Plenaries

As climate change accelerates, affordable housing has become a critical focal point in discussions around the right to the city. This session will examine the effects of climate-related disruptions on urban environments, with a particular emphasis on housing occupied by the most vulnerable populations. It will explore how climate events—such as heatwaves, flooding, and severe storms—disproportionately impact low-income communities and exacerbate existing inequalities in urban settings. It will also address the environmental justice issues linked to policies aimed at reducing these vulnerabilities

Urban areas, particularly the largest ones, face two main challenges: reducing the artificialization of land on their outskirts and meeting the housing needs of socially diverse households. Simplistically, two kinds of solution could be proposed: densify spaces inside conurbation, or (and) build higher. The first one comes up against the need to adapt cities to climate changes by avoiding their mineralization. The second one results often in a rejection due to the desire to preserve heritage of urban landscapes. The responses to these challenges condition the way in which cities would be able to offer an acceptable future to their inhabitants, both socially and environmentally.

Economic (in)accessibility of housing is a major issue across Europe, with varied effects on regions and social groups. This plenary session aims to explore the role of social housing in addressing this (in)accessibility, as well as the potential of alternative forms of housing ownership, such as community land trusts, through the combined perspectives of researchers and practitioners. The objective is to discuss how such tools for decommodifying housing are evolving within the context of climate adaptation, the growing influence and diversification of private actors, as well as demographic shifts and changing life trajectories.

Since 2019, the City of Paris has been implementing an experimental rent control scheme. In a context in which housing prices are increasingly out of line with household incomes, the issue of rent control is (re)appearing on the political agenda of European cities. Such schemes have been introduced more or less recently in Barcelona, Berlin, Stockholm, Dublin and others. Experiences with rent control will be considered both from the perspective of housing affordability and of climate change mitigation/adaptation. To what extent can policies articulate these objectives? As rent control affects the potential profitability of real estate, to what extent does it complicate the retrofitting of the housing stock? This session will feature presentations by housing researchers and experts. They will discuss the objectives, instruments and outcomes of rent control policies. This session will focus on capacity for political action and the ability of public actors to intervene in housing prices while responding to the climate crisis.