The “Souths” of the “Wests”. Southern critique and comparative housing studies in Southern Europe and USA

Abstract

Southern urban critique has enriched our understanding of global uneven development, but often ended up constructing a dichotomous understanding of two apparently homogeneous fields: the Global North (or West) and South. This has been particularly evident in housing studies. In this article, I advocate for a relational, multi-scalar and comparative approach to southern urban critique, capable of exposing quasi-colonial relations within the urban “West”; and apply it to the exploration of housing dynamics and systems in Southern Europe and Southern USA—two regions linked to their continental “cores” by historical patterns of uneven and combined development. Despite being characterized by different urban frameworks and housing systems, these regions have in common analogous patterns of globalization and neoliberalization, with similar impacts over housing, especially in the aftermaths of the global economic crisis. By discussing how global trends intersect with regional contexts, I aim to provide conceptual and epistemological instruments for deepening the analytical grasp and political relevance of southern (urban) critique.

Keywords:

• Postcolonial urban studies
• comparative housing
• housing systems
• housing policy
• uneven and combined development
• gentrification

Acknowledgements

This article benefitted from the comments, suggestions and critique from many colleagues and friends: three anonymous reviewers and Housing Studies’ editors; Ryan Powell and AbdouMaliq Simone, editors of the special issue; Ugo Rossi, who commented on a preliminary version; and many more at the RC21 Conference in Delhi (2019), the 3° Encontro da Associação Portuguesa de Economia Política (2020) and a workshop of the series Dislocating Urban Studies: Rethinking Theory, Shifting Practice (2021), where I presented various versions of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 My use of “southern” does not imply that all, or even most, post-, decolonial and subaltern urban critique comes “from” the Global South. Rather, my use of southern refers to, first, empirical attention to southern cities and, second, the epistemological critique of the universalization of northern theories (see next section).

2 In line with a consolidated tradition in comparative housing studies (above all, Allen et al., 2004), I define Southern Europe as Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece—excluding the Balkan states which have distinct socio-political, urbanization and welfare trajectories. Many of the considerations done for these countries could be extended to Cyprus, because of its similar position in the global division of labor and a number of similar characters in terms of housing system—e.g. trends of rent regulation (Kettunen and Ruonavaara, 2020, p. 8), rates of mortgaged homeowners (Stephens et al., 2015, p. 1221) or policies for attracting foreign real estate investment (Rogers & Koh, 2017). However, comparative housing and urban studies have engaged with Cyprus virtually only in large panel data studies, without inquiring in-depth the dynamics addressed in this article, making it impossible its inclusion in a study based on critical review of literature.

All definitions of Southern USA include the confederate states, with some including other states where slavery remained legal until 1860. Since extensive definitions include cities commonly included in other regional frameworks—the East Coast (Washington DC, Baltimore, Newark) and Midwest (St. Louis)—I limit my definition to former confederate states: Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Florida, Texas and Louisiana. I will occasionally mention the Sunbelt, which spans from the South to the South-West (New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and California).

3 Itself a remake-cum-extension (to Italy) of the “Europe’s poor 4” label that had some popularity in the 1980s.

4 HOPE VI, followed by Choice Neighborhoods, is the biggest federal housing program of recent decades. It provided 240 grants for public housing “revitalization”, that is, virtually always demolition, replacement with mixed developments and dispersal of residents (Goetz & Chapple, 2010).

5 This absence is not due to the use of other regional frameworks: For instance, also the word “Sunbelt” is absent from the book.

6 The fact that the EU has actively pushed certain political and policy developments does not imply that national and local governments and elites have been passive “recipients” of the process: on the one hand, we have mentioned above that the liberalization and financialization of housing has a quite long history; and, on the other, national governments have often discursively used “European pressures” to justify their own political agendas (e.g. Moury & Standring, 2017).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia under an individual grant (DL57/2016/CP1441/CT0007) and project HOPES: Housing Perspectives and Struggles (PTDC/GES-URB/28826/2017).

Notes on contributors

Simone Tulumello

Simone Tulumello is assistant research professor at the University of Lisbon, Institute of Social Sciences and deputy-PI of project HOPES: Housing Perspectives and Struggles. His appointments include: Fulbright Research Scholar at the University of Memphis (2016); Policy Fellow at the B. Hook Institute for Social Change of the University of Memphis (2016-2017); Visiting Scholar at DIST, Polytechnic of Turin (2019); and Senior Expert Evaluator at the 2019 edition of the Regiostars Awards (DG-REGIO, European Commission; 2019). His research interests span at the border between human geography, planning research and critical urban studies: housing policy and politics; austerity and neoliberal urban policy; security, fear and urban violence. He is author of Fear, Space and Urban Planning: A Critical Perspective from Southern Europe (2017, Springer).