2019 Conference: Housing under Pressure

Overview

Kicking off the series, the Vienna 2019 conference is primarily dedicated to the topic “Housing,” while the focus in Munich in 2020 will be on “Resources,” followed by “Public Spaces” in 2021 in Zurich.

With the Vienna conference’s theme “Housing under Pressure: Dynamics Between Centers and Peripheries,” the network will search for new perspectives on social housing and sustainable development. The inter- and transdisciplinary dialogue promotes discussion of challenges currently faced by growing cities and surrounding regions, with a particular focus on opportunities for design and innovative potential.

Focus

Rapid urban growth is associated not only with economic prosperity, the development of new fields of knowledge and technological innovation, but also with economic inequality, social polarization, and environmental costs.

Social inequality and societal tensions between the state, market, and general populace are particularly evident amid growth in already strained urban housing markets in European and global metropolises: a lack of housing for a growing and increasingly mobile population, enormous rises in prices in the markets to rent and to buy, rapidly increasing living costs in households with limited incomes.

Challenges Related to Housing Supply

Infill and redensification in attractive areas, a shortage of public spaces, the gentrification of city centers, and associated displacement effects are in many places as much of a challenge in providing housing supply as the development of new neighborhoods and public infrastructure with limited city budgets and space capacities.

At the same time, demographic shifts, growing environmental impact, and disparate living conditions are exerting pressure on state actors and democratic processes to develop socially inclusive, health-promoting, and resource-efficient housing policy.

Transformation of Housing

Against this background, complex dynamics are taking place between centers and peripheral urban areas, in which urban functions and urban usage are shifting, new patterns of suburbanization are emerging, and places of living and dwelling are changing rapidly.

A number of transdisciplinary and applied questions arise out of this transformation of housing related to maintaining urban populations’ access to transportation, food and medical services, and other aspects affecting the standard of living and the potential for designing alternatives for the sustainable development of residential areas.