on the left point to promises of inclusion and affordability (Cavicchia, 2021;Scally & Tighe, 2016) while those in the center link density with adjectives such as smart, sustainable, and healthy (Tomalty, 1997). Over time, density transitioned from being treated as a means of achieving efficiency to a political ambition, with density, infill, or housing targets set by upper levels of government (e.g., Lees, 2023;Ontario, 2020;Salter et al., 2022). ...
... For an overview, see Table 1. Oslo and Copenhagen are recognised as "global frontrunners in pushing forward the climate agenda, both locally and internationally" (Hofstad, Millstein, Tønnesen, Vedeld, & Hansen, 2021, p. 3) and use policies for densification as a strategy for more environmentally sustainable development (Cavicchia, 2021;Lilius, 2018;Naess et al., 2020;Zurovac, 2020). In Moscow, densification is not officially proclaimed as a planning strategy, but practiced on a large scale through the so-called "renovation" programme when existing apartment buildings are demolished and replaced by high-rises (Khmelnitskaya & Ihalainen, 2021). ...
... That is not to say that Moscow densification is necessarily evil, while Scandinavian densification is always a blessing. Densification in the Scandinavian context can also increase pressure in urban green spaces (Thorén & Saglie, 2015) and exacerbate social inequalities (Cavicchia, 2021). The Scandinavian model of densification can have, however, promise for the multifaceted role of urban cemeteries. ...
Insights from the field of cemetery research demonstrate that urban cemeteries have a variety of functions, not limited to their primary purpose of providing space for interment of human remains and commemoration of loved ones. This multiplicity of functions and meanings shapes cemeteries’ special place in contemporary cities and calls for a sensitive framework for their planning and management. This thesis sets out to explore the role of cemeteries with two foci: densification processes, which can reconfigure functions of urban green spaces, and postsecular debates, which highlight the relationships between the secular and the spiritual/religious. In many cities, cemeteries indeed function as publicly accessible green spaces and accommodate intrinsic spiritual aspects, yet it remains unclear how their role might be reshaped in dense postsecular cities.
This research is situated within the interdisciplinary field of urban studies and employs the concept of public space as the main theoretical lens. I also draw on the idea of municipal spirituality — a discursive tool intended to integrate the spiritual aspects of places into planning. The aim of this thesis is to contribute to existing research with new knowledge and understanding of the role of urban cemeteries as public spaces with an empirical focus on the policy context. The thesis consists of three scientific papers and an introductory essay.
Inspired by a recent call for more global urban studies, this thesis employs a comparative methodology and uses three cities (Oslo, Copenhagen and Moscow) as case studies in a multiple-case research design. The empirical material (policy documents and interviews with experts) is analysed qualitatively, in both inductive and deductive manners, and supplemented with field observations.
This thesis contributes to the existing body of literature in three ways. First, it establishes a multidimensional framework for the analysis of cemeteries as public spaces and demonstrates how different dimensions are manifested in the three case study cities. The framework illuminates both dimensions inherent to cemeteries (liminal and spiritual) and dimensions common to public spaces in general (multifunctional, multicultural and commercial). Second, the thesis outlines a comparative methodology that enables an assessment of the role of cemeteries in different contexts, as understood by planners and policymakers. While in Oslo and Copenhagen cemeteries are seen as multifunctional green spaces, Moscow cemeteries are viewed predominantly as burial spaces and places for commemoration and their other functions are overlooked. Third, this thesis extends an invitation to revisit debates around the notion of public space. The conceptualisation of urban cemeteries as a special type of public space emphasises the importance of the spiritual aspects — often forgotten in these debates — and points to the demand for a greater diversity of public spaces to fulfil citizen’s varied needs.
... Samtidig ser vi hvordan ulike kommunale aktører eller etater (trolig etter press fra politikere og utbyggere) handler innenfor rammer der fremdrift, budsjetter og andre politiske målsetninger skal følges, overholdes og nås. Slike materielle faktorer (som økonomi og utbygging) kan derfor vanskeliggjøre en realisering av medvirkningsvisjonen. Kort sagt er det noen målkonflikter her, noe en rekke byforskere har trukket frem som et fremtredende trekk i Oslos byutvikling -hvor de mer «myke» målene knyttet til sosial baerekraft nedprioriteres til fordel for de «harde» målene under paraplyene miljømessig og øknomisk baerekraft (Andersen & Røe, 2017a;Cavicchia, 2021). For å låne en formulering av Alparone og Rissotto (2001, s. 431), er vi dermed ikke overbevist om at vi i norsk stedsutvikling vil se en «desentralisering av makt» der borgere, 2 ...
... Med det menes at beboere eller andre (tenkte) berørte parter får komme med sine innspill, det vil si at man gis mulighet til å si eller skrive sin mening etter at prosessen er iverksatt. En materiell påvirkning, det å endre på bygningstyper, byggehøyder, arkitektonisk stilart, påvirke prisnivået eller endre på beboersammensetning, lokalisering med mer, synes det derimot å vaere langt faerre eksempler på (se også Cavicchia, 2021). En observasjon vi også gjorde, er at de som blir invitert inn som «medvirkere» eller som presser seg frem med sine innspill «sjelden kommer inn tidlig nok» , med referanse til bl.a. ...
... Samtidig ser vi hvordan ulike kommunale aktører eller etater (trolig etter press fra politikere og utbyggere) handler innenfor rammer der fremdrift, budsjetter og andre politiske målsetninger skal følges, overholdes og nås. Slike materielle faktorer (som økonomi og utbygging) kan derfor vanskeliggjøre en realisering av medvirkningsvisjonen. Kort sagt er det noen målkonflikter her, noe en rekke byforskere har trukket frem som et fremtredende trekk i Oslos byutvikling -hvor de mer «myke» målene knyttet til sosial baerekraft nedprioriteres til fordel for de «harde» målene under paraplyene miljømessig og øknomisk baerekraft (Andersen & Røe, 2017a;Andersen & Skrede, 2017;Cavicchia, 2021). For å låne en formulering av Alparone og Rissotto (2001, s. 431), er vi dermed ikke overbevist om at vi i norsk stedsutvikling vil se en «desentralisering av makt» der borgere, 2 ...
... Med det menes at beboere eller andre (tenkte) berørte parter får komme med sine innspill, det vil si at man gis mulighet til å si eller skrive sin mening etter at prosessen er iverksatt. En materiell påvirkning, det å endre på bygningstyper, byggehøyder, arkitektonisk stilart, påvirke prisnivået eller endre på beboersammensetning, lokalisering med mer, synes det derimot å vaere langt faerre eksempler på (se også Cavicchia, 2021). En observasjon vi også gjorde, er at de som blir invitert inn som «medvirkere» eller som presser seg frem med sine innspill «sjelden kommer inn tidlig nok» (Andersen & Skrede, 2021, med referanse til bl.a. ...
Med dette bidraget søkes det å gi en nyansert situasjonsbeskrivelse og å tilby en kritisk-orientert analyse av medvirkningens maktspill. Med begrepet «kritisk» tydeliggjøres det at man ikke nødvendigvis a priori aksepterer at noe er «fornuftig» eller «bra», men at dette må
undersøkes empirisk og at ulike sider, både fordeler og ulemper, løftes frem. Basert på foreliggende litteratur og på egne felterfaringer fra medvirkningsarbeid i Oslo, ønsker vi å belyse hvordan «makt» må trekkes inn i alle kritiske diskusjoner både av steds- eller byutvikling mer generelt, samt i medvirkningsarbeid med unge mer spesielt. Politikere, utbyggere og planleggere er blant dem som ofte har forslagsmakt og som deretter styrer prosessen. Så når ungdommene søkte å snakke om sine erfaringer, eller voksne idrettsledere la frem idrettslagets interesser, ble en del «presset» til å heller bli del av de profesjonelle byutviklingsaktørenes fremdriftsplaner. Det var også tilfeller at andre i praksis ble ekskludert fra prosessene. Avslutningsvis hevdes det derfor at det må en radikal maktforskyvning til om mål som reell medvirkning skal nås.
... For example, due to the general and severe housing shortage in the city (Lundin, 2017), the integration of affordable housing (drawing on the best practice strategy BCN4, see Section 5.2.) emerged to be highly relevant for local Gothenburg translation. This corresponds with previous compact city research, bringing up justice as an essential element of compact city development (Burton, 2000), linked to urban spatial justice and segregation both at the city level (Cavicchia, 2021;Musterd et al., 2017) and the neighbourhood level (Bibby et al., 2021). Here, the stakeholders translated the Barcelona best practice (BCN4) into the policy argument that there should be affordable housing across all of Gothenburg to decrease differences in living conditions, subsequently transformed into the locally relevant good practice to build inexpensive rental apartments everywhere in the city (see Section 6.2.). ...
The compact city is an ideal model for sustainability, transferred between cities as ‘best practices’. This article investigates how context-adaptive transfer of compact city ideals can take place, using Barcelona, Rotterdam and Gothenburg as examples. The objectives are to 1) summarize urban qualities discussed by stakeholders in the three cities; 2) uncover dominant urban challenges and strategies among Barcelona, Rotterdam and Gothenburg stakeholders; and 3) present how Barcelona/Rotterdam ‘best practices’ are translated and transformed by Gothenburg stakeholders into situated ‘good practices’. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 82 stakeholders in Barcelona and Rotterdam and a workshop with 17 stakeholders in Gothenburg. The article shows that any meaningful and consequential mobility of knowledge through best practices requires stakeholder-enabled translation involving social learning and co-production of locally relevant knowledge. This means that a wide range of stakeholders needs to be engaged, including affected citizens, to secure representation and transparency. To succeed, best practices need embellishment with sufficient contextual information in formats possible to understand and process by these stakeholders. Strengthened involvement of stakeholders in transfer, translation and transformation of ‘best practices’ into ‘good practices’ requires improved models for stakeholder engagement, moving away from prevalent top-down attitudes of many city governments.
