“Survival” of the fittest, “sheltering” of the mightiest: competition and regulation in contemporary urban housing markets

This essay mobilizes popular insights about the “law of the jungle” to conceptualize and critique prevalent consumption and policy attitudes in urban environments, with a focus on residential infrastructure. A phrase used metaphorically to describe a given situation where competition, aggression, and “survival of the fittest” prevail, it is here used in order to formulate a new characterization of contemporary cities as environments where there is minimal housing regulation or oversight (architectural occupation as survival-of-the-fittest battle), and where individual dwellers are left to operate without significant constraints. In the first section of the paper, I introduce a commonplace interpretation of the “jungle metaphor”, commenting on sets of characteristics and values which are associated with it. In the second section of the paper, I paint a portrait of contemporary socio-economic environments, with a focus on urbanity and its distributive ordering of housing resources. I describe these environments as constructed (formal arrangements; architecture and urbanism) and policed (institutional arrangements; governments and state authorities) in manners which acutely—and problematically—emphasize market laissez-faire and self-interest. In the third section of the paper, I link this portrait of the contemporary city to survival-of-the-fittest jungle-like spaces, commenting on rivalrous competition between dwellers and, in the fourth and concluding section, I briefly propose one possible, normatively desirable form of urban market regulations.