Public housing estates are disappearing from London’s skyline in the name of regeneration, while new mixed-tenure developments are arising in their place. This richly illustrated book provides a vivid interdisciplinary account of the controversial urban policy of demolition and rebuilding amid London’s housing crisis and the polarisation between the city’s have-nots and have-lots. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and interviews with over 180 residents living in some of the capital’s most deprived areas, Watt shows the dramatic ways that estate regeneration is reshaping London, fuelling socio-spatial inequalities via state-led gentrification. Foregrounding resident experiences and perspectives both before and during regeneration, he examines class, place belonging, home and neighbourhood, and argues that the endless regeneration process results in degeneration, displacement and fragmented communities.

‘Degrowth’, a type of ‘postgrowth’, is becoming a strong political, practical and cultural movement for downscaling and transforming societies beyond capitalist growth and non-capitalist productivism to achieve global sustainability and satisfy everyone’s basic needs. This groundbreaking collection on housing for degrowth addresses key challenges of unaffordable, unsustainable and anti-social housing today, including going beyond struggles for a 'right to the city' to a 'right to metabolism', advocating refurbishment versus demolition, and revealing controversies within the degrowth movement on urbanisation, decentralisation and open localism. International case studies show how housing for degrowth is based on sufficiency and conviviality, living a ‘one planet lifestyle’ with a common ecological footprint. This book explores environmental, cultural and economic housing and planning issues from interdisciplinary perspectives such as urbanism, ecological economics, environmental justice, housing studies and policy, planning studies and policy, sustainability studies, political ecology, social change and degrowth. It will appeal to students and scholars across a wide range of disciplines.

This book offers a fresh new approach to the study of housing. It explores the meaning that housing has for individuals and households by examining 'housing pathways'. Housing pathways refer to the varying household forms that individuals experience and the housing routes that they take over time. The book argues that housing has increasingly become a means to an end rather than an end in itself. The end is personal fulfilment and the main task of housing research is to elucidate the links. In this pursuit, the concepts of identity and lifestyle are key. Specifically, the book examines the structure and functioning of households and links this to changing discourses of the family; explores the important interconnections between housing and employment; considers the relationship between people and the physical aspects of a house and its location; looks at housing in terms of lifestyle choice from youth to old age and discusses the implications of the pathways approach for housing policy and future research in the field. The meaning of housing is recommended to anyone researching and studying housing and particularly to those wishing to engage with the new research agenda set out here.

In every major city in the world there is a housing crisis. How did this happen and what can we do about it? Everyone needs and deserves housing. But today our homes are being transformed into commodities, making the inequalities of the city ever more acute. Profit has become more important than social need. The poor are forced to pay more for worse housing. Communities are faced with the violence of displacement and gentrification. And the benefits of decent housing are only available for those who can afford it. In Defense of Housing is the definitive statement on this crisis from leading urban planner Peter Marcuse and sociologist David Madden. They look at the causes and consequences of the housing problem and detail the need for progressive alternatives. The housing crisis cannot be solved by minor policy shifts, they argue. Rather, the housing crisis has deep political and economic roots—and therefore requires a radical response.

The field of urban economics is built on an analysis of housing prices, land rents, housing consumption, spatial form, and other aspects of urban residential structure. Drawing on the journal publications and teaching notes of Professor John Yinger of Syracuse University, Housing and Commuting: The Theory of Urban Residential Structure presents a simple model of urban residential structure and shows how the model's results change when key assumptions are made more realistic. This book provides a wide-ranging introduction to research on urban residential structure. Topics covered range from theoretical analysis of urban structure with different transportation systems or multiple worksites to empirical work on the impact of local public services on house values and the impact of racial prejudice and discrimination on housing choices. Graduate students and scholars who want to learn about research in urban economics will find this book to be a good starting point.

This informative volume gathers contemporary accounts of the growth, influences on, and impacts of so-called gated communities, developments with walls, gates, guards and other forms of surveillance. While gated communities have become a common feature of the urban landscape in South Africa, Latin and North America, it is also clear that there is now significant interest in gated living in the European and East Asian urban context. The chapters in this book investigate issues and communities such as: gated communities in the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires, Argentina planning responses to gated communities in Canada who segregates whom? The analysis of a gated community in Mendoza, Argentina sprawl and social segregation in southern California. These illustrative chapters enable the reader to understand more about the social and economic forces that have lead to gating, the ways in which gated communities are managed, and their wider effects on both residents and those living outside the gates. This book was previously published as a special issue of the journal Housing Studies.