ABSTRACT

This article confronts the global affordable urban housing crisis by critically examining what has arguably become the dominant policy rhetoric in advanced economies: the accelerated market-based housing supply. This approach promotes efficient land and housing markets, fashions an enabling approach to planning, aims to deregulate development and building processes, and seeks to curtail local government and planning systems’ powers. These claims are juxtaposed here with heterodox literature strands, and—utilizing a multicity comparative ethnographical methodology—urban stakeholders’ perspectives in the Australasian housing crisis hotspots of Sydney and Auckland. The findings suggest a convergence of sobering stakeholders’ perspectives and critical, multifaceted literature claims. They thus demonstrate the fallacies of the market supply fetish in relation to generating affordability, and expose its status-quo-reproducing nature. The concluding reflections call for an intellectual and political engagement with the affordable city imaginary and associated policy strategies toward affordable futures for all.

摘要

本文通过批判性地研究可以说已成为发达经济体的主要政策言论，以应对全球可负担城市住房危机：加速以市场为基础的住房供应。这种方法促进了有效的土地和住房市场，形成了一种有利的规划方法，旨在放松对开发和建设过程的管制，并试图削弱地方政府和规划系统的权力。这些主张在这里与异端文献并列，并利用多城市比较人种学方法论——城市利益相关者在悉尼和奥克兰的澳大利亚住房危机热点地区的观点。研究结果表明，发人深省的利益相关者的观点与批判性的、多方面的文献主张相结合。因此，他们证明了市场供应迷信在产生负担能力方面的谬误，并暴露了其现状复制的性质。结论性思考呼吁对可负担城市的想象和相关政策战略进行知识和政治参与，以实现人人负担得起的未来。