support required for those that have been subsidised’. The arguments are interesting in so far as needs for affordable housing are not denied here but would leave its supply entirely to the free‐market mechanism, in the end accepting that these would privilege the ‘productive parts’ of the population with suitable housing options in central locations, while those depending on affordable housing would have to relocate and consequently be excluded from the social and economic networks and opportunities they are part of. Such displacements from central neighbourhoods to the peripheries would also increase need for transportation, indicating that exclusion also has an ecological dimension.
It is important to anticipate that issues of affordability go way beyond just economic aspects. In particular, because the notion of ‘making and having a home’ is considered to be an essential and ‘universal activity and (…) an extension and expression of our capacity to create’ (Madden and Marcuse 2016), the experience of displacement – either ‘direct’ by means of evictions, e.g. in order to raise rents or redevelop habitats, or ‘exclusionary’ by market mechanisms that render unobtainable what might have otherwise been a viable housing option – have fundamental social and psychological effects (Madden and Marcuse 2016). Dwellers forced to relocate are exposed to precarity, disempowerment, and insecurity; destructive for both individuals and communities. Affected citizens must reconstitute their social and professional networks ‘in circumstances that almost by definition are strained’ (Madden and Marcuse 2016).
These developments cast a more complex light on who is affected by exclusion – from opportunities to experience the benefits of ‘otherness’ and participate in and contribute to the social and economic potentials the urban realm could offer. Armborst et al. note that in general ‘cities (in general) bring people together, but they're pretty good at keeping people apart too’ and argue that most Americans still live in communities that ‘are racially, economically, (and) generationally … segregated’ (Armborst et al. 2017). Aiming to understand the specific reasons, the authors compile an entire ‘Arsenal of Exclusion & Inclusion’, inventorying physical artefacts, policies, and practices used by multiple actors – designers, policymakers, developers, real estate brokers, community activists, or others – to deliberately either restrict or enable inclusive access to housing, urban spaces, facilities, and service – as instruments of either integration or segregation, inclusion or exclusion.
Agencies of exclusion identified in their studies are – among others – exclusive access to public spaces, racist housing policies and racially‐homogeneous communities, gated communities, masterplans leading to exclusion of affordable housing projects, physical infrastructure solidifying socio‐spatial segregation, loopholes to relocate affordable housing options to other areas, segregating school district policies, or lack of choice regarding apartment types. Also, architecture itself as a creative domain ‘which makes real estate real’ contributes to the socio‐economic disparities at play, both reflecting and producing the prevailing social and economic order (Martin et al. 2015). These exclusionary practices continue to apply – and have a systemic capability to apply highly sophisticated financial instruments and legal expertise (Sassen 2014), undermining the capacities of the affected to defend their rights.
Examples fostering inclusion are policies against discrimination of people with disabilities, affordable housing subsidies also giving access to jobs, education, and health, housing options for immigrants, inclusionary housing policies setting quotas for low‐ and moderate‐income household in new developments, public support for ‘Naturally Occurring Retirement Community’ (see also below), or senior housing options for LGBT communities. The authors note that this arsenal reads in general almost like a historical account of the making of the modern American city as such, arguing how instrumental these ‘weapons’ are for the level of inclusivity of urban societies.
Agencies of Inclusion
Instruments to prevent exclusion and to cater for inclusive cities with ‘just spaces’, in which people ‘feel welcome’ (Armborst et al. 2017) are manifold, can be either legislative, financial, or project‐based, bottom‐up or top‐down – and might often emerge across different fields, parties, and strategies. The actors are both spatial and social designers, administrative bodies, legislators, NGOs, or community initiatives. The contexts of intervention are simultaneously legal, spatial, and social and affect both the design and operation of habitats.
One aspect often raised is the control of property prices or their entire withdrawal from unrestrained market mechanisms – an important prerequisite to prevent gentrification and displacement. There is an increasing recognition that profit maximization in an essential good like housing is problematic and that non‐profit economic models are more sustainable in the long term. Examples are the Limited‐Profit‐Housing Act applied in Vienna and Austria in general, to provide habitats whose economic viability is not based on short‐term profit‐maximization but on creating habitats that are sustainable, both socially and ecologically, in the long term (see Gerald Kössl’s chapter). To restrain property speculation, since 2016 public land in Berlin is only awarded as leasehold, (Weißmüller 2018). In Zurich, a referendum decided in 2011 that by 2050 one third of the city's total rental stock should be affordable, non‐profit apartments, so that by now 27% of rental apartments operate on a non‐profit basis, with 20% run by cooperatives (Kalagas 2019). Other models secure affordable apartments ownership by lease‐to‐own financing policies to support social sustainability and stable communities, such as with the Puukuokka Housing project in Finland (Hamm 2015). Here, a small down payment on the purchase price entitles dwellers to a state‐guaranteed loan.
In Singapore, 80% of the permanent population live in subsidized apartments built by the public Housing & Development Board, almost all of them as owner‐occupiers (The Economist 2017), while speculative spikes in property prices are in general limited by taxation policies (Deng et al. 2019). Also, in the Canadian province British Columbia, a Speculation and Vacancy Tax (Government of British Columbia 2020) penalizes property acquisitions purely based on asset building. But while Inclusionary Zoning legislations in New York also claim to prevent segregation, Madden and Marcuse (2016) criticize these policies for leaving the provision of affordable housing entirely to the market and having significant loopholes: mandatory affordable housing units are not only reverted to market prices after a specified period, they can also be built in completely different areas and thus rather enhance gentrification (Madden and Marcuse 2016).
As an alternative track, participatory and bottom‐up‐initiated collective building and living models are widely discussed as solutions for the scarcity of affordable housing option and the empowerment of dwellers that conventional housing developments are unable to resolve (Kries 2017). Building cooperatives are considered to be socially sustainable, inclusive solutions to address global housing challenges (Lutz 2019). But those collaborative housing projects based on individual (home) ownership can still have ‘a tendency to further the economic interests of residents, at the expense of the external solidarity with groups looking to access affordable housing’ (Sørvoll, Bengtsson, 2018), bearing the risk ‘that co‐housing communities will become (if not remain) enclaves for the relatively privileged.’ (Larsen 2020). As a consequence, Madden and Marcuse (2016) argue that alternative forms of tenure must be implemented and also be pursued by public housing authorities at a larger scale and made accessible to marginalized groups, in order to be more than ‘being interesting exceptions to an otherwise unchanged residential condition’.
Designing Coexistence
However, alternative, emancipatory housing projects at local scale can also serve as ‘living demonstrations’ of potential habitats for inclusive cities, as examples of how ‘housing might support non‐oppressive social relations (…) in everyday life’ (Madden and Marcuse 2016).
In the US, there are currently about 243 community land trusts, nonprofit organization originating from the civil right movements, that acquire land to be used for the benefit of the neighbourhood like for food production or affordable housing. As a response to the housing crisis they lease homeownership to tenants at