This article examines housing activism in five American cities using interviews with millennial-age housing activists, seeking more apartment development, and baby boomers who are members of neighbourhood groups that oppose growth. Many of the groups supporting growth have banded together under the banner of the ‘Yes in My Backyard’ (YIMBY) movement which seeks fewer zoning laws and pushes for market-rate rental housing. In desirable cities with thriving job opportunities, housing costs are pricing out not only low-income renters but also the middle class. The millennial activists sampled blame baby boomers for the lack of affordable housing because of resistance to higher density construction in neighbourhoods with single-family homes (characterising these people as having a ‘Not in My Backyard’ [NIMBY] mindset). The research shows that boomers and millennials not only disagree over urban growth but also more fundamental questions of what makes a liveable city.
This article examines British homeowners in Spain after the 2008 economic crisis and their struggles to navigate Spain's troubled real estate sector. It argues that foreign residents previously embraced European cosmopolitanism but disputes over illegal home construction soured their opinion of European Union (EU) integration. Using ethnographic research and interviews, the article shows how these homeowners contested the idea that EU cohesion policies produced uniform legal systems related to housing and urban development. It also shows that while cosmopolitanism was often spurred at the level of formal politics, cosmopolitan 'practices' were subtly endorsed to delineate between those who had agency, and were successfully dealing with the crisis, and those who seemed to be floundering. The article confirms contemporary studies of EU regional polarization and the stalled project of creating 'social Europe', while showing how personal conceptions of mobility are highly linked to class.Since the 2008 economic crisis, Spain has become infamous for its troubled real estate sector: images of entire suburbs of abandoned homes and exposés on corruption in the construction industry have dominated the news for years. No other country has taken more interest in the scandals arising from the bursting of Spain's real estate bubble than the United Kingdom. There are 397,000 officially registered UK citizens living in Spain (Spanish National Statistics Institute, 2012) and many of them came there in order to buy property for full-time or part-time use. This article argues that this group of semi-permanent residents,
This paper traces the reception of the architectural style known as 'Mafia Baroque' within the professions of architecture and urban planning in Bulgaria. The debate within these professions was strongly linked to the general decline of power among former intellectual elites and the specific decline of architects and planners, who were sidelined as arbiters of 'good taste' and disempowered as regulators of urban growth. The reaction to this style also highlights the rise in public concern over corruption and organized crime and dissatisfaction with post-socialist urbanization. This paper chronicles the extent of changes in construction and regulation in Bulgaria during the 1990s and argues that planners and architects were challenged not only by their professional marginalization but also by a deeper embarrassment over cultural change. It then relates this debate to broader post-socialist anxieties over insufficient regulation of urbanization and fear of failing to meet Western European goals for economic and political change.
Since the 2008 crisis, youth unemployment in Southern Europe has hindered a return to social and economic stability: in Spain, the young and unemployed are sometimes referred to as a ‘lost generation’. This article investigates how rampant youth unemployment in Spain has darkened expectations for the country’s future inside the European Union (EU) as well as altered views of the past. Using interviews with jobless young people, the article argues that the severity and duration of the 2008 crisis has prompted historical revisionism. Age cohorts often organise around pivotal events and the article shows how young people have questioned the success of democratisation (1980s) and European integration (1990s), causing a growing rift with their parents’ generation. Finally, it explores generational conflict in Spain through three interconnected experiences of unemployment: returning to live with parents, urban to rural migration for a lower cost of living, and emigration to Northern Europe for employment.
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