The socio-spatial production of non-market housing in urban regions under growth pressure: Thinking comparatively and relationally

This paper explores non-market housing in urban regions under growth pressure, and aims to open up a conversation about how modes of housing and related policies might be conceptualized in urban geographical scholarship, in order to broaden the possible range of housing policy measures beyond the rather narrow imperative of market solutions, that prevail here and elsewhere. The project is extension of a larger project that I have been working on for many years together with Markus Hesse examining spatial planning problems in urban regions under growth pressure. We began with exploring sustainable spatial development in Luxembourg, then we studied of regional governance in Switzerland for comparison, and now we are moving on towards one component that is central to the topic: housing and housing in non-market contexts. But how might one effectively conceptualize housing, given what we know about recent scholarship in urban studies? I'd like to argue that (1) there is much to be learned with urban comparison; (2) following the policy mobility literature, simply importing ready-made templates would be, at best (!), risky; (3) Storper's (2014) application of bricolage is useful inspiration for understanding urban transformation processes that are forever changing and in flux.