Toward habitation

Housing provision in Europe is increasingly caught between rising social and ecological concerns. Neoliberalization and financialization tendencies have undermined affordability and accelerated environmental degradation. This dissertation explores how housing systems – along with their wider regulation and the initiatives they foster – must be reorganized to enable social-ecological provision: meeting human needs while respecting planetary boundaries. The dissertation has been part of the interdisciplinary research project The Contested Provision of Care and Housing, which investigates the contested and increasingly market-oriented reorganization of care and housing provision, alongside emerging community alternatives that may promote decommodification. It develops a provisioning perspective that integrates social and ecological concerns, drawing on insights from housing studies, the sociology of care, and research on socio-ecological transformation. Furthermore, the dissertation is grounded in Karl Polanyi’s substantivist understanding of the economy, working particularly with his socioeconomic principles – market exchange, reciprocity, and redistribution – as well as the concept of habitation, which highlights housing as both a material infrastructure and a socio-cultural practice. The empirical research was carried out in Austria and the Netherlands, combining qualitative methods, institutional and descriptive data analysis to examine housing systems and collaborative housing initiatives. Across the articles, the dissertation develops three central insights for advancing social-ecological housing provision: First, it argues for moving beyond reductionist views of housing as either a private commodity or mere shelter, instead emphasizing habitation as the mutually constitutive relationship between built environments and the everyday practices of living, caring, and associated resource use. Second, while collaborative initiatives can foster more reciprocal forms of living and care, they alone cannot drive the broader systemic changes required for social-ecological housing provision. Engaging the state on multiple scales remains essential for promoting redistribution and restructuring housing provision at scale. Third, the dissertation shows that enabling social-ecological housing requires strengthening both reciprocity and redistribution while developing decommodification strategies that reduce the dominance of financialized market logics in housing.