... For example, due to the general and severe housing shortage in the city (Lundin, 2017), the integration of affordable housing (drawing on the best practice strategy BCN4, see Section 5.2.) emerged to be highly relevant for local Gothenburg translation. This corresponds with previous compact city research, bringing up justice as an essential element of compact city development (Burton, 2000), linked to urban spatial justice and segregation both at the city level (Cavicchia, 2021;Musterd et al., 2017) and the neighbourhood level (Bibby et al., 2021). Here, the stakeholders translated the Barcelona best practice (BCN4) into the policy argument that there should be affordable housing across all of Gothenburg to decrease differences in living conditions, subsequently transformed into the locally relevant good practice to build inexpensive rental apartments everywhere in the city (see Section 6.2.). ...
The compact city is an ideal model for sustainability, transferred between cities as 'best practices'. This article investigates how context -adaptive transfer of compact city ideals can take place, using Barcelona, Rotterdam and Gothenburg as examples. The objectives are to 1) summarize urban qualities discussed by stakeholders in the three cities; 2) uncover dominant urban challenges and strategies among Barcelona, Rotterdam and Gothenburg stakeholders; and 3) present how Barcelona/Rotterdam 'best practices' are translated and transformed by Gothenburg stakeholders into situated 'good practices'. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 82 stakeholders in Barcelona and Rotterdam and a workshop with 17 stakeholders in Gothenburg. The article shows that any meaningful and consequential mobility of knowledge through best practices requires stakeholder-enabled translation involving social learning and co-production of locally relevant knowledge. This means that a wide range of stakeholders needs to be engaged, including affected citizens, to secure representation and transparency. To succeed, best practices need embellishment with sufficient contextual information in formats possible to understand and process by these stakeholders. Strengthened involvement of stakeholders in transfer, translation and transformation of 'best practices' into 'good practices' requires improved models for stakeholder engagement, moving away from prevalent top-down attitudes of many city governments. resuMen Interpretación (coproducida) y transformación de conocimientos y políticas: una transferencia de los ideales relativos a las ciuda-des compactas adaptada al contexto.-La ciudad compacta es un modelo ideal de sostenibilidad, transferido entre ciudades como "mejores prácticas". Este artículo investiga cómo puede tener lugar una transferencia adaptativa al contexto de los ideales de ciudad compacta, utilizando Barcelona, Rotterdam y Gotemburgo como ejemplos. Los objetivos son: 1) resumir las cualidades ur-banas discutidas por las partes interesadas en las tres ciudades; 2) descubrir los desafíos y estrategias urbanos dominantes entre las partes interesadas de Barcelona, Rotterdam y Gotemburgo; y 3) presentar cómo las partes interesadas de Gotemburgo traducen y transforman las "mejores prácticas" de Barcelona/Rotterdam en "buenas prácticas" propias. Los datos se recopilaron a través de entrevistas semiestructuradas con 82 partes interesadas en Barcelona y Rotterdam y un taller con 17 partes interesadas en Gotemburgo. El artículo muestra que cualquier transferencia sig-nificativa y consecuente de conocimiento a través de mejores prác-ticas requiere una traducción habilitada por las partes interesadas que implique aprendizaje social y coproducción de conocimiento localmente relevante. Esto significa que es necesario involucrar a una amplia gama de partes interesadas, incluidos los ciudada-nos afectados, para garantizar la representación y la transparencia. Para tener éxito, las mejores prácticas deben enriquecerse con su-ficiente información contextual en formatos que estas partes inte-resadas puedan comprender y procesar. Una mayor participación de las partes interesadas en la transferencia, traducción y trans-formación de "mejores prácticas" en "buenas prácticas" requiere mejores modelos para la participación de las partes interesadas, alejándose de las actitudes verticalistas predominantes en muchos gobiernos municipales. résuMé Traduction et transformation coproduites des connaissances et des politiques : mobilité adaptée au contexte des idéaux de la ville compacte.-La ville compacte est un modèle idéal de durabilité, transféré entre les villes en tant que « bonnes pratiques ». Cet article étudie comment un transfert adapté au contexte des idéaux de villes compactes peut avoir lieu, en prenant comme exemples Barcelone, Rotterdam et Göteborg. Les objectifs sont de 1) résumer les qualités urbaines discutées par les acteurs des trois villes ; 2) découvrir les défis et stratégies urbains dominants parmi les parties prenantes de Barcelone, Rotterdam et Göteborg ; et 3) présenter comment les « meilleures pratiques » de Barcelone/Rotterdam sont traduites et transformées par les parties prenantes de Göteborg en « bonnes pratiques » situées. Les données ont été collectées au moyen d'entretiens semi-structurés avec 82 parties prenantes à Barcelone et Rotterdam et d'un atelier avec 17 parties prenantes à Göteborg. Volumen 2024-3. Año XLIV, pp. 205-233 206 E R Í A L'article montre que toute mobilité significative et conséquente des connaissances à travers les meilleures pratiques nécessite une traduction rendue possible par les parties prenantes, impliquant l'apprentissage social et la coproduction de connaissances perti-nentes au niveau local. Cela signifie qu'un large éventail de parties prenantes doivent être impliquées, y compris les citoyens concer-nés, pour garantir la représentation et la transparence. Pour réussir, les meilleures pratiques doivent être agrémentées d'informations contextuelles suffisantes dans des formats pouvant être compris et traités par ces parties prenantes. Une implication renforcée des parties prenantes dans le transfert, la traduction et la transformation des « meilleures pratiques » en « bonnes pratiques » nécessite de meilleurs modèles d'engagement des parties prenantes, en s'éloi-gnant des attitudes descendantes dominantes de nombreuses administrations municipales. keywords/palabras clave/Mots clé
... In sum, housing affordability refers to the economic conditions confronted by people and households in certain socioeconomic conditions to access and maintain housing (usually low-and middle-income households) within a housing market. In this perspective, affordability is a measurable characteristic of any type of housing (whether public, social, or private) connected to its quality and location (Cavicchia, 2021;Peverini, 2023). In the related concept of housing accessibility (Neuteboom & Brounen, 2011), affordability is a crucial factor indicating the degree to which a city is accessible to newcomers, especially low-and middle-income people, and how the city can be an inclusive platform for socioeconomic improvement or a poverty trap leading to expulsion of the most vulnerable. ...
As the housing affordability crisis strikes many cities around the world, public institutions and citizens have started to become aware of growing problems in the access to adequate affordable housing. The issue is particularly evident in Milan, where increased attractiveness is paralleled by a huge rise in housing prices. This article presents the results of research conducted by the Affordable Housing Observatory of Milan, contributing to public knowledge on housing affordability problems and envisioning possible policies to tackle them. Housing issues are contested and political in nature, and in the Italian context the debate is often led by the voice of the real estate sector while data are highly fragmented and knowledge about housing affordability is limited, especially in Milan. We fill this gap by conducting an original analysis of existing public data on the housing market, the labour market and incomes to highlight the trends in housing affordability in Milan. We focus on the period starting in 2015, a turning point for Milan with the international EXPO and the beginning of an intense phase of urban transformation and real estate development. The article shows how the increase in housing prices and rents has outpaced growth in incomes and wages by nearly a factor of three and how a major share of income earners in Milan cannot afford decent housing. These trends expose lower-income residents to the risk of expulsion and condition access to a job in the city to ownership of assets or financial assistance from parents (especially for first-time buyers and the younger generations). Finally, the article reflects on the implications of growing unaffordability with reference to policies targeting housing costs, incomes, and wages.
... This need for housing has caused densification to be raised as an idea in urban land use planning (Cavicchia, 2021;Puustinen et al., 2022). Densification may, on the one hand, increase strain on infrastructure, reduce access to green and leisure spaces, increase property value, etc. ...
In contemporary cities, justice stands as a paramount concern, integral to their fabric and functionality. Just urban land use planning (JULUP) is one of the main topics in urban land use planning and tries to promote justice in cities through land use planning principles. Despite the abundance of JULUP studies, there is still a lack of comprehensive research that can review JULUP principles in an integrated manner. This article aims to explore and describe the principles of JULUP and seeks to answer the question of what principles JULUP is defined by using a systematic review and qualitative content analysis method. Based on the review of 191 sources, the results show that principles of JULUP can be categorized into four major principles: Land rights management, social cohesion, accessibility and spatial health. This array of principles underscores that attaining justice in urban land use planning necessitates a comprehensive and integrated perspective.
... In addition, there are increasing tensions between global benefits and local effects, and currently pursued densification policies have come under attack for resulting in reduced neighbourhood and housing qualities, insecurity, sadness and loss of place identity (Pont et al. 2021;Skrede and Andersen 2022). Moreover, instead of making cities more inclusive to lowincome groups, as has sometimes been claimed (Monroy et al. 2020), densification tendsunder neoliberal conditionsto increase housing unaffordability and gentrification, compared to sprawl (Miles 2012;Cavicchia 2021). Such negative impacts of current densification processes may cause the pendulum starting to swing back againback from the compact city strategy toward a renewed acceptance of outward urban expansion, often promoted as 'polycentric urban development' (Schmitt et al. 2015 However, for sustainable urban planning, recent years' increased focus on neighbourhood-scale and responsiveness to local stakeholders' inputsalthough also of relevanceshould not block the sight of the larger and more material crises. ...
