On-edge in the impasse: Inhabiting the housing crisis as structure-of-feeling

Harris, Ella; Nowicki, Mel; Brickell, Katherine

doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2018.09.001

Cited by 40 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…predominantly white hipsters and young professionals) play a spectral role in long-time and precarious residents' feelings of unease regarding the local pace of change. 49 Affective displacement resonates with Albrecht's notion of "solastalgia," 50 which describes a form of anguish arising from the turbulence of local environmental (place) transformation, such that one is increasingly unfamiliar with their surroundings and becomes "homesick without leaving home;" indeed, Albrecht gives gentrification as an example.…”

Section: Makers Gentrification and The (Urban) Impassementioning

confidence: 99%

Old Detroit, New Detroit: “Makers” and the impasse of place change

Marotta

2020

cultural geographies

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In Cruel Optimism, Lauren Berlant describes an impasse as “what it feels like to be in the middle of a shift.” This paper mobilizes that notion of impasse to critically analyze the position of Detroit’s “maker” community against the background of a rapidly changing city. Makers, who might crudely be described as small craft-manufacturers, have found themselves entangled in an emergent narrative of place transition captured by the juxtapositional monikers of “Old Detroit” and “New Detroit.” The goal of this paper is to think through what gets taken up by these Old/New representations of Detroit – and what the shift between the two feels like – as described by makers. I interpret Old and New Detroit to be unique-but-inseparable place imaginaries; they are the representational bracketing around a transitional lifeworld in which the optimism makers brought to Old Detroit has largely come unraveled in New Detroit. This unraveling, I suggest, is not only a collective melancholy associated with feelings of eroding creativity and autonomy, but also a percolating confrontation with the privileged fantasies of Old Detroit. For makers, New Detroit meant professionalization and gentrification: on one hand, the exigencies of New Detroit have occluded the creative and egalitarian form of change they envisioned for the city; on the other, it opened new financial benefits for their small businesses. The resulting impasse tasked makers with adjusting to the economic and moral uncertainties posed by still-unfolding circumstances in a changing Detroit.

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Section: Makers Gentrification and The (Urban) Impassementioning

confidence: 99%

Old Detroit, New Detroit: “Makers” and the impasse of place change

Marotta

2020

cultural geographies

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“…Compensatory housing also includes "innovations" in the social sector. Elsewhere we have explored examples from the emerging UK trend of "pop-up housing": temporary and mobile accommodation offered to homeless families by local governments (Harris et al, 2019). At a time when physical and political infrastructures for permanent social housing are being dismantled, pop-up temporary housing is a measure which, while helping a limited number of families, cannot solve the crisis in social housing provision.…”

Section: Micro-living: Typologies Contextsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Distinct from housing forms that are unequivocally problematic, like Hong Kong's “coffin homes” or the UK's “beds in sheds,” 2 compensatory housing cultures can be understood as reductions in standards that are not recognised as such but instead branded, and often experienced as, aspirational (Harris, 2019). This trend includes the rise of property guardianship schemes (Ferreri et al, 2017), renting or buying in “blue space” (boats on waterways), and the promotion, in the UK's social housing sector, of “pop‐up” accommodation (Harris et al, 2019).…”

Section: Micro‐living: Typologies Contextsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“GET SMALLER”? Emerging geographies of micro‐living

Harris

Nowicki

2020

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Self Cite

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Cities across the world are in the grip of an intensifying housing crisis, in which access to affordable, secure, and appropriate housing is increasingly inaccessible for the majority. There is rising pressure on stakeholders to find solutions but, simultaneously, persistent opposition to housing models that contest the neoliberal logics which prioritise housing's financialisation. In this context, many proposed and developed "solutions" have focused on how housing canin the words of one entry to an architectural competition-"GET SMALLER." Termed "microliving," a trend is emerging for housing models that shrink living spaces, either by providing self-contained units at below minimum space standards or by offering "co-living" tenancies in small private rooms with access to shared communal spaces. Presented as innovative and aspirational, micro-living distinguishes itself from unequivocally problematic small housing, such as Hong Kong's "coffin homes" or the UK's "beds-in-sheds." While micro-living is transforming ways of imagining, producing, and inhabiting cities, it has, as yet, been little explored by geographers. Responding to this gap, this paper traces the emerging geographies of micro-living in major Western cities and demonstrates the importance of the topic in Geography. As well as detailing micro-living's typologies, we excavate the lineages of micro-living and consider the discourses it draws on in self-presenting as an aspirational form of homemaking. In doing so, we highlight some of the issues that micro-living responds to, exacerbates, and entrenches, including the stunted opportunities of millennials since the 2008 recession and the precarity of contemporary labour economies. K E Y W O R D S co-living, housing crisis, micro-living, precarity 1 | INTRODUCTION In 2015, New London Architecture (NLA)a UK-based research forumran a competition looking for ways to alleviate the housing crisis. It was met with manifold suggestions of ways that housing can, in the words of one entry, "GET SMALLER!" The competition exposed the explosion of interest and investment in what has been termed "micro-living"; living spaces that don't conform to current minimum space standards. The British Property Federation (2018) has defined three kinds of micro-living: "self-contained living spaces," purpose built co-living developments, and converted and subdivided shared living spaces. Micro-living is rapidly growing and now a feature of housing economies in cities including London,

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“…Kinton et al (2018) note a polarised student accommodation market whereby students priced out of PBSA concentrate in lower‐cost downgraded environments, therefore resulting in socio‐spatial division. Whilst precarity has commonly been understood “in relation to insecure conditions of work within Post‐Fordist neoliberal labour economies” (Harris, Nowicki, & Brickell, 2019, p. 2), recent debates have located precarity in the micro‐spaces of everyday life (Ettlinger, 2007). Scholars have recognised that precarity is not restricted to work but is also useful in exploring the experiences of those in a precarious housing context (McKee, Hoolachan, & Moore, 2017).…”

Section: Precaritymentioning

confidence: 99%

Geographies of purpose built student accommodation: Exclusivity, precarity and (im)mobility

Reynolds

2020

Geography Compass

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Purpose Built Student Accommodation is increasingly dominating the urban landscapes of university locations. Yet a focus on student accommodation beyond "studentification" remains under-researched and under-analysed in geography and housing studies. Drawing upon pre-existing studies and new insights from the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland, this paper provides an analysis of the contemporary student accommodation sector and the distinct geographies this creates. The paper argues that the neoliberalisation of the student accommodation sector has (re)produced three distinct outcomes: exclusivity, precarity, and (im)mobility, themes of increasing attention within geography and beyond. In concluding, the paper argues that student accommodation is a key vector in which inequalities produced by neoliberalism are articulated and displayed, reflective of a wider global trend.

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On-edge in the impasse: Inhabiting the housing crisis as structure-of-feeling

Cited by 40 publications

References 25 publications

Old Detroit, New Detroit: “Makers” and the impasse of place change

Old Detroit, New Detroit: “Makers” and the impasse of place change

“GET SMALLER”? Emerging geographies of micro‐living

Geographies of purpose built student accommodation: Exclusivity, precarity and (im)mobility

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