Affordable housing and sustainable development: a tale of two systems

摘要

According to the World Urbanisation Prospects published by the United Nations in 2014, in the next three decades the rate of urbanisation will increase at a fast pace, adding 2.5 billion new dwellers to the current urban population. To accommodate this growth the world needs to create the equivalent of 300 new megacities, each roughly the size of London. However, London, like Rome, was not built in a day, and maybe creating new megacities is not the best solution to cope with this path of urbanisation. So, where will all these people live? More importantly, perhaps, how will these new urbanites dwell? What will be the role of architects and urban planners in this process? Answering these questions is anything but simple. Eecent critical scholarship following in the footsteps of Henry George's Progress and Poverty or Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century singles out inequality as the single most problematic issue that challenges the future of cities, both in the so-called urban global south and in the most developed countries. The recent history of the role of the state in the promotion of affordable housing is vital to understanding how inequality in housing opportunities became the new normal.