Key global processes of financial capital markets and securitization have restructured national property and housing systems, making them increasingly interdependent. Welfare retrenchment, product deregulation and financial liberalization each contributed to a dual process of residualized social housing and the expansion and inflation of the private housing market. However, in the aftermath of the 2008 global economic crisis - and hopefully of Covid-19, new subjectivities and relational strategies by people for people emerged as a coping mechanism to fight the instability and uncertainty of living at a disadvantage.

By linking research, innovation and policy, #cityofcare analyzes, at the macro level, urban strategies, policies and planning practices to promote equitable and sustainable growth. At the micro level, it looks at the efforts and the organizing that take networks, skills, and resourcefulness to alleviate housing affordability crisis, insecurity, exclusion and segregation imposed on social housing communities.

CITY-OF-CARE takes a “personal network” approach to elicit the dynamics and the relevance of interconnected care providers. Caring as a distinctive, network-based activity is one of the central elements in the survival practices of disadvantaged areas of the city. Yet, it remains a gendered activity that develops between women and their community members under significant structural constraints.

CITY-OF-CARE puts under scrutiny the role of women’s leadership in building and using social capital that can sustain community care and solidarity over the long haul, challenging the inequities of neoliberalism and contributing to the EU urban cohesion agenda advancement.

Keywords

Financialization of Social Housing; Urban Restructuring; Urban Poor Communities; Care; Personal Networks; Women Residents’ Activism; Social Capital; Community Development; Comparative Urbanism