Urban Social Protests: Towards a Post-Neoliberal Decommodification of Housing?

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Sebastian Schipper
• Subject Area: Human Geography
• Term: from 2015 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 278124007

In many urban centers worldwide and especially since the beginning of the global financial crisis in 2008, contradictions inherent to long-lasting processes of neoliberalization result in increasing public unease and serious social protests. Something is going on in many urban environments as old and new political actors and coalitions take to the streets and occupy places, engage in community organizing and enter parliaments, network across places and scales, and change the character of urban politics in general. One focus of many such activities is housing provision. Escalating rents and a lack of affordable housing have, for instance, given rise to growing urban social movements against the deregulation of rent control mechanisms, the gentrification of inner-city neighborhoods, and the marketization and privatization of former non-profit public housing associations. In light of the above, critical scholars have discussed whether the urban scale is becoming again a privileged terrain of social struggles and alternative political experiments that go beyond existing market-based housing regulation. Against this background, the proposed research project focuses on the question of whether social protests are able to promote "regulatory experiments" (Brenner et al. 2010a: 335) that go beyond the neoliberal restructuring of the last decades and that could lead to the decommodification of housing in the interest of both the middle and lower classes. With special focus on housing regulation in the metropolitan regions of Tel Aviv-Jaffa in Israel and Frankfurt am Main in Germany, the central objectives of the project are 1) to formulate a comprehensive knowledge on how and why different forms of resistance are able (or not able) to reverse the long-lasting trend towards unfettered market-based regulation, and 2) to understand the significance of social protests and urban social movements in struggles for the decommodification of housing. Thereby, the term decommodification refers to all alternative practices and non-neoliberal concepts that impose limits on the commodity character of housing and open up strategies for a housing provision beyond market rule. This includes, for instance, legal and financial state interventions in housing markets, the strengthening of non-profit public housing associations, and the establishment of housing commons through collective ownership models independent of state authorities (like self-governed cooperatives, communal land trusts, or tenement trusts). The analysis is comparative and multiscalar, situating both cities within their metropolitan, national and global contexts, and it uses mixed methods, such as desk research, statistical market analyses, content and discourse analyses, expert and in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, and in-field participation.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Israel
• Cooperation Partners: Professor Dr. Bernd Belina; Professorin Dr. Tovi Fenster; Professorin Dr.-Ing. Barbara Schönig