Fourteenth International Conference on The Constructed Environment

Abstract

Should development-driven displacement be regarded as an asocial urban form? Cast alternately, does the notion of development without displacement constitute an illusory juxtaposition of conflicting possibilities in the current or recent urban environment? ‘Development without Displacement’ represents an adaptation of Lefebvre’s notion of a ‘right to the city’. Yet community engagement and activism, even when community benefits are explicitly agreed upon, appear to result only in marginal inroads into the gentrifying changes development ushers in, whether one looks to community struggles over the future of the city in the United States from Oakland, California, to Somerville, Massachusetts. Does the history of housing policies in Vienna, Austria, offer a significant counterpoint? In the era of Red Vienna Otto Bauer’s description of an ‘Austrian Revolution’, which entailed the radical revaluation of financial assets, including real property, underlay an economic transformation that made progressive housing policies possible. At the same time, the primacy of the Social Democratic Workers’ Party in Vienna in the 1920s led to a reformist emphasis upon rent regulation and the construction of social housing. Highly controversial in the interwar period, these policies were late accepted as the norm and embraced as successful, even exemplary. In the United States the interests of developers typically assume primacy in the urban environment, rendering affordability a distant goal at best, so that community activists are involved in rearguard actions. By contrast, Vienna’s case stands out as a model, essentially because it placed housing rather than development as its primary goal.

Presenters

Michael H. Turk
Professor Emeritus, Department of Economics, History, and Political Science, Fitchburg State University, Massachusetts, United States