... Dagens fortettingspolitikk har blitt kritisert for å redusere nabolags-og boligkvaliteter og skape utrygghet, tristhet og tap av stedsidentitet (Skrede & Andersen, 2022). I stedet for å gjøre byene mer inkluderende for lavinntektsgrupper, slik det noen ganger har blitt hevdet, har fortetting under nyliberale forhold hatt en tendens til å presse boligprisene i vaeret og bidra til mer gentrifisering (Cavicchia, 2021). Slike negative virkninger av dagens fortetting kan få pendelen til å svinge tilbake fra kompaktby-strategien til fornyet aksept av utadrettet byvekst. ...
... Strategies to increase building stock energy efficiency through ecological retrofitting and digital solutions for energy-saving technologies have been connected to growing house prices (Grossmann and Huning 2015;Bouzarovski et al. 2018). Critical scholars are also increasingly questioning strategies for efficient and sustainable land use, such as densification (against urban sprawl), for their potential implications for housing inequalities (Cavicchia 2021;Debrunner et al. 2022), targeting more affluent groups and appealing to the «eco-conscious» middle-class elites (Rérat et al. 2009;Rosol 2015). However, such consequences are dependent on and impacted by the governance arrangements at different levels, housing, and welfare systems, and may exhibit distinct patterns according to the various degrees of urbanization and varying jurisdictions. ...
In the last fifteen years, we have witnessed the development and subsequent major growth of the literature on the role of welfare policies in the ecological crisis and the so called green transition. Concepts such as sustainable welfare, just transition, eco-social policies and eco-social justice, to name just a few, have been used to portray the need for a paradigm shift. This has led some scholars to acknowledge the urgency to challenge the current unsustainable growth model and to investigate how sustainable welfare policies should address societal needs within ecological limits and from an intergenerational and global perspective. The paper highlights the foundations, challenges and current research gaps in the literature on sustainable welfare, such as empirical weaknesses; uncertainty and ambiguity; the complexity of multilevel governance arrangements; and the emerging inequalities associated with the green transition. It also introduces the main topics discussed and analysed in the six contributions collected in the Focus: Towards a Sustainable Welfare System? The Challenges and Scenarios of Eco-social Transitions published of the Journal Politiche Sociali/Social Policies. The Focus/Special Issue is gathering contributions from both Italian and international researchers belonging to different disciplinary communities and providing an interesting contribution to the debate.
Table of Contents: https://www.rivisteweb.it/issn/2284-2098/issue/8705.
Roberta Cucca Yuri Kazepov Matteo Villa, Towards a Sustainable Welfare System? The Challenges and Scenarios of Eco-social Transitions, pp: 3-26 DOI: 10.7389/107136.
Max Koch Milena Buchs Jayeon Lee (OPEN ACCESS), Towards a New Generation of Social Policy: Commonalities between Sustainable Welfare and the IPCC, pp: 27-42 DOI: 10.7389/107137.
Giovanni Carrosio Lorenzo De Vidovich, Eco-welfare between the socio-ecological crisis and application fields for the eco-social policies, pp: 43-62 DOI: 10.7389/107138.
Alexander Ruser, Undeserving and Dangerous: The Construction of Outsiders and the Return of the Third Way in Green Welfare State Debates, pp: 63-80 DOI: 10.7389/107139.
Matteo Mandelli Maristella Cacciapaglia Sebastiano Sabato, EU Eco-social Policies for a «Just Transition»: Comparing the Just Transition Fund and the Social Climate Fund, pp: 81-98 DOI: 10.7389/107140.
David Natali Michele Raitano Giulia Valenti, Pensions and Green Transition: new inequalities and further challenges for pension systems’ adequacy and sustainability, pp: 99-122 DOI: 10.7389/107141.
Stella Volturo, Towards a Sustainable Welfare? The Role of Social Work in the Fight against Poverty from an Eco-Social Perspective, pp: 123-142 DOI: 10.7389/107142.
... Being located adjacent to the traditional working-class and the ethnically mixed East End, Barcode also became a visible manifestation of the socio-economic elite inhabiting the apartments and offices in the city, contributing to on-going gentrification (Turner & Wessel, 2013) and socio-spatial segregation (Wessel, 2015). Arguably this pronounced architectural expression of the compact city model is also part of the newly designed socio-economic enclave in Oslo's inner east, an observation supported by recent studies focusing on housing prices (Cavicchia, 2021) and the role of architectural competitions (Bern, 2018). ...
The compact city has become the preferred and mainstream model for urban, peri-urban and sometimes even rural planning in the Nordic context. However, the compact city is increasingly contested as a model for sustainability and may be criticized for a functionalistic perspective on social practices and transitions. Besides, the compact city model is part of increasing transnational or global urban policy mobilities including generic models and strategies, and it may be argued that this contributes to the de-contextualisation of urban planning and development. In this chapter we scrutinize the spatialities of the compact city model and examine how the compact city model has played out in the Nordic context – focusing in particular on Oslo. We ask: how is the compact city developed and promoted as a spatial model? We argue that although the compact city has to some extent been promoted in influential policy circles as a universal model, the compact city in Oslo has some distinct features shaped by the Nordic context. In particular, these features can be attributed to welfare state governance centred on the public sector, yet it is also here we find some of the most significant differences between the Nordic countries. In closing, we discuss whether there is such a thing as a Nordic compact city model, and point to some of its political, social and cultural implications. Is there a pathway for a re-contextualized, relational and grounded compact city model?
... Being located adjacent to the traditional working-class and the ethnically mixed East End, Barcode also became a visible manifestation of the socio-economic elite inhabiting the apartments and offices in the city, contributing to on-going gentrification (Turner & Wessel, 2013) and socio-spatial segregation (Wessel, 2015). Arguably this pronounced architectural expression of the compact city model is also part of the newly designed socio-economic enclave in Oslo's inner east, an observation supported by recent studies focusing on housing prices (Cavicchia, 2021) and the role of architectural competitions (Bern, 2018). ...
Radical geography came only patchily to Nordic geography, and the development of theoretical Marxist geography was even sparser. But in the radical geography environment at Copenhagen University, a group of geographers in the 1970s developed a vocal and self-assured Marxist theory, which became known as the territorial-structure approach and drew its inspiration from the work of the GDR geographer Gerhard Schmidt-Renner. In this chapter we present a critical discussion of the territorial-structure approach as an example of an early theorisation of geography from a Marxist perspective. We discuss the central controversies that came to surround the approach, and we discuss the territorial-structure approach as a conscious effort to resist disciplinary specialisation and fragmentation of (human) geography. Our aim is not to resurrect the territorial-structure approach, but rather to investigate this theory as an important step towards socio-spatial theory in Nordic geography.
... Being located adjacent to the traditional working-class and the ethnically mixed East End, Barcode also became a visible manifestation of the socio-economic elite inhabiting the apartments and offices in the city, contributing to on-going gentrification (Turner & Wessel, 2013) and socio-spatial segregation (Wessel, 2015). Arguably this pronounced architectural expression of the compact city model is also part of the newly designed socio-economic enclave in Oslo's inner east, an observation supported by recent studies focusing on housing prices (Cavicchia, 2021) and the role of architectural competitions (Bern, 2018). ...
This chapter focuses on some socio-spatial views by Nordic geographers who have studied the tendencies of politicisation vs. depoliticisation of human/nature relationships. First, I introduce early formulations of politics of nature research by showing the epistemological grounding and argumentation for the political in Nordic nature studies. This is followed by an overview of studies that have focused on depoliticising drives and turns in contemporary human/nature practices. The variations in handling and conceptualising the dominating aspects of neoliberal environmental governance will be described. Thereafter, I address some approaches of research within Nordic geography that are entangled in the processes and actors defending and promoting a (re)politicisation in nature-use. Finally, I discuss the Nordic content and bearing found in the geographical contributions included in this study.
... Being located adjacent to the traditional working-class and the ethnically mixed East End, Barcode also became a visible manifestation of the socio-economic elite inhabiting the apartments and offices in the city, contributing to on-going gentrification (Turner & Wessel, 2013) and socio-spatial segregation (Wessel, 2015). Arguably this pronounced architectural expression of the compact city model is also part of the newly designed socio-economic enclave in Oslo's inner east, an observation supported by recent studies focusing on housing prices (Cavicchia, 2021) and the role of architectural competitions (Bern, 2018). ...
In this chapter we discuss how demands for social justice and struggles around social reproduction have evolved in the Nordic “periphery”, placing the struggles within a context of critical socio-spatial theorizing and earlier geographical research on uneven development within Nordic welfare states. We give examples from Sweden of how resistance in the northern periphery increasingly mobilizes around spatial justice and social reproduction rather than mainly around employment. Demands about the right to spatial justice challenge the rewarding of a specific place – usually the urban – of modernity, meaning-making and hub for democracy and resistance. And thus oppose the naturalization of uneven rual-urban geographies. Nordic critical geographers have researched inequalities within Nordic welfare states, including center-periphery divides and conflicts, and examined how these have increased with welfare state retrenchment. Feminist geographers highlight the centrality of battles around social reproduction – the right to environmental security, work, food, housing, healthcare, education, a meaningful and dignified life in both urban and rural places. We identify a tradition of empirically based geographical research on material conditions and changing socio-spatial forms of production and consumption, which suggests a socio-spatial theory useful in an era of crisis and increased privatization of nature and social reproduction.
... Being located adjacent to the traditional working-class and the ethnically mixed East End, Barcode also became a visible manifestation of the socio-economic elite inhabiting the apartments and offices in the city, contributing to on-going gentrification (Turner & Wessel, 2013) and socio-spatial segregation (Wessel, 2015). Arguably this pronounced architectural expression of the compact city model is also part of the newly designed socio-economic enclave in Oslo's inner east, an observation supported by recent studies focusing on housing prices (Cavicchia, 2021) and the role of architectural competitions (Bern, 2018). ...
