Affordable Housing within 'Planetary Boundaries': Theories, Practices, Infrastructures

The research focuses on the tension between the provision of affordable housing and the objectives of environmental sustainability. The global urban housing affordability crisis is a pressing issue that has significant social, economic, or spatial implications. The mitigation of the housing crisis often means a strong extension of the housing infrastructure (public or private). The housing crisis is accompanied by an environmental crisis, which forces the transformation of today's socio-economic systems to fit within the "planetary boundaries". The main aim of the project is to advance the understanding of this tension: 1) empirically by examining the socio-material infrastructures of "new social housing" in Vienna that tries to reconcile the tension between "the social" and "the environmental," and 2) theoretically by rethinking the question of the housing crisis in the context of the Anthropocene. The research outcomes will further develop housing studies influenced by the urban assemblages approach and thus help them to cope with current trends in global social theory and science.