To inhabit is not an infinitive. The emptiness of the housing stock in the contemporary city

Journal title CRIOS
Author/s Sara Caramaschi
Publishing Year 2022 Issue 2021/22 Language Italian
Pages 10 P. 6-15 File size 498 KB
DOI 10.3280/CRIOS2021-022002
DOI is like a bar code for intellectual property: to have more infomation click here

Below, you can see the article first page

If you want to buy this article in PDF format, you can do it, following the instructions to buy download credits

Article preview

FrancoAngeli is member of Publishers International Linking Association, Inc (PILA), a not-for-profit association which run the CrossRef service enabling links to and from online scholarly content.

The forms of use of housing are increasingly varied. This variety is little reflected in the dichotomy occupied/empty that characterizes studies and policies on the subject. Indeed, occupied homes and empty houses constitute a geography that is anything but sedentary like the goods that host this condition. Empty houses are as much a natural element of the local market as they are a potential alarm for troubling processes, such as urban decline, speculation, or overproduction. The following essay systematizes the vast literature on the subject, highlighting some questions that deserve to be addressed in the context of public policies. Starting from a reflection on the roles and meanings of abandoned, vacant and underused properties, the article critically addresses some misunderstandings and ambiguities that have long had a significant impact on the public and political debate.

Keywords: housing emptiness; vacancy; abandonment; empty homes

  1. Di Feliciantonio C. (2016). Subjectification in Times of Indebtedness and Neoliberal/Austerity Urbanism. Antipode, 48(5): 1206- 1227.
  2. Erbani F. (2019). L’Italia che non ci sta. Torino: Einaudi.
  3. Fernandez R., Hofman A., Aalbers M.B. (2016). London and New York as a safe deposit box for the transnational wealth elite. Environment and Planning A, 48(12): 2443-2461. DOI: 10.1177/0308518X16659479.
  4. Filandri M., Olagnero M., Semi G. (2020). Casa dolce casa? Italia, un paese di proprietari. Bologna: Il Mulino.
  5. Forrest R., Koh S.Y., Wissink B., a cura di (2017). Cities and the Super-Rich. Real Estate, Elite Practices and Urban Political Economies. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
  6. Gant A.C. (2016). Holiday rentals: The new gentrification battlefront. Sociological Research Online, 21(3): 112-120.
  7. Gentili M., Hoekstra J. (2019). Houses without people and people without houses: a cultural and institutional exploration of an Italian paradox. Housing Studies, 34:(3): 425-447. DOI: 10.1080/02673037.2018.1447093.
  8. Glaeser E.L., Gyourko J. (2005). Urban Decline and Durable Housing. Journal of Political Economy, 113(2): 345-375. DOI: 10.1086/427465.
  9. Glaeser E.L., Gyourko J., Saiz A. (2008). Housing supply and housing bubbles. Journal of Urban Economics, 64(2): 198-217.
  10. Glock B., Haussermann H. (2004). New Trends in Urban Development and Public Policy in eastern Germany: Dealing with the Vacant Housing Problem at the Local Level. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 28:(4): 919-99.
  11. Hohmman J. (2013). The Right to Housing: Law, Concepts, Possibilities. Oxford: Hart Publishing.
  12. Hollander J.B. (2011). The bounds of smart decline: A foundational theory for planning shrinking cities. Housing Policy Debate, 21(3): 349-367. DOI: 10.1080/10511482.2011.585164.
  13. Immergluck D. (2016). Examining changes in long-term neighborhood housing vacancy during the 2011 to 2014 US national recovery. Journal of Urban Affairs, 38(5): 607-622.
  14. Keenan P., Lowe S., Spencer S. (1999). Housing Abandonment in Inner Cities-The Politics of Low Demand for Housing. Housing Studies, 14(5): 703-716. DOI: 10.1080/02673039982687.
  15. Kemeny T., Storper M. (2020). Superstar cities and left-behind places: disruptive innovation, labor demand, and interregional inequality. Working Paper, 41. International Inequalities Institute, London School of Economics and Political Science.
  16. Kitchin R., O’Callaghan C., Boyle M., Gleeson J. (2012). Placing neoliberalism: the rise and fall of Ireland’s Celtic Tiger. Environment and Planning A, 44: 1302-1326.
  17. Lee P., Nevin B. (2003). Changing demand for housing: Restructuring markets and the public policy framework. Housing Studies, 18(1): 65-86. DOI: 10.1080/0267303032000076849.
  18. Lötscher L. (2005). Shrinking East German cities. Geographia Polonica, 78(1): 79-98.
  19. Lowe S., Spence S., Keenan P., a cura di (1998). Housing Abandonment in Britain - Studies in the Causes and Effects of Low Demand for Housing. York: Centre for Housing Policy.
  20. MacLaran A., Sinead K., a cura di (2014). Neoliberal Urban Policy and the Transformation of the City: Reshaping Dublin. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
  21. Massey D., Denton N. (1993). American apartheid: Segregation and the making of the underclass. London: Harvard University Press.