Research in economic geography on innovation and regional development is an important and thriving research area in Scandinavia, which has contributed significantly to theoretical and empirical advancements beyond the Scandinavian research environments. This chapter demonstrates how the field has developed and changed its focus over the years, touching upon and developing around central academic and societal topics from deindustrialisation, clusters and regional innovation systems to creativity, green transition and changing regional development paths. The chapter focuses on how research milieus have developed in Scandinavia, how theories, methodologies and methods have advanced and how researchers have worked together nationally and internationally during the last four decades.
... Being located adjacent to the traditional working-class and the ethnically mixed East End, Barcode also became a visible manifestation of the socio-economic elite inhabiting the apartments and offices in the city, contributing to on-going gentrification (Turner & Wessel, 2013) and socio-spatial segregation (Wessel, 2015). Arguably this pronounced architectural expression of the compact city model is also part of the newly designed socio-economic enclave in Oslo's inner east, an observation supported by recent studies focusing on housing prices (Cavicchia, 2021) and the role of architectural competitions (Bern, 2018). ...
Through tracing what ‘landscape’ has meant, and the political and intellectual work that ‘landscape’ does, we in this chapter explore the shifting nature of Nordic landscape geography. We thereby aim to introduce readers to the role of the landscape concept within Nordic scholarship and critically engage with contemporary debates over the nature and meaning of landscape. Landscape was an important political concept long before the advent of geography as a discipline in the Nordic countries, though what landscape denoted differed between various national and linguistic settings. Based in our mapping of the concept as it has evolved within geography and related disciplines, we centre on three strands of landscape scholarship today: mediations on a particularly ‘Nordic’ substantive landscape concept, attempts to utilise landscape as a concept to influence planning, and attempts to utilise landscape as a concept to grasp environmental issues. Scrutinising these current traditions leads us to primarily underline the necessity of relational approaches to steer the concept away from a problematic and narrow emphasis on the local scale. Yet, and importantly, various relational approaches take analysis in different directions, leading us to also underscore the necessity of critically scrutinising where particular relational approaches might lead landscape geography.
... Being located adjacent to the traditional working-class and the ethnically mixed East End, Barcode also became a visible manifestation of the socio-economic elite inhabiting the apartments and offices in the city, contributing to on-going gentrification (Turner & Wessel, 2013) and socio-spatial segregation (Wessel, 2015). Arguably this pronounced architectural expression of the compact city model is also part of the newly designed socio-economic enclave in Oslo's inner east, an observation supported by recent studies focusing on housing prices (Cavicchia, 2021) and the role of architectural competitions (Bern, 2018). ...
The development of Nordic gender geography is closely related to societal transformation. The way the gendered labour market is structured and re-structured is a recurrent theme for investigation. In this chapter, we discuss Nordic gender geography since its establishment in the 1980s, with the aim of scrutinising long-term and contemporary trends and challenges. We discern an engagement in issues based on socio-spatial conditions, where agency, identity and intersectional perspectives work together with materiality, institutions and structures. Nordic gender geography thereby contributes with a contextual gender theory, emphasising space as both a designer and an interpreter of gender relations. Regional and local gender relations become a player in the structure-agency relationship, and we argue that socio-spatial gender theorising can modify the idea of universal and all-embracing theoretical explanation of how gender is constructed. Nordic gender geography constitutes a prevailing and growing potential for a significant contribution to gender theory and to socio-spatial analysis of power.
... Being located adjacent to the traditional working-class and the ethnically mixed East End, Barcode also became a visible manifestation of the socio-economic elite inhabiting the apartments and offices in the city, contributing to on-going gentrification (Turner & Wessel, 2013) and socio-spatial segregation (Wessel, 2015). Arguably this pronounced architectural expression of the compact city model is also part of the newly designed socio-economic enclave in Oslo's inner east, an observation supported by recent studies focusing on housing prices (Cavicchia, 2021) and the role of architectural competitions (Bern, 2018). ...
As an example of socio-spatial theorization within the Nordic context, this chapter is written as an autobiographic narrative of my intellectual development from the 1970s to 2021. It is a story involving a steady positioning in the ‘Nordic’ context, but within that a range of shifts in affiliations, as well as a participation in different intellectual networks – both Danish, Nordic and ‘International’ – all of which have influenced my thinking. The chapter is arranged in four parts: First, a presentation of some Nordic predecessors. This is followed by an intellectual history of what I call theoretical approximations to (a) a non-deterministic social ecology, (b) towards a theory of practice, and (c) an engagement with the formulation of a critical phenomenology – all involving issues of the urban question, of everyday life and of modalities of social space.
... Being located adjacent to the traditional working-class and the ethnically mixed East End, Barcode also became a visible manifestation of the socio-economic elite inhabiting the apartments and offices in the city, contributing to on-going gentrification (Turner & Wessel, 2013) and socio-spatial segregation (Wessel, 2015). Arguably this pronounced architectural expression of the compact city model is also part of the newly designed socio-economic enclave in Oslo's inner east, an observation supported by recent studies focusing on housing prices (Cavicchia, 2021) and the role of architectural competitions (Bern, 2018). ...
Approaching Nordic human geography as an evolving community of practice with strong historical-geographical legacies, this chapter introduces the two overarching themes of the book. On the one hand, we foreground how geography has been, and is, theorised in Nordic human geography, particularly (but not exclusively) as socio-spatial theory. On the other hand, if often intersecting with the former, we seek to highlight the importance of historical-geographical context in geographical theorising and research. Following from this, and acknowledging that the balancing of these themes differs between the individual contributions, the chapter outlines the approach of the book.
... Being located adjacent to the traditional working-class and the ethnically mixed East End, Barcode also became a visible manifestation of the socio-economic elite inhabiting the apartments and offices in the city, contributing to on-going gentrification (Turner & Wessel, 2013) and socio-spatial segregation (Wessel, 2015). Arguably this pronounced architectural expression of the compact city model is also part of the newly designed socio-economic enclave in Oslo's inner east, an observation supported by recent studies focusing on housing prices (Cavicchia, 2021) and the role of architectural competitions (Bern, 2018). ...
Throughout its recorded history, the aims of geography have shifted between synthesis and specialized systematic studies. Cosmography, as understood by Alexander von Humboldt and others, presented an ambitious synthesis of climate, topography, biogeography, settlement and human life. Explorations financed by geographical societies gradually led to growth of specialized disciplines, particularly in natural sciences. This broad activity was regarded as geography by the general public and those that established geography chairs 1870–1910. The first professors adhered to synthesis of human and physical geography and found relevant research themes. Initially geography was dominated by environmental determinism, possibilism and a focus on regional geography through synthesis. Gradually specialized research in systematic branches led to a nomothetic shift to spatial science, inspiring models in both human and physical geography. Synthesis of physical and human geography remained an aim within spatial science but provided few integrating research exemplars. Synthesis of physical and human geo-factors was fundamental for the first professors and was seen as a goal for many geographers in the following generations, but has been difficult to attain in research projects. However, present global changes give our discipline new relevance for research on global sustainability.
... Being located adjacent to the traditional working-class and the ethnically mixed East End, Barcode also became a visible manifestation of the socio-economic elite inhabiting the apartments and offices in the city, contributing to on-going gentrification (Turner & Wessel, 2013) and socio-spatial segregation (Wessel, 2015). Arguably this pronounced architectural expression of the compact city model is also part of the newly designed socio-economic enclave in Oslo's inner east, an observation supported by recent studies focusing on housing prices (Cavicchia, 2021) and the role of architectural competitions (Bern, 2018). ...
In intellectual histories of geography as well as in international relations, geopolitics is usually the business of great powers, understood as the expansion of hard power through territorial control. However, the existence of a ‘ Geopolitik of the weak’ has also been theorised, premised on the ability of smaller states – such as the Nordic countries – to secure their survival through a wider range of policy instruments. In this chapter, we analyse key themes in the work of two Nordic geographical thinkers deeply concerned with the place and status of their home countries in the era of high modernity – Rudolf Kjellén and Gudmund Hatt. Relying upon their scholarly works as well as relevant public debates circa 1905–1945, we trace the ‘small-state geopoliticking’ of Hatt and Kjellén, identifying three key characteristics of their style of small-state geopolitics: (1) determinism is qualified by voluntarism; (2) space is complemented by future; and (3) external expansion is sublimated into internal progress. In its reconceptualisation of living space as primarily concerned with existential survival as premised upon future progress, rather than outward-oriented territorial expansion, small-state geopolitics emerges as a highly situated, somewhat quaint but nonetheless significant element in Nordic theorising of geography.
... Being located adjacent to the traditional working-class and the ethnically mixed East End, Barcode also became a visible manifestation of the socio-economic elite inhabiting the apartments and offices in the city, contributing to on-going gentrification (Turner & Wessel, 2013) and socio-spatial segregation (Wessel, 2015). Arguably this pronounced architectural expression of the compact city model is also part of the newly designed socio-economic enclave in Oslo's inner east, an observation supported by recent studies focusing on housing prices (Cavicchia, 2021) and the role of architectural competitions (Bern, 2018). ...
Research on displacement has a long trajectory in Western geography and urban studies. In a Swedish context theory formation around displacement re-emerged in the 2010s as a response to an increasingly heated housing market, increased gentrification and growing homelessness, and as a consequence of ‘renoviction’ processes. Learning from empirical research in Sweden, the Nordic experiences differ from the Anglo-American context, and set ground for a theoretical discussion on how to understand the specificities of displacement processes in (post-)welfare societies. In this chapter we investigate some Swedish manifestations of displacement that cannot easily be grasped by conceptual apparatuses often developed in an Anglo-American context. The process of displacement in a Swedish (and Nordic) context is often more indirect and slower but its eventual outcomes have the same damaging effects on its victims. The chapter provides both an historical and contemporary view of Swedish displacement processes and practices, and we argue that we cannot uncritically import a conceptual apparatus that grew out of other socio-spatial contexts and develop particular understandings of displacement based on Nordic empirical observations.
