Housing is a basic need. Suppose only this banal statement is so undisputed that it serves as the basis for an internationally recognized social right. In that case, housing as a practice and the conditions that socially and spatially structure it is of enduring and compelling social importance. It is precisely for this reason that housing, more than any other aspect of human life, reflects processes of social change. For this very reason, housing reflects social transformation processes like hardly any other aspect of human life.
Significant upheavals, processes of change, and challenges can be analyzed through the perspective of housing. At the same time, housing is characterized in a unique way by a tense interrelationship between social change on the one hand and its spatial materialization as a built form on the other. The socially produced built environment influences everyday practices and social interactions and creates path dependencies for future social developments. In the face of climate change, digitalization, housing shortages, and the energy crisis, the complexity of social demands on housing is becoming more evident than ever before – as are the challenges of its transformation.
The Research Training Group focuses on the question of which problems, contradictions and conflicts arise from the tension between social change and the spatial materialisation of housing and how the built living environment shapes or should shape future social development paths. The long-term aim of the research group is to understand this complex and sometimes contradictory interplay.
We assume that the current trends of change in structurally weak and growing areas, metropolitan regions, cities, and suburban or rural areas produce different spatial materializations, conflicts, contradictions, and challenges. The program’s explicit aim is to examine the interwoven and yet different housing issues in various spatial contexts.
Geographically focussed, housing issues are initially investigated in a European context to be able to relate the research findings from the research group to each other despite the diversity of housing regimes.
