This workshop is organised in follow-up of the last two ENHR-conferences. It adresses topics related to the provision of land for housing, with an emphasis on social and affordable housing. As the provision of building land sets an important physical condition for housing production, this topic is of utmost relevance to ENHR’s 2009 conference theme of integration and segregation in changing housing markets. That is because the area as well as the (spatial) distribution of land available for (social and affordable) housing strongly affects processes of social exclusion and – more in general – the geography of opportunity of those who are dependant of various categories of housing. While some countries still struggle with rising land prices as an obstacle to constructing social and affordable housing, others may look at opportunities in the current commercial housing market crisis to (re)claim land for anti-cyclical investments in housing, or even have to solve land-related problems facing structural vacancies or abandonment of part of the housing stock. Another issue deserving thorough consideration in the light of the commercial housing crisis is how to safeguard a basic level of production of social and affordable housing in countries that rely on policies of ‘inclusionary zoning’. The working group has prepared a framework for discussing and analyzing public policies as well as the strategies of providers of (social and affordable) housing and other parties in the land market in a European comparative perspective, and it hopes this framework will inspire a lively exchange of both empirical findings and grounded explanations related to the workshop theme. All enquiries about the workshop should be sent to George de Kam.