... Being located adjacent to the traditional working-class and the ethnically mixed East End, Barcode also became a visible manifestation of the socio-economic elite inhabiting the apartments and offices in the city, contributing to on-going gentrification (Turner & Wessel, 2013) and socio-spatial segregation (Wessel, 2015). Arguably this pronounced architectural expression of the compact city model is also part of the newly designed socio-economic enclave in Oslo's inner east, an observation supported by recent studies focusing on housing prices (Cavicchia, 2021) and the role of architectural competitions (Bern, 2018). ...
This chapter explores the emergence and eventual decline of a distinctive kind of planning-oriented human geography in post-war Sweden and the closely related adaptation of Walter Christaller’s central place theory by geographers such as Torsten Hägerstrand and Sven Godlund. The rapidly expanding Swedish welfare state gave rise to a demand for skills and expertise of a kind many geographers were eager to provide, and Christaller’s abstract framework allowed them to position themselves as producers of socially useful knowledge. Eventually, however, several voices raised concerns about how the focus on planning and the dominance of reductive theories such as central place theory constrained the academic development of the discipline. The end of the expansive phase of the welfare state also decreased the demand for the expertise geographers had provided. In essence, the popularity of central place theory was tethered to a particular historical moment, and it only allowed for rather narrow analyses of socio-spatial relations. Nonetheless, the theory played a key role in the transformation of Swedish human geography into a modern social science, insofar as the comparatively novel understanding of space it provided contributed to the development of more complex and philosophical theories and approaches to geography.
Wallin, A. (2024). Vihreän maankorkoeron teoria: Kestävän kaupunkikehityksen investoinnit ja asuinalueiden erilaistuminen. Focus localis, 52(1), 63-80. https://journal.fi/focuslocalis/article/view/136030
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Ajatus kestävästä kaupungista on valtava suunnitteluparadigman muutos. Viime vuosina Tampereella on investoitu suuria summia kestävään kaupunkikehitykseen. Tämä artikkeli tarkastelee, miten ajatus kestävästä kaupungista on vaikuttanut Tampereen kaupungin kehitykseen. Tutkimus seu-raa tapaustutkimuksen perinnettä ja hyödyntää monipuolista aineistotriangulaatiota. Artikkelin abduktiivinen analyysi tarkastelee Tampereen kaupunkikehitystä vihreän maankorkoeron teo-rian valossa, jonka mukaan kestävyystoimet nostavat maan ja asuntojen arvoa. Teoria antaa se-lityksen, miksi kestävä kaupunkikehitys on kiinnostunut ennen kaikkea keskusta-alueista. Uusi kirjallisuus lisää ymmärrystä siitä, miksi huonomaineisia alueita ei kehitetä ilman valtion tukea. Tampereen kaupunki on rakentanut kestävyydestä uuden kehyksen kasvulle, ja se on luonut kes-tävän kaupunkikehityksen investoinneilla suurta maan ja kiinteistöjen arvonnousua erityisesti keskusta-alueen läheisyydessä. Kerrostalolähiöt taas ovat jääneet pitkälti syrjään investoinneis-ta, jos niiden kehittämiseen ei ole kohdennettu valtiontukia. Vihreän maankorkoeron teoria li-sää ymmärrystä kestävän kaupunkikehityksen investointien jakaantumisesta sekä asuinalueiden erilaistumisesta. Artikkeli esittää, että julkinen tuki on tärkeää mainehaitasta kärsivien alueiden kehittämiseksi, jotta tulevaisuudessa asuinalueiden väliset sosiaaliset erot eivät kasvaisi enempää.
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This is a case study of how the new planning orthodoxy of sustainable urban development has changed the city of Tampere. The article applies and develops further the green gap theory, which states that sustainability measures increase land and real-estate values. The theory explains why sustainable urban development is primarily interested in city centre areas, and recent literature provides an explanation for why stigmatized neighbourhoods are only developed with state subsidies. Tampere has created significant land value increases with investments in sustainable urban development, especially near city-centre areas. Suburban housing estates have remained in the margins of the sustainable city, especially without state subsidies. The green gap theory explains the distribution of sustainable urban development investments. This paper concludes that state
This chapter focuses on theory building. Engaging in a constructive dialogue between literature review and case study, it aims at the creation of an updated theoretical ground for housing affordability. The first section provides an overview of the literature on housing affordability that argues for the importance of its conceptualization. The second section is a critical review of the conceptualization of housing affordability that can be found in research, policy, and practice. The third section discusses the reviewed conceptualizations and attempts to synthesize them in an original interpretation of housing affordability, which is adopted in the remainder of this book for reflecting on affordability problems and policies and for developing the case studies.
This chapter, starting from the outcomes of the case studies, reflects on critical nodes that arise in addressing the housing affordability crisis and elaborate possible responses to the research question. The first section summarizes the findings of the review and the case studies and reflects on the contributions regarding policies and conditions for more affordable cities. The second section reflects on concrete action lines proposed to make cities more affordable, discussing opportunities and limits of different approaches that range from housing supply to the land question, and discusses challenges for urban policies and planning, highlighting that to address affordability issues a mix of integrated policies is needed. Then, the final section discusses perspectives for future research pathways on the topic of housing affordability.
Growing and attractive cities, such as Vienna, globally face housing crises. Urban land rent (inflated by the huge housing demand in attractive areas and the consequent housing shortage) is transferred to housing prices and results in increasingly unaffordable and inaccessible cities. Housing affordability is a critical factor for enjoying the use value of housing and the broader set of values associated with cities. To assure urban agglomerations' inclusiveness and spatial justice, urban governance should be "grounded" on affordability by redistributing land rent and keeping housing prices hooked on income levels. However, the relation between urban land rent and housing affordability is rarely connected in Housing studies. Furthermore, it is often neglected by urban governors, generally competing to increase housing prices and attract investments. This article contributes to fill this policy/research gap and offers new conceptual avenues for the analysis of urban housing affordability governance. A theoretical basis and a coherent analytical framework for policy analysis are empirically applied in a case study of the city of Vienna, focusing on affordable rental housing. Based on peculiarities-of history, political stability, and a solid welfare system-the Viennese case offers relevant insights for disentangling the complex network of policies and institutions that ground urban growth on affordability.
The compact city concept remains a key policy response to multiple societal challenges. Based on theoretical and empirical research, this article seeks to a) develop a systemic understanding of compact city qualities; b) map alleged compact city qualities from the literature onto this framework; c) map qualities mentioned by stakeholders in two European cities onto the same framework; and d) apply the developed framework to analyse how compounded compact city qualities relate to policy challenges, such as carbon neutrality, poverty alleviation, neighbourhood revitalization, or community engagement. It is based on literature reviews and interviews with stakeholders in Barcelona and Rotterdam.
Do higher urban densities contribute to more sustainable cities and communities? This paper examines the effectiveness of higher density (as a means) for achieving sustainable urban development (the goal) following three lines of inquiry. First, a systematic review of scientific literature (229 empirical studies) is presented on the effects of urban density. Second, the motivations for increasing urban density are studied in a systematic review of Swedish planning practices based on the comprehensive urban plans in 59 municipalities. Third, these two studies are compared to find matches and mismatches between evidence and practice. Although positive effects exist for public infrastructure, transport, and economics, there are also considerable negative environmental, social and health impacts. This creates a challenging task for urban planners to assess the trade-offs involving densification and accommodate current urbanization rates. Some topics are found to be over-represented in research (transport effects), seldom discussed in practice (environmental impact except) and misaligned when comparing motives and evidence (social impact). Furthermore, for some topics, urban density thresholds are found that are important because they may explain some divergences of results between studies.
The compact city and the associated process of densification have attained almost hegemonic status as a sustainable urban form. Seeking to counteract the negative impacts of sprawl, urban densification has usually focused on areas beyond the city centre. However, a renewed attraction of the urban core is altering patterns at a time when other trends, including the decline of retailing and commercial activity, are also changing demands for space in the city centre. This paper investigates different approaches to the use of urban densification as part of strategies for the regeneration of the city centre. Drawing on two case studies—Newcastle upon Tyne in the UK and Newcastle in New South Wales, Australia—it considers the different mechanisms by which city authorities and their development partners are seeking to densify the city centre, and examines the tensions created by the process in these two contexts. In addition to document analysis, data are derived from symposia based in both cities as part of the future of the city centre project led by the authors. Contributors included representatives from local government, non-government organisations, business and community groups. The outcome is an appraisal of contrasting approaches to the densification of city centres. 'Policy relevance' Coherence of city form and consistency throughout the city centre are important objectives, and great differences in density disturb this unity. The city centre is not a project, but a continuous process. Thus, it benefits from fine grain developments on the principle of a rich built environment being generated through small contributions by numbers of people over time. A concept is proposed that densification has positive outcomes up to a point at which negative effects begin to occur. Density is readily measured, but the question remains where the balance point is for each city. There is also a notion that negative impacts may occur before a stipulated density is realised. Support is needed to develop a virtual city model for all cities, and funding to advance city information modelling for all aspects of sustainability, to encourage optimum levels of densification to be achieved.
Study of the relation between urban density and social equity has been mostly based upon comparative analysis at the city level. It therefore fails to address variations in intra-urban experience and sheds no light on the process of urban densification. Incremental residential development is particularly poorly recorded and under-researched, yet cumulatively it makes a substantial contribution to the supply of dwellings. The paper presents a detailed examination of this form of development in England between 2001 and 2011 and considers its impact on urban spatial justice. We find that the incidence of soft residential densification was very uneven. It had disproportionately large effects on neighbourhoods that were already densely developed and that were characterized by lower income households with access to relatively little residential space. It thus contributed to an increase in the level of inequality in the distribution of residential space, increasing socio-spatial injustice.
