At Home and Abroad: Housing in Comparative Perspective

At Home and Abroad examines the diverse approaches to housing across cultural, political, and economic contexts. In a selection of cities across the globe, students will learn from different housing systems, and understand how each one responds to local problems–and sometimes, creates new ones. We will invert the usual lists of best practices, prioritizing traveling policies that move from South to North, and taking lessons from housing actors beyond the usual suspects.  

A unique feature of this course is the opportunity to work in tandem with the New York-based organization the Urban Design Forum. Students will be paired with groups of Forum fellows as they set out to analyze international housing models and extract valuable lessons for addressing New York City’s ongoing housing crisis. What makes New York a good laboratory for this inquiry? The scale of its housing crisis, paired with the relentless attempts at solving it. This provides students an extraordinary chance to apply classroom knowledge to real-world challenges, and connect in real time with practitioners taking those challenges on.  
 
In class, we will divide our time between discussion and action. In addition to our work with the Urban Design Forum, each week, we will debate essential readings in comparative housing studies. We will cover models in affordability, sustainability, governance, and financing. Students will engage with a variety of case studies, policy transfer stories, and theoretical frameworks. They will complete the course with an understanding of how housing solutions are influenced by local, national, and transnational conditions–and how, in turn, they shape the fate of cities. Potential case studies will include housing cooperatives in Uruguay and India, zoning reformers in New Zealand, Japanese aging-in-place strategies, Lebanon’s financialization of urban development, France’s social housing projects, and so on (see syllabus). We will also incorporate examples you choose in each of our sessions. 
 
This class explicitly seeks to include students from across the school’s programs. It is ideal for those interested in urban planning and design, public policy, sociology, environmental planning, and international studies. The course will be a mix of lectures, case discussions, exercises, and student presentations.

By the end of the course a student will be able to:  
1. Develop a comprehensive understanding of global housing systems 
2. Critically analyze and compare housing policies and practices across different regions 
3. Evaluate the role of housing in promoting or hindering social equity, better health outcomes, and environmental justice 
4. Synthesize cross-cultural perspectives to address housing challenges 
5. Collaborate with industry leaders as they engage directly with ongoing efforts to transform New York City’s housing landscape. 
6. Debate whether we can produce a clearly identifiable set of “best practices” given the global diversity of contexts, institutional arrangements, and intractable challenges cities are faced with, which themselves are constantly changing.