Ebook: Housing as intervention: architecture towards social equity

Across the world, the housing crisis is escalating. Mass migration to cities has led to rapid urbanisation on an unprecedented scale, while the withdrawal of public funding from social housing provision in Western Countries, and widening income inequality, have further compounded the situation. In prosperous US and European cities, middle- and low-income residents are being pushed out of housing markets increasingly dominated by luxury investors. The average London tennant, for example, now pays an unaffordable 49 percent of his or her pre-tax income in rent. Parts of the developing world and areas of forced migration are experiencing insufficient affordable housing stock coupled with rapidly shifting ways of life. In response to this context, forward-thinking architects are taking the lead with a collaborative approach. By partnering with allied fields, working with residents, developing new forms of housing, and leveraging new funding systems and policies, they are providing strategic leadership for what many consider to be our cities' most pressing crisis. Admidst growing economic and health disparities, this issue of AD asks how housing projects, and the design processes behind them, might be interventions towards greater social equity, and how collaborative work in housing might reposition the architectural profession at large.;About the guest editor / Karen Kubey -- Housing for the common good / Karen Kubey -- Architecture's progressive imperative : housing betterment in the 19th and 20th centuries / Matthew Gordon Lasner -- The global crisis of affordable housing : architecture versus neoliberalism / Robert Fishman -- Demapping automotive landscapes : affordability as a land game / Marc Norman -- Calling all architects : new approaches to old housing / Emily Schmidt and Rosalie Genevro -- A new era of social housing : architecture as the basis for change / Paul Karakusevic -- Designing for impact : tools for reducing disparities in health / Brian Phillips and Deb Katz -- The architect's lot : backyard homes policy and design / Dana Cuff -- Evoloving rural typologies for rapidly growing cities : Urbanus's work towards inclusive communities / Na Fu -- Beyond temporary : prototypes for resilient communities / Cynthia Barton, Deborah Gans and Rosamund Palmer -- Spaces of migration : architecture for refugees / Kaja Kühl and Julie Behrens -- Beyond green : environmental building technologies for social and economic equity / Pollyanna Rhee -- Social versus affordable : the search for inclusive housing policies in Mexico / Meir Lobaton Corona -- The land of a thousand hills : Rwanda's new urban agenda / Fatou Dieye -- Spatial models for the domestic commons : communes, co-living and cooperatives / Neeraj Bhatia and Antje Steinmuller -- Allies in equity : a conversation with an architect, a developer and a former federal housing official / Karen Kubey -- Social housing in an increasingly politicised landscape / Julia Park.