This course is cross-listed in SOC. SOC is the home department.
This one semester course is part of a sequence of classes tied to the Latin American Housing network research initiatives (www.lahn.utexas.org). UN-Habitat convenes bi-decennially: the first meeting was in Vancouver in 1976; the second in Istanbul in 1996; and the third took place in 2016 (October 15-17, in Quito, Ecuador). Last year’s class explored the dynamics and role of the three UN-Habitat meetings and the World Urban Forum meetings (every two years since 2002).).
This 2017 class wiIl analyze the changing nature of housing policy since the 1970s focusing especially on how neoliberal economic and political theory are shaping housing practices and housing policies since the late 1990s, and the extent to which neoliberal and post-neoliberalism shaped featured in the UN Habitat III meeting.
Three major thrusts in social and household organization, housing practices and policy will be examined. First, the rise of mass social housing estates targeting lower income formal workers in three countries in which they have been developed on a large scale (Mexico, Brazil and Chile). Their location in peri-urban areas of major metropolitan areas with long travel commutes and poor social infrastructure is now leading to major problems of non-occupancy and abandonment. Second will be a focus on an emerging counter movement of densification, urban regeneration and housing rehab – all taking place in the inner urban neighborhoods or old suburbs. This will draw upon insights and research across nine Latin American countries as part of the Latin American Housing Network (LAHN) www.lahn.utexas.org and the Ward et al. recent (2015) publication Housing Policy in Latin American Cities: A New Generation of Strategies and Approaches for 2016 UN-HABITAT III http://www.routledge.com/9781138776869/. Third, until recently, just as few researchers had explored rehab as a major policy plank, so too has the nature of low income renting and sharing been systematically analyzed with a view to developing policies to encourage the production and consumption of rental housing options.
The graduate seminar class will systematically analyze these three major arenas of contemporary housing practice and policy making in light of neoliberal theory and the outcomes and directions of the UN-Habitat III Congress. It will be tied to a two-day Capstone Workshop on the Directions and Dilemmas Post UN Habitat, partially supported by LLILAS, COLA and the LBJ School designed to bring together invited international scholars and policy experts to engage with UT faculty and graduate students as we debate and reflect on future urban development and housing policies for the next decade.