No abstract

In environmental planning practice, political parties tend to be perceived as marginal, unimportant or even dysfunctional. Although urban politicians are increasingly important in the formulation of strong sustainable policies, there is little research that explicitly and empirically looks at the role of elected officials in shaping policies for urban sustainability. This paper scrutinizes the role of parties in formulating urban agendas of sustainable development and in triggering projects of eco-district development in Amsterdam and Stockholm. It does so in order to show how parties play a multiplicity of roles: they mobilize voters through differentiated agendas, they organize the translation of agendas into interventions and act as power holders in the formulation of sustainable urban policies. Combining a post-political framework and classic work on electoral politics, we show how this dynamic occurs in practice. We empirically illustrate that the behavior of parties resonates with the insights of a post-political critique but they do not behave linearly and homogeneously in the 'policing' process. They show a complex combination of mobilizing, politicizing and depoliticizing tactics. Political parties are relevant to ecodevelopment and should be problematized within contemporary urban research.

This paper investigates the aspirations and strategies of self-builders of owner-occupied homes in a facilitated self-build scheme. It draws on a qualitative case-study of the Homeruskwartier in Almere, the Netherlands, one the largest assisted self-build schemes in presentday Europe, which caters to lower-and middle-income households. The study problematizes the notion that self-building necessarily leads to the pursuit of use values over exchange values. This questions the positive benefits attributed to self-building. The aspirations of self-builders are not only framed by social and material conditions, but are also being reframed in the action process. The paper stresses the contingent nature of aspirations and strategies and emphasizes the experimental nature of the self-building process.

Tenure in collaborative housing remains under contextualized. Unpacking tenure contributes to internal differentiation of collaborative housing, its comparison to other modes of housing provision and the evaluation of potential benefits. This paper develops an ideal-typical typology of tenure through property regimes. These constitute social arrangements regarding the allocation of rights, rules and roles with respect to a resource. In terms of organizational characteristics, collaborative housing is based on limited common property, self-governance and sets of internal rules. While sharing these characteristics with other residential communities, collaborative housing can be differentiated by virtue of collectively held management and commissioning rights. Property regimes are a mediating variable for both positive and negative effects attributed to collaborative housing.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

Comparing the housing situation of European city-regions is complicated by the large differences between social-economic and institutional conditions. In the first part of the chapter, a global indication is given of the different tenures, the differences of accessibility, and the recent tendencies of housing conditions. Social and private rent appear to be the most common arrangements for low- and middle-income groups; these are provided by different public and private sector agencies. The second part of the chapter discusses recent experiences of articulating the commissioning role of tenants vis à vis the public sector, the market and the established developers in a number of significant cases.