Post-Crash City: Houses and Homes, 5 - 6 July 2012

Keynote speakers:
Moira Munro
(University of Glasgow) and Rebecca Tunstall (University of York)

Please send abstracts (max 150 words) addressing the themes of the meeting and series to rowland.atkinson@york.ac.uk

Further details and registration at: www.york.ac.uk/sociology/research/curb/events/2012/post-crash

Housing remains at the epicentre of the sense of crisis and economic malaise in so many cities globally. Not only does the cost of private housing continue to stagnate but discourses of unending asset price growth and the security of ownership as a means of attaining personal wealth have largely been punctured by the strangulation of mortgage finance, unease around the impact of public funding cuts and a more general questioning of the pyramidal nature of such investment. Alongside this ‘crisis’, also a potential opportunity to those locked-out of the previous boom, is another in public housing and welfare assistance. In this sector financial retrenchment highlights the potential for new forms of gentrification and household displacement as these forms of state aid are withdrawn in the name of financial austerity. How will major and minor cities be re-organised by these new economic and social imperatives? What opportunities remain for organised and flourishing forms of capital even within the apparent decline of private finance? What forms of resistance, action and progressive change can be mounted by communities and individuals in these contexts?