Increasingly, greening in cities across the Global North is enmeshed in strategies for attracting capital investment, raising the question: for whom is the future green city? Through exploring the relationship between cities’ green boosterist rhetoric, affordability and social equity considerations within greening programmes, this paper examines the extent to which, and why, the degree of green branding – that is, urban green boosterism – predicts the variation in city affordability. We present the results of a mixed methods, macroscale analysis of the greening trajectories of 99 cities in Western Europe, the USA and Canada. Our regression analysis of green rhetoric shows a trend toward higher cost of living among cities with the longest duration and highest intensity green rhetoric. We then use qualitative findings from Nantes, France, and Austin, USA, as two cases to unpack why green boosterism correlates with lower affordability. Key factors determining the relation between urban greening and affordability include the extent of active municipal intervention, redistributional considerations and the historic importance of inclusion and equity in urban development. We conclude by considering what our results mean for the urban greening agenda in the context of an ongoing green growth imperative going forward.
Recent research suggests that inner-city parents have become more loyal to urban living. If this is true, it is certainly good news for compact-city policies, which incorporate residential stability as part of the package. We investigate this issue with empirical evidence from Oslo, using longitudinal data for first-time parents with native and non-native background. Our first analysis tracks two parental cohorts, from 1995 and 2005, over 10 years, and shows that non-native parents have become less stable, whereas native parents have the same stability in both periods. A second observation is that native parents, and only this group, are more stable in areas with spacious dwellings. Finally, we also show that parents who leave the inner city, especially non-natives, increase their representation in low-rise houses. The results as a whole indicate that minority integration and compact-city policies may collide. They also indicate that Oslo, despite green city awards, has failed to create stable inner-city communities. We conclude with policy recommendations.
The last two decades have witnessed a growing trend towards transit-oriented development (TOD) as a critical approach for achieving sustainable mobility. However, some analysts and community activists have expressed concerns that TOD could induce gentrification and potential concomitant low-income group displacements. This paper presents a systematic review of 35 quantitative research-based studies presenting evidence on gentrification outcomes resulting from transit-based interventions, published between 2000 and 2018. To our knowledge, this is the first systematic review on this topic and thus provides a useful synthesis of current empirical evidence on transit-induced gentrification. Although there is some evidence supporting the transit-induced gentrification hypothesis, methodological flaws render many of the studies' conclusions highly questionable. The findings suggest that gentrification is more closely associated with existing local dynamics, built environment attributes, and accompanying policies than transit-oriented development. In its critical analysis of research approaches, this paper warns that the incorporation of several sources of bias into study designs may engender a number of misinterpretations, thus ultimately leading to misguided conclusions and policies.
Vacancy chain theory suggests that mobility opportunities spread within and between specific states, typically flowing from attractive to less attractive units, with households moving in the opposite direction. We explore whether such welfare gains apply in a context, the Oslo region, which combines egalitarian welfare programmes and pro-market housing policies. We use merged census and register data from 2011, and include all events that initiate vacancies. Our results show that rental submarkets function poorly. There are many vacancies, but most of them are immediately absorbed by recruits, that is, households who leave no vacancy behind. Opportunities for disadvantaged groups are further reduced by rapid absorption of owner-occupied flats, often because privileged nest-leavers eschew the rental markets. Two related outcomes are segmentation between submarkets and segregation between Oslo Outer East and the remaining city. All of these adverse consequences reflect the costs of current policies, and call for initiatives that increase and improve opportunities in the rental sector.
Det virker å være stor enighet om at norske boliger er dyre, og at dette er stort problem. Vi mener at absolutte priser må ses i sammenheng med rente- og inntektsnivå. I denne analysen benytter vi sykepleierindeksen for å forsøke å svare på om bolig er dyrt eller ikke.
In Norway, mass home ownership has been an important part of social housing in the post-war period. Social housing became available to everybody and a great majority seized the opportunity. The Global Financial Crisis (GFC) had little effect on the Norwegian housing market other than to create a more rigorous housing finance system for the purpose of counteracting increasing house prices and housing debts. This, in turn, has affected the possibilities of young adults entering home-ownership. Nevertheless, the share of young homeowners has been stable or even growing in recent years. Today, social housing in Norway mainly refers to a rather marginal and targeted system providing housing only for the most vulnerable groups. © 2017, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Institute of Sociology. All rights reserved.
To date, little is known about the extent to which the creation of municipal green spaces over an entire city addresses social or racial inequalities in the distribution of environmental amenities – or whether such an agenda creates contributes to green gentrification. In this study, we evaluate the effects of creating 18 green spaces in socially vulnerable neighborhoods of Barcelona during the 1990s and early 2000s. We examined the evolution over time of six socio-demographic gentrification indicators in the areas close to green spaces in comparison with the entire districts. Our results indicate that new parks in the old town and formerly industrialized neighborhoods seem to have experienced green gentrification. In contrast, most economically depressed areas and working-class neighborhoods with less desirable housing stock and more isolated from the city center gained vulnerable residents as they became greener, indicating a possible redistribution and greater concentration of vulnerable residents through the city.
FULL TEXT OPEN ACCESS LINK: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/tran.12126/epdf
The paper expands the conceptual framework within which we examine mortgage debt by reconceptualising mortgages as a biotechnology: a technology of power over life that forges an intimate relationship between global financial markets, everyday life and human labour. Taking seriously the materiality of mortgage contracts as a means of forging new embodied practices of financialisation, we urge for the need to move beyond a policy- and macroeconomics-based analysis of housing financialisation. We argue that more attention needs to be paid to how funnelling land-related capital flows goes hand in hand with signing off significant parts of future labour, decisionmaking capacity and well-being to mortgage debt repayments. The paper offers two key insights. First, it exemplifies how macroeconomic and policy changes could not have led to the financialisation of housing markets without a parallel biopolitical process that mobilised mortgage contracts to integrate the social reproduction of the workforce into speculative global real-estate practices. Second, it expands the framework of analysis of emerging literature on financialisation and subjectification. Focusing on the mortgage defaults and evictions crisis in Spain, we document how during Spain's 1997–2007 real-estate boom the promise of mortgages as a means to optimise income and wealth enrolled livelihoods into cycles of global financial and real-estate speculation, as home security and future wealth became directly dependent on the fluctuations of financial products, interest rates and capital accumulation strategies rooted in the built environment. When, after 2008 unemployment escalated and housing prices collapsed, mortgages became a punitive technology that led to at least 500 000 foreclosures and over 250 000 evictions in Spain.
This paper provides a framework to look at the affordability both of the regular repayment of housing debt (an income constraint) and of the initial deposit (a budget constraint). Analysis of the microdata on Italian households in the period 2006-2012 indicates that the improved capability of households to maintain their mortgage repayments was counterbalanced by tighter budget constraints. The framework can be employed as a tool to assess the impact of macroprudential policies, such as caps on loan-to-value ratios (LTVs), on the pool of households who can access mortgage loans without running into financial distress: the level and the slope of the ‘mortgage affordability curve’, the curve that shows the share of eligible households at different LTVs provided by the banks, change over time and depend on the definition of household wealth. The 2008-09 crisis lowered the share of eligible families at high LTVs and slightly increased it at lower LTVs. Moreover, we find that mortgage capability worsened more for the middle class and that the decline in Italian LTVs across the period was mainly supply driven, whereas household preferences barely changed. Finally, alternative policies affecting mortgage affordability display heterogeneous effects both in increasing households’ market participation and in fostering safer lending policies.
Compact city development has, over the last 20 years or so, emerged as the preferred response to the goal of sustainable development. As such, it is pertinent to examine planning practices to see whether the traditional economic bias in planning is now balanced by aims and practices in support of environmental and social sustainability. In this light the social, environmental, and economic goals linked to densification and mixed use development will be the main focus of this article. In addition, the article assesses whether distinct institutional practices support the balancing of these goals. The empirical basis is formed by urban plans in four Scandinavian cities in combination with qualitative interview data. The article concludes that on a discursive level, social, environmental and economic goals are represented in compact city strategies. Institutionalised practices, however, show that economic goals remain at the core of planning. Environmental and social aims still play second fiddle, but new measures are in development that may gradually strengthen their influence over urban development practices.
The industrial structure of Oslo has changed dramatically over the last fifty years. Much of the change took place in the 1980s and 1990s, and led to increasing income inequality. The latest decade has seen a different development: stable income inequality and increasing economic segregation. This pattern implies that long-term effects of structural economic change fuse with influences of a shorter temporal length. The net result of many changes, including immigration, is geographical polarisation: increasing segregation of both poor and affluent groups. It is a 'contingent outcome', and not a simple reflection of economic transformation and globalisation. © 2016 selection and editorial material, Tiit Tammaru, Szymon Marcińczak, Maarten van Ham, Sako Musterd; individual chapters, the contributors. All rights reserved.
