Housing as intervention : architecture towards social equity Edited by Karen Kubey

Housing for the common good -- Architecture's progressive imperative : housing betterment in the 19th and 20th centuries -- The global crisis of affordable housing : architecture versus neoliberalism -- Demapping automotive landscapes : affordability as a land game -- Calling all architects : new approaches to old housing -- A new era of social housing : architecture as the basis for change -- Designing for impact : tools for reducing disparities in health -- The architect's lot : backyard homes policy and design -- Evolving rural typologies for rapidly growing cities : Urbanus's work towards inclusive communities -- Beyond temporary : prototypes for resilient communities -- Spaces of migration : architecture for refugees -- Beyond green : environmental building technologies for social and economic equity -- Social versus affordable : the search for inclusive housing policies in Mexico -- The land of a thousand hills : Rwanda's new urban agenda -- Spatial models for the domestic commons : communes, co-living and cooperatives -- Allies in equity : a conversation with an architect, a developer and a former federal housing official -- Social housing in an increasingly politicised landscape.

Across the world, the housing crisis is escalating. Mass migration to cities has led to rapid urbanisation on an unprecedented scale, while the withdrawal of public funding from social housing provision in Western Countries, and widening income inequality, have further compounded the situation. In prosperous US and European cities, middle- and low-income residents are being pushed out of housing markets increasingly dominated by luxury investors. The average London tenant, for example, now pays an unaffordable 49 percent of his or her pre-tax income in rent. Parts of the developing world and areas of forced migration are experiencing insufficient affordable housing stock coupled with rapidly shifting ways of life. In response to this context, forward-thinking architects are taking the lead with a collaborative approach. By partnering with allied fields, working with residents, developing new forms of housing, and leveraging new funding systems and policies, they are providing strategic leadership for what many consider to be our cities' most pressing crisis. Amidst growing economic and health disparities, this issue of AD asks how housing projects, and the design processes behind them, might be interventions towards greater social equity, and how collaborative work in housing might reposition the architectural profession at large.