Responsible City: Swiss Responses to Housing in Socio-Ecological Crisis

Introduction

In the opening decades of the 21st century, cities have increasingly been threatened by perpetual global crises, including climate change, pandemics, financial speculation, and economic restructuring. As the resulting processes of precarization, inequality, and climate vulnerability manifest in cities, they have triggered increasing controversies around how to respond to these socio-ecological crises and negotiate the trade-offs between environmental goals and questions of social justice.

Empirically, the project focuses on controversies around housing and residential development in two Swiss cities (Zurich and Geneva), where the green transition is entangled with questions of social (in)justice around an acute housing crisis. Emerging controversies about who should deal with, pay the price for, or is liable for socio-ecological crises, as well as to whom responsibility in ongoing transformations is owed, provide an understanding of how urban actors respond to and advance competing moral claims in housing and urban development.

The Project

In tracing socio-ecological controversies in Swiss cities, the project pursues three objectives: First, the analysis of housing controversies contributes to a relational understanding of Swiss urban (residential) development. Across seven subprojects (SPs), it advances a comparative case-study analysis of prominent socio-ecological housing controversies in Zurich and Geneva. These include controversies around how to maintain housing, densify and plan cities and invest in the built environment. Moreover, in thinking relationally about responsibility, the project endeavors to trace global geographies of responsibility. Second, these empirical contributions provide the grounds for developing novel conceptualizations of responsibility and operationalize them for the urban realm. Third, analysis of how to produce responsible innovation translates new responsibility practices into urban policy. A systematic comparative analysis and knowledge transfer strategy serves to gather emerging insights in agenda-setting publications and practice-oriented outputs that support cities in their responses to socio-ecological threats.

The research conducted within the SPUR group specifically focuses on controversies around responsible planning to inquire into how urban planners, policymakers, and architects interpret, negotiate, and design responsible planning in order to reconcile socio-ecological controversies. The project will particularly investigate the impact of planning instruments and policies for urban transformations, such as densification, urban redevelopment, and the creation of mixed neighbourhoods on residents and neighbourhoods. Doing so, the project asks whether and how urban redevelopment leads to the displacement of low-income residents and how these processes impact residential segregation and gentrification and with that contribute to social inequalities.

Further Team Members

• Project Leader: external pageHanna Hilbrandtcall_made, Professor in Social Geography and Urban Studies at the University of Zurich
• Project Leader SP1: external pageIfigeneia Dimitrakoucall_made, Senior Scientist in the Social Geography and Urban Studies group at the University of Zurich
• Project Leader SP2: external pageVincent Kaufmanncall_made, Professor at the Laboratory of Urban Sociology (LaSUR, EPFL)
• Project Leader SP 6: external pageLuca Pattaronicall_made, Professor at the Laboratory of Urban Sociology (LaSUR, EPFL)
• Project Leader SP7: external pageHugues Jeanneratcall_made, Professor at the Geography Institute of the University of Neuchâtel
• Researcher SP6: external pageMaxime Feldercall_made, Postdoctoral researcher in the Laboratory of Urban Sociology (LaSUR, EPFL)