In modern times, efforts to construct sustainable alternative neighbourhood scale developments date to isolated voluntary initiatives in 1970s Europe and the United States. Since about 2006, they have increased rapidly in popularity. They now go by many names: ecodistricts, écoquartiers, eco-cities, zero/low-carbon/carbon-positive cities, ecopolises, ecobarrios, One Planet Communities, and solar cities. They have become frames-sometimes the dominant frame-used to orient the construction of new pieces of a city in a growing number of countries. Despite numerous standardization efforts, the field of ecourban neighbourhood planning and practice lacks a consistent cross-cultural understanding of what constitutes meaningful ecourbanism in specific economic, political, ecological, social, and design-based terms. Ecourban neighbourhood projects also respond to strictly local challenges and opportunities and express themselves in fragmented ways in different contexts. This article presents an original typology of ecourbanism as the integration of seven extreme type principles. We developed this typology through an abductive approach, or the back and forth testing of observed practices with arguments advanced in theories of sustainable development, planning and urban studies. While ecourban neighbourhood developments by definition express integrative goals, this typology permits assessment of the extent to which outcomes are being achieved in terms of each specific principle. We define and present a limiting case for each of these extreme type principles. Rather than attempting to render different standards equivalent across national contexts, this typology-based approach to understand the outcomes of ecourban neighbourhood developments promises a means to facilitate orienting these developments toward higher levels of integration within a common set of principled boundaries, as they are developed around the world.
Urban planning policy in North America is increasingly dominated by the ideal of "sustainability-as-density"—the promotion of walkable neighborhoods containing high-density housing in proximity to transit and daily amenities. Although this planning approach is increasingly scrutinized due to its links to gentrification and rising regional housing costs, there are few examples of analysis of neighborhood-level effects, especially social impacts. This study extends a political ecology perspective to combine quantitative, cultural, and critical policy analysis methods to analyze neighborhood densification initiatives in the city of Vancouver, Canada. Densification was found to be entangled with socioeconomic neighborhood composition as well as cultural and lifestyle characteristics of gentrification. Increased public concern over tensions between the promotion of densification and housing affordability is also a factor, despite some limited efforts by the City of Vancouver to address social concerns. This suggests a need to rethink the roles of both densification and "the social" more generally in urban sustainability policy.
With a comparably high degree of de-commodification in the urban housing market, Amsterdam has been long considered a prime example of a ‘European city’ and a ‘just city’. This paper looks at how the city's housing tenure sectors have changed since the 1990s due to neo-liberalisation processes and specifies effects for housing conditions of the poor. It highlights how restructuring has been driven by policy changes at different scales, and analyses the effects of reform on issues of accessibility and affordability. We identify a gap between insiders and outsiders, with affordability for the poor inside the system not yet deteriorating, but accessibility for poor outsiders emerging as a key problem. In the conclusion we speculate on future developments of the Amsterdam housing market and relate our findings to debates about the ‘European city’ and the ‘just city’.
The compact city has become a leading concept in the planning of peri-urban areas. The compact city concept is often advocated as “sustainable” because of claims that include lower emissions and conservation of the countryside. The literature shows, however, that there are certain trade-offs in striving for compaction, especially between environmental and social aspects of sustainability. In this article, we describe expressions of the compact city concept in the planning practice of several European urban sample regions, as well as policies and developments that contradict the compact city. We look at examples of positive and negative impacts of the compact city that were observed in the sample regions. Further, we discuss attempts by planners to deal with sustainability trade-offs. Being aware that developments in the peri-urban areas are closely connected to those in the inner city, we compare the sample regions in order to learn how the compact city concept has been used in planning peri-urban areas across different contexts in Europe: in Western, Central and Mediterranean Europe, and with growing, stable or declining populations. We conclude with recommendations with respect to balance in applying the compact city concept.
This paper explores the development of the smart growth programme in Austin, Texas. Drawing on growth machine theory, it documents the conflict in Austin in the 1980s and 1990s between pro-growth and anti-growth machine coalitions over urban sprawl. Around that time, the business community also began to focus on the redevelopment of city’s downtown and the need to address the problems of crime and homelessness. By the mid 1990s, the need to ‘clean up the streets’ was increasingly coupled with arguments about being ‘green’. It is argued that the development of the particular urban sustainability compromise that emerged in Austin, which has become a core part of the city’s competitiveness, was an institutional innovation made possible by struggles between the business community and local environmental activists. The institutional compromise, however, was achieved only by a spatial compromise that shifted the costs of growth from natural ecological onto the city’s homeless population.
One of the debates on the sustainability of housing revolves around the spatial dimension of human settlements and the influence of location and urban morphology on resource and energy consumption. Urban sprawl has often been criticised and this has led to the promotion of the model of the compact city as an alternative in many countries. Based on empirical data on urban trends in Switzerland, this paper discusses three critiques that are usually made of the model of the compact city. These critiques relate to its feasibility, its social consequences and its environmental implications. The paper concludes that the model of the compact city seems workable in the context of a growing population group whose residential aspirations are oriented towards centrality and proximity.
Many brownfield development projects and many redevelopment projects aimed at improving older urban spaces list sustainable development as a stated goal. It is a key question, however, whether the benefits of these redevelopment projects are equitably shared with the original members of the community, and in the case of brownfields with residents of adjacent neighbours, or are there differential benefits that accrue to new higher-income residents at the expense of current residents and retailers, and at the expense of existing community diversity? A case study of a brownfield development in Victoria, Canada, confirms concerns in the literature about income diversity in brownfield developments; a second case study of a Toronto neighbourhood suggests that there is no guarantee that local sustainable development projects within existing neighbourhoods will encourage or even maintain existing social diversity and equity. A similar trend is demonstrated in a series of infill projects that had profound ramifications on adjacent communities and indeed contributed to greater unsustainability in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, British Columbia. It is concluded that the relationship between sustainable development and gentrification is more complex than has been previously suggested.
Neo-liberal ideas have resulted in a planning practice characterized by an informal phase in which early agreements are reached in closed negotiations between municipal planners and private developers. This challenges norms of legitimacy and accountability found in traditional democratic theories, as well as deliberative planning and network governance theories. Input-based legitimacy may be weakened by the lack of participation as well as by asymmetry in resources available for participation (voice). The representative democracy's (vote) responsiveness to the electorate may be weakened due to the lack of knowledge of the views of those affected, early lock-in to agreements and weak meta-governance due to the lack of adherence to overall plans. Throughput legitimacy is reduced by the lack of transparency, and thus accountability, in the informal phase. Output legitimacy might justify the privileged position of developers if tangible results are achieved. However, lack of participation weakens the quality and long-term lastingness of decisions, and lack of deliberation weakens the acceptability of justifications for those burdened by the decisions. We argue that two different types of reforms are necessary to increase the input legitimacy of planning practices: representative democracy reforms that strengthen the role of politicians and reforms that strengthen the direct participation of stakeholders in planning.
This paper looks at the competing theses of polarising convergence and policy-related divergence in the study of socioeconomic segregation. Using data from Oslo, Norway, it is shown that the level of segregation has remained fairly stable, or has even declined, in spite of increasing income inequality. This spatial stabilisation is causally related to a more exible design in city planning and policy. It is, however, not a development in accordance with the welfare state approach proposed by Chris Hamnett and some other scholars. Rather, we observe a 'perverse' effect where social democracy has been helped by opposition policies. In consequence, the paper suggests the use of models of action and the identii cation of 'closed' and 'open' processes of change.
Smart growth proponents suggest that the housing needs of low-income households can be better met by neighbourhoods of greater density, a greater variety of housing types and mixed land use than by neighbourhoods dominated by low-density, single-family homes. This research tests these relationships in two regions: one with and one without urban containment policies. The research provides evidence that neighbourhoods with a greater variety of housing types and residential density have a greater quantity of units affordable to very low-income renters and, at the same time, a greater quantity of units that are not affordable. An implication of the findings is that planners and growth management advocates should specify goals of housing types, in addition to density targets, when creating or updating comprehensive plans for future growth.
In many countries, densification is a central goal of land policies to promote sustainable development. However, while these policies intervene in existing built-up structures and thus affect diverse and complex arrangements of property rights, it remains unclear how they are applied by actors. We argue that an explicit normative point of view is required to better understand this application. To this end, we measure densification in space and interpret the allocation through the lens of justice. Using an automated GIS approach, we analyse the suburban region of Frankfurt, which is covered by a regional land-use plan with ambitious densification goals.
Urban economics and branches of mainstream economics – what we call the “housing as opportunity” school of thought – have been arguing that shortages of affordable housing in dense agglomerations represent a fundamental barrier for economic development. Housing shortages are considered to limit migration into thriving cities, curtailing their expansion potential, generating rising social and spatial inequalities, and inhibiting national growth. According to this dominant view within economics, relaxing zoning and other planning regulations in the most prosperous cities is crucial to unleash the economic potential of cities and nations and to facilitate within-country migration. In this article, we contend that the bulk of the claims of the housing as opportunity approach are fundamentally flawed and lead to simplistic and misguided policy recommendations. We posit that there is no clear and uncontroversial evidence that housing regulation is a principal source of differences in home availability or prices across cities. Blanket changes in zoning are unlikely to increase domestic migration or to increase affordability for lower-income households in prosperous regions. They would, however, increase gentrification within prosperous regions and would not appreciably decrease income inequality. In contrast to the housing models, we argue the basic motors of all these features of the economy are the current geography of employment, wages and skills.
Urban densification has for some decades been considered as the most relevant strategy for ecological modernization within the field of urban spatial development. Compared to outward urban expansion, densification has important environmental merits, but is not without negative environmental impacts. This paper critically examines how urban densification policies contain an assumption – implicit or explicit – that continual growth, expressed in per capita consumption of building stock and infrastructure, should be accommodated. This is argued to lead to a weakening of environmental sustainability. The Norwegian capital Oslo is used as an example, illustrating the environmental achievements and limitations of the densification strategy. These achievements and limitations are then discussed in the light of theoretical literature on tensions between economic growth and environmental sustainability. The paper concludes with a call for further critical scrutiny of how growth assumptions influence/subtly shape urban sustainability policies.
Purpose
The development of designated redevelopment areas often consists of multiple projects spread across several years, some in parallel, some sequential. New units are put on the market in a piecemeal fashion, and infrastructure, shared green spaces and shared facilities are installed successively. The article asks whether developers’ ask lower prices on homes in redevelopment sites than they do on similar units in smaller developments completed over a shorter time span. It also asks whether developers price units differently at different stages of the redevelopment process.
