housing Gentrification class compensatory mechanisms shrinking spaces precarity

Urban Studies Seminar Series: Event Two - Buenos Aires

By Ella Harris Mel Nowicki Tim White

25^th May 2023

Our Urban Studies Foundation Seminar Series continued last week with a second event in Buenos Aires. We had the privilege of meeting scholars from across Latin America who are working on various forms of Shrinking Domesticity. The event was co-organised with colleagues at IIGG, UBA (Instituto de Investigaciones Gino Germani, Universidad de Buenos Aires); Mercedes Di Virgilio, Mercedes Najman and Agustina Frisch.

Speakers and participants attended from Bolivia, Colombia and Chile as well as from different parts of Argentina. Research was presented by: Carolina Blanco (Universidad de los Andes); Angélica Camargo and Alex Araque (Universidad Sergio Arboleda); Natalia Cosacov (CONICET/UNC); Daniela Rotger and Kuanip Sanz Resel (National University of La Plata); Juan Cabrera and Valeria Reynolds (Bolivian Private University – Educational Foundation); Javier Frias (National University of Cuyo); Joaquín Tomé (National University of San Martin) and Eleonora Elguezabal (INRAE).

After a fascinating first event in Johanessburg we were interested to learn about how shrinking living spaces manifest differently in the socio-economic contexts of Latin American countries and cities.

Key themes that emerged from participant’s presentations included:

The impact of shrinking domesticities on the lifecourse: For example,some micro-housing developments explicitly banning people with children, older residents living in co-living spaces designed for young professionals, pensioners selling off housing to help children get on the housing ladder only to end up in homeless accommodation themselves, and correlations between shrinking housing and shrinking family sizes.
Informal practices within the ‘formal’ housing economy: For example, informal rental agreements being used to circumvent official policies and informal subdivisions. In the Argentinian context specifically, we also learned about informal agreements being used to navigate the complexities of the economy at a time of extreme inflation.
The shrinking of collective domestic spaces: For example, Eleonora Elguezabal presented her findings that communal areas in housing developments are being closed or restricted, either through the introduction of timetabled access or entrance fees. Collective spaces in informal developments in Argentina are also shrinking due to the density of buildings, as we learned when we visited a site where government developers are working to reduce density by rehousing some residents to enable ‘selective demolition’ that opens up gaps between properties.
The rise of commercial micro-housing being actively marketed as an aspirational lifestyle choice: For example, Natalia Cosacov’s research in Cordoba is looking at how a former hotel has been repackaged as a co-living development aimed at relatively wealthy students and young professionals. The layout of the building remains almost the same as when it was a hotel, but now rooms are marketed as ‘smart flats’ - one developer even described it as a ‘B&B for the upwardly mobile’.
The growing emphasis among planners and developers on building smaller housing units. For example, Juan Cabrera and Valeria Reynold’s research in Bolivia highlighted that there has been a boom in studio flats being built in the country from 2019, and Carolina Blanco’s work in Bogota highlighted how micro-flats are increasingly being developed and promoted as buy-to-let investment properties.
The impact of platform economy short term rentals (e.g. Airbnb) on the affordability of housing leading to shrinking personal space.

Our events in Buenos Aires also included trips to see formal and informal shrinking domestic spaces in the city, including government led housing developments designed to rehouse residents of overcrowded informal settlements, and high end micro apartments for urban professionals built by up and coming architects.

Our third Urban Studies Foundation Seminar Series event will be taking place in Tokyo, Japan in July 2023. This will then be followed by an online, international event (in a time zone yet to be established!) to connect scholars from the three regions (Sub Saharan Africa, Latin America and South East Asia).

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Ella Harris

Ella Harris is a researcher and writer interested in 'crisis cultures', epistemically just creative methods and inventive knowledge exchange strategies. She is currently working on the project Story Arcs at Bath Spa University as the Narrative Exchange Champion as well as undertaking freelance research for clients including Natural England, Caring in Bristol and the Runnymede Trust.

Previously, Ella was a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Geography Department at Birkbeck, University of London. Prior to this, she was an ESRC postdoctoral fellow in the Sociology Department at Goldsmiths, University of London. She's also worked as a research assistant in the Geography Department at Royal Holloway University on a collaborative project on pop-up social housing. She completed a PhD in Cultural Geography at Royal Holloway University in 2017.

Ella has published widely on subjects including the cultural geographies of precarity, pop-up culture, housing insecurity, immersive cinema and interactive documentary. Her book on pop-up culture is out now and her latest interactive documentary, about COVID-19 lockdown in London, can be found here.

Mel Nowicki

Mel Nowicki is a Senior Lecturer in Urban Geography at Oxford Brookes University. Broadly her research interests lie in housing inequality, precarity and the concept of home. Mel's research projects have included: understanding the impact of the criminalisation of squatting and the bedroom tax in London, experiences of family homelessness and temporary accommodation in London and Dublin, and the rise of Tiny Housing as a 'solution' to global housing crises. Mel has published work both in academic journals, national news websites, and in a policy context. Her forthcoming book, Bringing Home the Housing Crisis (Bristol Policy Press) brings together multiple strands of her research to consider how the concept of home is politicised in order to de-legitimise working-class and low-income people's rights to home.

Tim White

Tim White is a PhD candidate on the Cities Programme at LSE. His doctoral research examines the rise of the co-living sector - corporate shared housing for young professionals - and he has undertaken work in London, Berlin and San Francisco looking at the production and consumption of this phenomenon. Prior to starting his PhD, Tim worked as a researcher at LSE Cities.

Tim is interested in how cities are reshaped by money and power, particularly at the intersection of housing, finance and technology. Prior to and alongside his PhD, he has worked on a number of research projects, including: understanding the experience of high-density housing in London, exploring the Tiny House phenomenon in Texas, and reviewing international policy on foreign property ownership. His work has been published in a range of academic and non-academic contexts, including Urban Geography and The Guardian.

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