When Choice isn’t an Option: New Forms of Housing Inequality Across Income Groups

Seminar Description: Socio-economic segregation is the outcome of inequalities in income and wealth combined with the spatial organisation of the housing market and mediated by the types of welfare housing systems. This workshop draws upon the latest research from across European cities paying particular attention to contemporary housing market transformations that both reflect and enforce new technologies of financialisation, recent economic shifts and ongoing demographic transitions. A specific outcome has been a revival of private rental sectors that follow new patterns of local and cross border flows/agglomerations of wealth derived from rents. Another related dimension of transformation has been the intensification of housing inequalities shaped by age and intergenerational differences. In combination with late-neoliberal housing policies and diminishing housing affordability, the interaction of housing market transformation with socioeconomic change is (re)shaping our cities and appears to be driving greater and more nuanced patterns of social and spatial inequality.