The issue of housing in the broadest sense (i.e. housing plus its urban, logistical, social, service and natural environment) is now at the heart of our major economic, social, ecological and political challenges.
The associated costs (housing, travel, energy, urban services) absorb a good third of household income, and more than half for the least well-off households. These are compulsory items of expenditure, which have been rising steadily over the last 20 years, reducing real purchasing power by the same amount. The corresponding consumption accounts for two-thirds of greenhouse gas emissions in France, and justifies the restrictions on individual housing proposed by some ecological planners. Finally, the feeling of ‘spatial decline’ associated with certain areas or urban forms feeds the extreme votes that threaten democracies.
What we call the housing crisis is in fact, more broadly speaking, a crisis of the urban fabric. If housing production is at a low ebb today (even though it is supported by a system of subsidies which, in France, absorbs almost 2% of gross domestic product), it is because it is facing a double crisis, which is both a crisis of supply (difficulty in producing and finding land) and a crisis of demand (household insolvency, mismatch between demand and supply).
This book (Repairing and Building the City: Renewing the Housing Supply) has the great merit of tackling the issue of housin...
