Grassroots housing models in Europe: Translocal networks, innovations, community

This edited collection focuses on the translocal networks interlinking community-led housing movements and explores their social innovations to support alternative imaginaries of housing in Europe. This is the first comprehensive compilation of Europe’s expanding translocal networks of grassroots housing movements and the housing models they propagate. Structured around two thematic sections, the book explores the characteristics and challenges of grassroots housing production across diverse European contexts, as well as the role and dynamics of solidarity networks operating at multiple scales. The authors identify, contrast and connect key mechanisms, strategies and learning processes within community-led housing.The volume brings together researchers from human geography, housing studies, sociology, architecture and anthropology alongside practitioners from NGOs and grassroots organisations. Contributions range from state-of-the-art academic debates to boiled down insights from bankers and activists, including interviews, promising varied reading on a socio-politically timely topic.Ultimately, the book presents community-led housing as a dynamic and evolving practice that offers genuine responses to today’s increasingly financialised housing markets.‘Potential opportunities of commoning and collaboration in community-led demands for housing arise today in Europe, as this timely and inspiring collection shows.’ – Stavros Stavrides, Emeritus Professor of Architectural Design and Theory, National Technical University of Athens; Author of Common Space: The City as Commons‘The book is essential reading for understanding housing as a communal right and resource, offering practical insights and inspiring directions for socio-ecological transformation and the future of housing.’ – Yuri Kazepov, Professor of Urban Sociology, University of Vienna For years, we have been observing an increase in housing shortage in Europe, to which the public sector has so far failed to respond adequately. At the same time, there has been a steady growth in grassroots initiatives developing non-speculative community-led housing while joining forces across Europe. This edited collection focuses on the translocal networks interlinking these grassroots movements and explores their social innovations to support alternative imaginaries of housing and structures of solidarity. The book thus provides the first comprehensive overview of translocal grassroots housing networks in Europe and the housing models they propagate (including new co-operatives and community land trusts), while undertaking international in-depth analyses. It is arranged along inter- and transdisciplinary lines: In addition to researchers from the fields of human geography, housing studies, sociology, architecture and anthropology, the authors include practitioners from the NGO sector and grassroots activists.

Pagina's: 320, Hardcover, Manchester University Press