The Call for Papers is now closed. Authors have been notified and asked to submit their full papers by 10 Oct 2018. All information about the Conference Program can be found here. Registration is open until 24 October 2018. Please download the Registration Form here.
Migration, climate change and economic globalisation fundamentally transform human and social life in the 21st century. Under the title “Housing and Human Settlements in a World of Change”, the 19th N-AERUS conference will bring together international scholars and urban specialists to discuss the interlinkage between these three global megatrends and housing as well as housing provision under the umbrella of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and New Urban Agenda (NUA).
The Department of International Urbanism is delighted to host the annual N-AERUS conference this year and very much looks forward to welcoming you at the at the University of Stuttgart, Germany to join the discussion and exchange! The conference is open to N-AERUS members as well as scholars, specialists and students free of charge.
The challenge of housing is increasingly recognised in the international policy discussion in its broader links to processes of migration, climate change, and economic globalisation. In spite of the fact that housing is recognised as a basic human right and essential for human development, securing safe and adequate housing for everyone remains a major global development challenge of the 21st century (Tibaijuka, 2009). Recent international agreements have therefore put housing at the centre of urban development and call for systematic approaches to the housing challenge (SDGs 2015, Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, the Addis Ababa Action Agenda on Financing for Development, the Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change 2015, the NUA 2016). The objective of this conference is therefore to debate the challenges of housing and emerging solutions along the lines of three major dynamics: migration, climate change and neo-liberalism. Scholars from all disciplines are invited to submit abstracts in relation to the topics of the following three sessions.
SESSIONS:
• Housing and migration
Worldwide more than 65 million people are on the move due to conflict or natural disasters (UNHCR, 2015). In addition, rural to urban migration increases pressure on urban infrastructure and on the housing demand. Most recently the influx of refugees in Europe has put affordable and safe housing back on the agenda in the Global North. This issue has persisted in the Global South over decades. Here, high pressure on urban areas and the failure of local governments to provide access to affordable housing has led to the current condition of more than one billion urban dwellers living in informal settlements worldwide (UN-Habitat, 2016).Thus, it calls for addressing inefficient housing policies, stringent regulations and inaccessible housing finance as well as to acknowledge informal solutions and efforts taken by the urban poor themselves in order to achieve an inclusive and empowering approach. The question that can be addressed in the conference papers under the session housing and migration is as follows: how are the dynamics of migrations reshaping the urban housing provision in a changing world?
• Housing and climate change
A large amount of informal urban dwellers resides in risky locations that are prone to natural disasters, for instance on river banks prone to flooding or areas in danger of landslides. With the impact of climate change, the frequency of natural disasters and issues such as urban heat islands often intensify with disastrous consequences for the most vulnerable groups in many instances (UN-Habitat, 2014). Thus, access to safe and adequate housing also means access to land in safe locations (Boonyabancha, 2009). The assessment and perception of risk is, however, not without contestation. Urban poor communities living on risk sites are also exposed to the threat of eviction and relocation that would cause further vulnerability. This contested situation calls for upscaling of the levels on which housing is being discussed and thus for a citywide approach towards a strategy of safe and affordable housing. Integration of (community-based) risk-mapping into urban development and a discussion of land and infrastructure developmenttools associated with housing can identify the pathways for increasing urban resilience in well-connected and safe locations. The question that can be addressed in the conference papers under the session housing and climate change is as follows: how are human settlements able to respond with different housing approaches to extreme climate events?
• Housing in the neo-liberal paradigm
Neo-liberalism has dominated policy discourse and policy formulation for at least two decades and has been particularly influential in reshaping housing systems and housing opportunities for the urban poor. Neo-liberal housing approaches have involved privatisation, increased rents, reduced subsidy, deregulation of private housing and mortgage lending, and weakening of planning controls for new and existing housing; they reduced state intervention in social and economic affairs and the firmly established assertion of the superiority of market processes (Forrest and Hirayama, 2009; Mukhija, 2004). Despite broad application, this approach has seldom yielded the desired results, and it has been recognised that the success of the two first decades of the market enablement paradigm in the housing sector has been rather modest (Keivani and Werna, 2001). However, the type of neo-liberalism and its outcomes in relation to housing differ across political, economic, social and cultural contexts. Therefore, it is of significance to contextualise how neo-liberal ‘enabling’ ideas have been modified in different countries to address the issue of housing, particularly housing for the urban poor. The question that can be addressed in the conference papers under the session housing in the neo-liberal paradigm is as follows: what outcomes have the neo-liberal ‘enabling’ ideas brought on the ground to address the issue of housing in the last two decades?
THE HOST INSTITUTE:
The Department of International Urbanism of the Institute of Urban Planning and Design, University of Stuttgart, Germany will be the organising and hosting institution of the 19th N-AERUS Conference. The department’s research and teaching activities focus on the following themes: global processes of urbanisation and urban transformation, metropolisation, social-spatial segregation and functional differentiation, spatial-social polarisation and urban conflicts, conflict and synergies between formal and informal actors and development processes, self-help urbanism, inner-city slums and urban poverty, provision of social, cultural and technical infrastructure, sustainable urban governance and urban management, stakeholder interaction and grass root participation in planning and development processes. Further information on the Department of International Urbanism can be found on its website www.unistuttgart.de/si/siaal/. The organising team of Department of International Urbanism, University of Stuttgart Astrid Ley, Md. Ashiq Ur Rahman & Josefine Fokdal
The Call for Papers is now closed.
All information about the Conference Program can be found here.
Please download the Registration Form here.
Please find the Conference Papers here.
FURTHER INFORMATION:
For more information please contact naerus2018@si.uni-stuttgart.de.
HOST INSTITUTE:
Institute of Urban Planning and Design, University of Stuttgart