Speaker
Description
Copenhagen, Hamburg and Helsinki aim to become “cities for everyone”, “inclusive”, cities that are “characterized by a strong, social cohesion”, and can “enable all the citizens to remain in their city, and that “ welcome all people” One of the critical issues recognized in order to reach this goal is the supply of affordable housing as planners identify affordability as one of the main contemporary crises along climate change that planners need to tackle. According to Heslop & Ormend (2020), the understanding of the “housing crisis” has rarely been fully analysed in academic literature. Therefore, using discourse analysis, this paper seeks to understand how the lack of affordable housing is represented and employed in the comprehensive spatial plans in these cities. By identifying three dominant stories in the plans, the paper will argue that densification is justified as it is thought to solve both the lack of affordable housing and to increase social cohesion. Using interviews with key planners in the cities, the paper further concludes that more emphasis should be put on the knowledge production used in the plans. This is inherently important as the dominant story about densification as a solution for complicated societal issues is used as a way to legitimize the policy actions.
References
Heslop, J. and Ormerod, E. (2020) 'Deconstructing the Dominant Narratives of the Housing Crisis', Antipode, 52(1), pp. 145-163.
| Keywords | housing crises; affordable housing; planners |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | Yes |