Design/methodology/approach
A hedonic price model is used to analyse sales prices of 7,000 new apartments in Oslo sold between 2011 and 2015, all else being equal. The paper distinguishing between infill as one-stage projects, and multistaged competitive and multistaged monopolistic redevelopments.
Findings
Dwellings in redevelopment projects sell at a lower price than similar dwellings in infill projects. In competitive redevelopments, those in charge of the last projects put a slightly higher price on apartments. In redevelopments involving only one developer, the last stages asks the lowest prices.
Research limitations/implications
This research expands our understanding of developers’ pricing behaviour. Developers supplying housing for the private market through redevelopments land are willing to take risks particularly in the initial stage.
Practical implications
The findings indicate that credit institutions financing developers’ projects need to take into account the structure of selling prices, including lower prices and higher risk of pursuing redevelopment projects.
Originality/value
An original investigation of housing transactions in urban brownfield sites in Oslo provides fresh insights into developers’ pricing behaviour.
Low-density urban forms are often considered more livable than compact ones. Yet, studies investigating the relationship between compact cities and livability do not take into consideration the importance of public transport, accessibility and mix of land uses along with high densities. Moreover, direct comparisons of livability between the compact city and its alternative, urban sprawl, are scarce, and even more so in a European context. Investigating the metropolitan area of Oslo, which encompasses both compact and sprawled areas, this study examines the impact of the compact city on livability by employing neighbourhood satisfaction as a livability measure. Three different methods are used: cross-sectional regression analysis, longitudinal comparisons and qualitative analysis. Cross-sectional results indicate that compact-city residents are significantly more satisfied with their neighbourhood than those who live in sprawled neighbourhoods, even after controlling for sociodemographic and other variables. Longitudinal analysis based on residents who have lived in both neighbourhood types confirms this finding. This study also examines the impact of compactness within a wider range of urban form typologies and finds that the higher the density, the higher the neighbourhood satisfaction. Important components of the compact city – public transport, accessibility to city centre and land use mix – demonstrate a positive association with neighbourhood satisfaction. Findings from this study suggest that, when common urban problems are addressed, and when planned to integrate all its essential characteristics, the compact city has a positive influence on livability.
This critical commentary confronts and explores the – so far under-recognised and under-researched – emergent global crisis of urban housing affordability and affordable housing provision. This crisis results from the fact that housing-related household expenses are rising faster than salary and wage increases in many urban centres around the world; a situation triggered by at least three global post-Global Financial Crisis megatrends of accelerated (re)urbanisation of capital and people, the provision of cheap credit and the rise of intra-society inequality. Reflecting on the recent findings of extensive comparative ethnographic research across Western countries, and analytically approaching housing affordability and affordable housing issues from a broadly understood intersection of political and economic spheres (e.g. issues of state and market, governance and regulation, policy and investment), the paper pursues four key objectives: raising awareness of the crisis, showing its extent and context-specificity but also the severe social as well as problematic spatial implications, linking current developments to key academic debates in housing studies and urban studies, and importantly, developing a research agenda that can help to redress the currently detectable ‘policy–outcome’ gap in policy making by asking fresh and urgent questions from empirical, theoretical and political viewpoints. This intervention ultimately calls for more dedicated and politicised knowledge production towards achieving affordable urban futures for all.
How have house prices evolved over the long run? This paper presents annual house prices for 14 advanced economies since 1870. We show that real house prices stayed constant from the nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, but rose strongly and with substantial cross-country variation in the second half of the twentieth century. Land prices, not replacement costs, are the key to understanding the trajectory of house prices. Rising land prices explain about 80 percent of the global house price boom that has taken place since World War II. Our findings have implications for the evolution of wealthto- income ratios, the growth effects of agglomeration, and the price elasticity of housing supply.
Many cities today face challenges related to urban growth. This is also the case in Oslo, currently one of the fastest growing capitals in Europe. In order to prepare for the population growth, a new municipal master plan has been prepared. In this, sustainable development is a prominent concept, and the urban district is going to be densified as part of the strategy. This paper examines some obstacles of turning planning theory into practice. There is a lack of coherence between municipal goals and the actual outcome. The analysis indicates that the official strategy is not able to cater for social sustainability partly due to institutional constraints. Moreover, there is no concise understanding of what sustainability means, which in turn hampers the ability to operationalise the concept in urban planning.
As the world increasingly urbanizes, the imaginaries, conceptions and politics of urban density will become increasingly urgent for research, policy, practice and activism. Density is a keyword in the history of how the city has been conceived and understood, and is firmly back on the global urban agenda. However, we lack sustained studies of how the geographies of density have been defined, lived, and contested. This paper develops a topological approach to urban density, considers key ways in which density has been politicized, and examines an emerging research area that understands the life and politics of density as ‘intensive heterogeneities’.
This bibliography focuses on the dynamic relationships between housing affordability for the low- and moderate-income (LMI) population and smart growth management and planning practices. Smart growth advocates generally seek to promote greater housing affordability and diversity. However, compact development, a goal of smart growth, curbs land development and poses significant challenges to promoting affordability. Housing markets can be affected by smart growth-related planning practices, ranging from growth management policies to various urban design tools such as transit-oriented development and urban infill. The review concludes by emphasizing several important social, administrative, and economic issues facing a successful integration of smart growth and affordable housing goals, and discusses possible solutions for maintaining affordability.
Inclusionary housing brings together housing supply policies and social housing policies. This article contrasts this combination of policies to a situation where the two policies are kept separate. Drawing on theory of institutional change, the article highlights constitutional, organisational and cultural aspects of inclusionary housing policy and compares this with the features of a policy where inclusionary housing is not adopted. The article seeks to assess similarities and discrepancies between the English version of inclusionary housing and Norway’s housing and planning policy. The planning law and practices, the policy for housing affordability, financial support systems, actors and organisations are assessed and compared. The article concludes that if Norway wanted to implement ICH, it would be possible to customise the planning practices and finance schemes, but new organisations would have to be established. On top of that, there are also cultural divergences between the policy regimes that would need to be regarded.
Sustainable mobility has been an important concern in urban planning and development in Oslo Metropolitan Area since the 1990s. The period has been characterized by concentrated and compact urban development, especially within the municipality of Oslo. This has contributed to a reduction in growth in car traffic. Analyses of selected land use and transport plans and policy documents, professional journal articles and interviews with key actors show that there has been a high degree of consensus about this spatial development strategy. Considerable investments have been made in public transport as well as in road development; the former based on broad consensus. Road capacity increases have been contested among professionals but widely supported by politicians.
Taking feminist research as a starting point into the ways in which gentrification shapes gender relations in the city, this article addresses the phenomenon of new-build gentrifi- cation in terms of the re-contouring of gendered boundaries of public and private urban life. I examine how a widespread process of condominium development in Toronto is informed by neoliberal policy imperatives such as growth and competition. I also explore the ways in which the neoliberal, political-economic rationality underlying condominium development translates into changes in the ways that a particular group of city dwellers, women condominium owners, conceptualize their relationships to their homes, neighborhoods, and the city at large. This study suggests that condominium living produces a shift in the way that public and private spaces are understood and experienced, and that this shift has contradictory implications for the reshaping
There is widespread agreement that metropolitan growth should be channeled into compact, walkable developments. New growth should include diverse housing types and mixed land uses and support pedestrian access and public transit. This article investigates how local government regulation has responded to this trend. Local development regulation is empirically examined by analyzing how much “smart growth” policies are implemented at the local level and investigating how much regulatory cultures prevent compact, pedestrian-oriented development. A typology of the kinds of local regulation used to promote smart growth is first established. Interregulatory consistency is also investigated—to what degree are cities and counties adopting frameworks consistent with smart growth? The types of developments implemented by local zoning regulations are then quantified. Results from a large-scale sample show that local jurisdictions in Illinois employ relatively low levels of smart growth-related prescriptive policies, and regulations generally run counter to smart growth development ideals.
The aim of the research described in this paper is to examine the validity of the claims that higher-density urban form promotes social equity—that is, promotes benefits for the life-chances of low-income groups. Overall, the evidence suggests that, for medium-sized English cities, higher urban densities may be positive for some aspects of social equity and negative for others. More specifically, likely benefits include improved public transport, reduced social segregation and better access to facilities, while the main problems are likely to be reduced living space and a lack of affordable housing. Investigations of different aspects of density show that the cities that most support social equity appear to be those that have a large proportion of high-density housing.
In this paper, an examination is made of the accessibility of the homeownership market using measures that include both supply and demand characteristics of regional housing markets. These measures are applied empirically on an extensive dataset that covers the Dutch housing market. The analysis quantifies the extent to which the position of first-time buyers on the homeownership market has weakened over time and identifies the driving factors of this change. It is found that smaller portions of the housing market are becoming affordable due to financial constraints of young households. However, more importantly, first-time buyers today need to contend with a much larger group of competing bidders on every house that suits their financial situation, than ever before.
Although urban sustainability programs frequently include measures that focus on the environmental and economic components of sustainability, the social dimension of sustainability remains underrepresented. An analytical vulnerability approach from global change vulnerability research provides one way to evaluate the distributional impacts and procedural aspects of sustainability initiatives. I apply the vulnerability approach to a study of one contemporary sustainability initiative in New York City, brownfield redevelopment, and identify populations who are vulnerable to the negative impacts of the redevelopment process: elderly residents, renters, and residents receiving government assistance. The results of the case study suggest that the vulnerability approach provides a way to develop indicators of social sustainability for inclusion in existing urban sustainability indicator projects.