Abstract
This paper analyzes social sustainability in the context of urban housing through the lens of institutional capital. It examines how civil society housing actors co-construct bottom-linked governance arrangements by interacting endogenously with peers and exogenously with institutional actors, such as public housing agencies and elected officials, in order to steer, as housing alliances, socially sustainable residential developments. The paper thus offers an answer to the following two research questions: (1) What are internal governance features that characterize such civil society housing alliances? (2) What are their strategies of interaction with institutional actors in order to promote social sustainability and thus counter exclusionary patterns in urban housing systems? Empirical evidences are drawn from two civil society housing alliances in Austria, ‘BAWO’ (a national alliance of homelessness NGOs) and the ‘Initiative Collaborative Building & Living’. During three research stays in Vienna between 2014 and 2020, data was collected through semi-structured interviews and focus groups with leaders and members of housing alliances, interviews with key institutional stakeholders and web research. By reflecting on the institutional and relational character of the two housing alliances and digging out their potential and limitations in promoting different elements of social sustainability, our paper concludes that social sustainability in housing systems can be realized when it is set as a societal ambition sufficiently politicized by major parties involved in housing systems (housing alliances, governmental authorities of all ideological backgrounds, large non-profit housing developers) that collectively guarantee housing affordability and socio-spatial equity for all.
Highlights
Introduction published maps and institutional affilRecent research in sustainable development scholarship has focused on the systemic study, conceptualization and definition of social sustainability—it is one of the three major pillars of sustainable development that has hitherto remained insufficiently and/or inadequately scrutinized [1,2,3,4]
The paper draws from the Viennese housing system, which is characterized by a ‘social sustainability deficit’ as it has traditionally accommodated the needs of medium-income citizens and paid insufficient attention to people seeking collective residential lifestyles and those customarily discriminated by housing markets
It adds to an emerging stream of literature that deals with the re-emergence of collaborative housing organizations in Europe that aim to advance the social sustainability agenda [51,54]
Summary
This paper is theoretically embedded in the scholarship of bottom-linked governance and institutional capital. Bottom-linked governance has emerged as a key concept in social innovation scholarship, because of its ‘positive’ analytical, action-oriented, socio-political transformation potentialities [13,14,15,17,18,19,22] It is understood as a novel and dynamic governance modality between top-down receptive institutional actors (e.g., public authorities, elected officials, large housing developers, charity groups and foundations) and bottom-up social innovators (e.g., non-profit/non-governmental organizations, community initiatives, social movements) aiming for the satisfaction of human needs, the co-construction of public policy and the formation of more democratic public institutions and participatory decisionmaking mechanisms. Figure through intraandand inter-level interactions forming endogenous and exogenous instiFigure 1
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
