affordable housing

Essays

A Global Right-to-Housing Movement Versus Financialization

Jaime Jover - 23 June 2021
Financialization enables a wealthy transnational class to accumulate capital through land, enhances inequalities...
Interviews

Fighting for Housing Justice: An Interview with Two Youth Organizers in Curtis Bay, Baltimore

Nicole Fabricant & Carlos Sanchez & Terriq Thompson - 16 March 2021
Two Baltimore youth organizers discuss the importance of community land trusts, for housing and beyond. Series:...
From the Field

The Contestations and Contradictions of the New York City Housing Authority’s Plan for Mixed-Income Redevelopment

Valerie E. Stahl - 10 November 2020
The New York City Housing Authority, faced with a capital shortfall of nearly $40 billion, is pursuing a series of...
Essays

The House is Ours: How Moms 4 Housing Challenged the Private-Property Paradigm

Lauren Everett - 6 October 2020
In the midst of a global housing affordability crisis that has been heightened by the Covid‑19 pandemic, it is time...
Essays

Shelters for Profit, Not People: The Rise of Tax-Credit Investment in US Cities

Renee Tapp - 22 September 2020
Tax-credit investment in US cities provides tax havens for investors, and squanders taxpayer resources on...
Debates

What Does a Just Housing Plan Look Like? NYC and National Housing Movements Show the Way

Oksana Mironova & Sylvia Morse - 22 October 2019
How could we develop a housing plan that is not rooted in capitalism? Oksana Mironova and Sylvia Morse describe how...
From the Field

Community Movements and Housing Liberalism: Reflections on the Bank of America Low‑Income Housing Competition

Avi Garelick - 15 October 2019
Avi Garelick describes how the imperative for realism in affordable housing production conflicts with the goals of...
Reviews

Crisis Makes Heroes: Affordable Housing in New York City During and After a “Decade of Fire”

Susan Saegert - 2 July 2019
Susan Saegert discusses the memoirs of two hard-fighting Bronx housing advocates, active at a particularly...
Debates

The Limits of the Accepted Orthodoxy on Rent Control

Loïc Bonneval & François Robert & translated by Oliver Waine - 22 March 2019
In response to a recent critique of their work, Loïc Bonneval and François Robert defend their method and results. In...
Essays

Organizing Against Projet Gentrification: Housing Activism in a White-Supremacist Landscape in Montreal

Pierce Nettling - 27 November 2018
Housing activists in Montreal and Quebec have successfully sought to secure tenant rights and social housing for...
From the Field

When Progressive Mayors Aren’t Enough: Homes for All and Trans-Local Social Movements

H. Jacob Carlson & Marnie Brady & Gianpaolo Baiocchi - 13 November 2018
Progressive governments are often pulled away from their campaign promises by local growth-coalition interests or...
Reviews

Photographing the Slums of 1900s Berlin

Danièle Voldman & translated by Oliver Waine - 14 September 2018
At the turn of the 20th century, the dramatically poor conditions of urban working-class housing was a cause of...
From the Field

The Cost of Affordability: Inclusionary Zoning and Displacement in East New York

James Shelton - 20 March 2018
What are the impacts of New York City’s Mandatory Inclusionary Housing program upon low-income communities of color?...
From the Field

Excluding Fast and Slow: Charlottesville’s Long Battle over Public Space

Frank Muraca - 9 January 2018
The “Unite the Right” white-supremacist rally in downtown Charlottesville, Virginia, erupted into violence, killing...
Debates

To Prevent Worsening Inequality, Put Affluent Neighborhoods on NYC Rezoning List

Moses Gates - 17 November 2015
Mandatory Inclusionary Zoning is meant to boost the affordable housing supply and create more economically...
Debates

New York’s de Blasio bargains with FIRE

Tom Waters - 16 June 2015
Frantic deal-making over an obscure but costly New York City real-estate tax incentive (421‑a) provides a window...
Debates

Interrupting Inequality: Crisis and Opportunity in Low-Income Housing Policy

Susan Saegert - 26 January 2015
Inequality in the United States is deeply rooted in issues of property ownership, wealth, race and class....
From the Field

“Soft densification” in Canada

Anastasia Touati & translated by Oliver Waine - 5 June 2013
Against the backdrop of a housing crisis, a number of local authorities in Ontario, Canada, have developed policies...

Series

Urban Wastes, Present and Future
New York Dossier: The Food Industry Faces the Covid‑19 Pandemic
Cities in the Age of Financialization
Contemporary Housing Struggles: Crises, Activism, and Critical Research
New York Tech Dossier: The Dark Side of New York’s Tech Economy
Progressive Mayors and Urban Social Movements
Land Rights in the Urban Global South
Climate Change and Social Change
Shrinking Cities

Featured

From the Field

Covid-19 Transformed New York’s Destination Food Markets

Ivana Mellers - 5 October 2021
Ivana Mellers analyzes how New York’s destination markets—key spaces of economic and social interactions—coped during...
Reviews

Filming Ethnic Diversity in New York

Stéphane Tonnelat & translated by Christina Mitrakos - 21 October 2016
Frederick Wiseman’s fortieth documentary film, In Jackson Heights (2015), returns to an urban theme explored in...
From the Field

Looking Inward, Across the Border

Harel Shapira - 19 April 2016
In the constellation of anti-immigrant politics in the United States, groups like the Minutemen, civilians who...
Essays

The Political Aesthetics of Drag

Shaka McGlotten - 13 October 2015
Drag, or the diverse art form and culture of performance that typically plays with gender and sex, is an integral...
Debates

Disarm the Police

Gregory Smithsimon - 29 September 2015
In the current political debates about discriminatory policing, there has been a lack of serious discussion of...
Reviews

The Dangers of Security

Médéric Martin-Mazé & translated by Oliver Waine - 22 May 2015
In Against Security, Harvey Molotch highlights – through various examples, including the New York subway, airports,...

Other resources online

Cycles of Violence: Analysing Media Discourse in the Newspaper...

Mobile Lives Forum
How are cyclist and pedestrian deaths depicted in newspaper reports, and how do these reports help shape...

Lahti: The First Carbon-Rationing Experiment Applied to Local...

Mobile Lives Forum
The city of Lahti in Finland was the first to experiment with a carbon-trading scheme among its inhabitants to...

Is Rationing Carbon for Travel a Fair, Efficient, and Realistic...

Mobile Lives Forum
In the wake of the pandemic, a carbon tax at Europe’s borders is now on the agenda, but a domestic version for...

Reducing Carbon-Emitting Travel: A Factor of Social Cohesion and...

Mobile Lives Forum
As part of France’s Mission on the Future of the Economic Model of Public Transportation, commissioned by the French...

Strasbourg, An Example of a Cycling City

Mobile Lives Forum
Strasbourg is the leading city for cycling in France and a constant source of inspiration for all French cities...

The Trinity of Walking, Cycling and Public Transportation Must Be...

Mobile Lives Forum
While emissions from the transportation sector remain at a very high level, all hopes are currently pinned on the...
Centre national de recherche scientifique
Journal supported by the Institut des Sciences Humaines et Sociales (Institute of Human and Social Sciences) of the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS)

Partners