  22. Molloy R. (2016). Long-term vacant housing in the United States. Regional Science and Urban Economics, 59: 118-129.
  23. Morgan D.J. (1980). Residential housing abandonment in the United States: the effects on those who remain. Environment and Planning A, 12: 1343-1356.
  24. Moroni S., De Franco A., Bellè B.M. (2020). Unused private and public buildings: Re-discussing merely empty and truly abandoned situations, with particular reference to the case of Italy and the city of Milan. Journal of Urban Affairs, 42: 1299-1320. DOI: 10.1080/07352166.2020.1792310
  25. O’Callaghan C., Boyle M., Kitchin R. (2014). Post-politics, crisis, and Ireland’s ‘ghost estates’. Political Geography, 42: 121-133.
  26. O’Callaghan C., Di Feliciantonio C. (2021). The New Urban Ruins. Vacancy, Urban Politics, and International Experiments in the Post-Crisis City. Bristol: Policy Press.
  27. Oswalt P., Rieniets T., a cura di (2006). Atlas of Shrinking Cities. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz.
  28. Paris C. (2009). Re-positioning Second Homes within Housing Studies: Household Investment, Gentrification, Multiple Residence, Mobility and Hyper-consumption. Housing, Theory and Society, 26(4): 292-310. DOI: 10.1080/14036090802300392
  29. Power A., Mumford K. (1999). The slow death of great cities? Urban abandonment or urban renaissance. York: Joseph Roundtree Foundation.
  30. Rodríguez-Pose A. (2018). The revenge of the places that don’t matter (and what to do about it). Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 11(1): 189-209.
  31. Smith R., Merrett S. (1988). Empty dwellings and tenure switching: A British case study. Housing Studies, 3(2): 105-111. DOI: 10.1080/02673038808720620
  32. Steinführer A., Haase A. (2007). Demographic change as future challenge for cities in East Central Europe. Geografiska Annaler B, 89(2): 95-110.
  33. Sternlieb G., Burchell R.W., Hughes J.W., James F.J. (1974). Housing Abandonment in the Urban Core. Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 40(5): 321-332. DOI: 10.1080/01944367408977488
  34. Wachsmuth D., Weisler A. (2018). Airbnb and the rent gap: Gentrification through the sharing economy. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 50(6): 1147-1170. DOI: 10.1177/0308518X18778038
  35. Weaver R. (1977). The suburbanization of America or the shrinking of the cities. Civil Rights Digest, 9:(3): 2-11.
  36. Wegmann J. (2019). Residences without residents: Assessing the geography of ghost dwellings in big U.S. cities. Journal of Urban Affairs, 42(3): 1-22. DOI: 10.1080/07352166.2019.1657020
  37. Wilson D., Margulis H., Ketchum J. (1994). Spatial aspects of housing abandonment in the 1990s: The Cleveland experience. Housing Studies, 9(4): 493-510. DOI: 10.1080/02673039408720802.
  38. Woodworth M.D., Wallace J.L. (2017). Seeing ghosts: Parsing China’s “ghost city” controversy. Urban Geography, 38(8): 1270-1281. DOI: 10.1080/02723638.2017.1288009
  39. Zanfi F. (2014). Le case del boom nella città contemporanea. Un’interpretazione e un programma di lavoro. In: Calafati A.G., a cura di. Città tra sviluppo e declino. Un’agenda urbana per l’Italia. Roma: Donzelli Editore: 371-399.
  40. Aalbers M.B. (2008). The financialization of home and the mortgage market crisis. Competition & Change, 12: 148-166. DOI: 10.1179/102452908X289802.
  41. Accordino J., Johnson G.J. (2000). Addressing the Vacant and Abandoned Property Problem. Journal of Urban Affairs, 22(3): 301-315.
  42. Baldini M. (2010). La casa degli italiani. Bologna: Il Mulino.
  43. Bar–Sinai K.L. (2009). Urban second homes: Temporal-dwelling in London. Open Housing International, 34(3): 8-15.
  44. Beauregard R.A. (1993). Voices of Decline: The Postwar Fate of American Cities. London: Routledge.
  45. Beauregard R.A. (2006). When America Became Suburban. London: University of Minnesota Press.
  46. Bontje M. (2004). Facing the challenge of shrinking cities in East Germany: The case of Leipzig. GeoJournal, 61: 13-21.
  47. Breckenfield G. (1978). Coping with city shrinkage. Civil Engineering, 48(11): 112-13.
  48. Caramaschi S., Chiodelli F. (2022). Reconceptualising housing emptiness beyond vacancy and abandonment. The International Journal of Housing Policy. In uscita.
  49. Caramaschi S., Coppola A. (2021). Post-Disaster Ruins: the old, the new and the temporary. In: O’Callaghan C., Di Feliciantonio C., a cura di. The new urban ruins: Vacancy, urban politics, and international experiments in the post-crisis city. Bristol: Bristol University Press: 125-143.
  50. Clark D. (1989). Urban decline: The British experience. London: Routledge.
  51. Couch C., Cocks M. (2013). Housing Vacancy and the Shrinking City: Trends and Policies in the UK and the City of Liverpool. Housing Studies, 28(3): 499-519. DOI: 10.1080/02673037.2013.760029.
  52. De Rossi A. (2020). Riabitare l’Italia. Le aree interne tra abbandoni e riconquiste. Roma: Donzelli Editore.

Sara Caramaschi, Il verbo abitare non è all’infinito. Sull’inutilizzo del patrimonio abitativo nella città contemporanea in "CRIOS" 22/2021, pp 6-15, DOI: 10.3280/CRIOS2021-022002