SBE-RCUK: The Effects of Non-peripheralization of Affordable Urban Housing

Syracuse University, Syracuse NY

Investigators

Abstract

The research supported by this award will enlarge scientific understanding of the social effects of centrally-located affordable urban housing, by testing hypotheses about the impact of housing on economic, political and social life. One recent development to place new housing in centrally-located urban neighborhoods rather than more peripheral ones as often was the case in the past. The new approach encompasses an array of models, including state-planned projects, self-managed state-subsidized cooperatives, state-subsidized rentals, and informal take-overs of repurposed buildings. This research will take advantage of a single city center where all of these approaches are being tried, which provides a natural experiment to investigate a range of social science questions about the relationships between the built environment, social organization, and social mobility. For example, how do differently-modelled affordable housing projects affect employment and economic mobility? How do different projects affect kinshhip, gender relations, and neighborhood sociality? How do they affect civic engagement and urban paricipation? To answer such questions, an interdisciplinary and international team comprised of anthropologist Dr. John S. Burdick (Syracuse University), geographer Dr. Jeff Garmany (King's College London), anthropologists Dr. Rolf Ribeiro de Souza and Dr. Michelle Lima Domingues (Fluminense Federal University, Brazil), and urban planner Dr. Luciana Correa do Lago (Rio de Janeiro Federal University, Brazil) will undertake research in the downtown port district of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This site is appropriate for the research because it is home to five clearly distinct models of new affordable housing, all located in close proximity to each other. These include a cooperative administered by a housing organization that practices participatory governance; a cooperative administered by a housing organization that does not practice participatory governance; a building run by the federal housing authority; rent-controlled apartments; and an invader settlement in which families have established an independent organization. The researchers will employ a range of social science methods to collect data: intensive participant observation in the everyday functioning of the different housing projects; in-depth interviews with project residents, repeated at intervals to record change; interviews with urban planners and officials; information sessions with a local expert in urban planning and architecture; and text analysis of housing-related documents and media. Because housing projects and central urban districts are similar throughout the world, answers to these questions will be generalizable and of interest not only to scholars interested in the social effects of housing organization and the built environment, but also to policymakers and urban planners everywhere. The project also will provide training for graduate students and for a postdoctoral scholar. This award is made under the SBE-RCUK Lead Agency Agreement.