**Apologies for cross posting**
AAG Paper session: Reimagining affordable, adaptable, sustainable settlements
Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers, New York, NY (24-28 February 2012)
Convenors: Helen Jarvis (Newcastle University, UK) and Rae Dufty-Jones (University of Western Sydney, Australia)
With sponsorship from: the Urban Geography Specialty Group
Reimagining affordable, adaptable, sustainable settlements
Two of the most pressing housing-related issues confronting hyper-modern societies today expose the failure of market-led planning and regional policy to address social justice and sustainable development as integrated social-environmental objectives. The dysfunctional results signal the acute need for a radical reimagining of the form and function of dwelling, privacy, social interaction and community-based infrastructure and amenity.
On the one hand, there is growing evidence of new households forming (or remaining as hidden homeless) in market contexts where there is no long-term prospect of affordable housing being provided in the vicinity of mainstream employment. On the other hand, state sponsored 'smart growth', and niche-market preference (among buyers who can exercise choice) for high amenity accessible small-town communities, indicates shifting settlement patterns. While polycentric hinterland settlement patterns may benefit selected sustainability objectives, they are unlikely to address concerns that young people, low income and migrant families, will be priced out of independent housing in the future. Neither is affordability simply a function of housing supply. Market-oriented supply-side approaches typically force people on low-to-average incomes to move to low-amenity outer suburbs, often taking up essential sites of food production, worsening the mismatch between where people live and work and where they source the goods and services of daily life.
Paradoxically, the creative solutions that individuals and families sometimes arrive at in situations of financial hardship and limited choice, such as shared, multi-family, temporary or adapted dwellings, suggest experimental sites from which lessons may be learned as a means to challenge powerful social, cultural and economic expectations of home ownership and single family dwelling.
This session of papers responds to calls for (i) integrated critical engagement with the social cohesion and environmental sustainability impacts of future housing policy and planning and (ii) open international exchange of experimental studies which challenge unsustainable housing and settlement norms and develop innovative ideas for affordable, adaptable sustainable housing in the future.
We anticipate organising two paper sessions plus an agenda-setting panel and we welcome both empirical and conceptual papers that address issues such as (but not limited to):
* The spatial patterns and socio-economic profile of counter-cultural settlement
* National and international trends in low-impact and innovative housing (grow/shrink/tiny house ideas, cohousing, lifetime homes, accessory dwellings etc.)
* The influence and role of not-for-profit organisations
* The influence and role of slow movement and grassroots community groups
* The barriers to innovation
* Alternative visions
Abstracts of no more than 250 words should be submitted by September 5th, 2011 to Helen Jarvis, University of Newcastle, UK, [log in to unmask] and Rae Dufty-Jones, University of Western Sydney, Australia, [log in to unmask] If you have any questions please contact either of the above.
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