Abstract
In Auckland, the dream of owning a house may now be entirely out of reach for some people as housing prices continue to be severely unaffordable. One of the key factors to which Auckland’s housing unaffordability is often attributed is the housing shortage. Through abductive/retroductive reasoning, I contend that rather than attributing Auckland’s housing unaffordability solely to housing shortages, other factors that have not been adequately explored contribute to housing unaffordability. This research found that after shift toward neoliberalism, the housing price significantly increased in New Zealand; therefore, the alternative factor could be traced to the shift from Keynesian welfare economic policies to neoliberal planning policies. From the neo-Marxist point of view, the profound impact of changes in planning policies under neoliberalism is the main inherent contradiction of capitalism: exchange value versus use value. Harvey as neo- Marxist urban philosopher suggested that the main aim of housing provision in capitalist societies is to obtain exchange value rather than use value. Due to the dominant role of exchange value in the housing provision, access to affordable housing for an increasing segment of the population has become more difficult. I set this theory as the hypothesis of this research, and the main objective of this research is to test the validity of this hypothesis in the case of Auckland. To provide a complementary theoretical framework for analysing the contradiction between housing use value and exchange value, this research integrates Harvey’s theory of triad circuits of capital accumulation and Lefebvre’s spatial triad theory.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
HOUSING, UNAFFORDABILIY, HARVEY, TRIAD, CAPITAL, ACCUMULATION, LEFEBRVE, SPATAIL, TRAID, NEOLIBRALISM
