Participative Housing: A New Way of Inhabiting?

If the right to the city is understood as the double right to inhabit the city in time and space and to participate in the elaboration of the city, then one of the most fundamental expressions of the right to the city is that of participative housing.  But what is participative housing?  What is its purpose?  How does it work?  And what are its possibilities, limits, and challenges as an alternative mode of inhabitation?  These are some of the questions Gali and I are exploring as part of our research project.

Conveniently, these were also some of the questions addressed at a “conference-debate” last Thursday co-hosted by l’Ordre des architectes d’Île-de-France and the City of Paris.  The panel discussion featured an architect, an economist, a banker, an activist, and a policy-maker all with experience with participative housing – in other words, a panel offering extensive and diverse perspectives on participative housing.

Detroit: “A City Hollowed Out”

On July 18th, 2013, the city of Detroit filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy; as the largest municipal default in U.S. history, it was the latest in a horrific series of economic, political, social, urban planning, and public policy bankruptcies to drain Detroiters of the ability to inhabit their city.  In effect, this long decline has been marked by the flow of factors of inhabitation from an increasingly disadvantaged city-centre towards an endowed (and sometimes predatory) periphery.  Thus the city has become the site for existing citizens to contest their rights of inhabitation and new citizens to experiment with new forms and functions in a city hollowed out.

De l’argent, il y en a pour construire de nouveaux droits

This was the view this afternoon just outside the Sèvres-Babylone metro station, just behind Sciences Po:

Detroit’s Hollowing – View from Google Maps

Following up on an suggestion from last week, I explored the Google Maps “History” tool to track the evolution of some of Detroit’s most blighted neighbourhoods.  Evidence of Detroit’s spatial “de-habitation” is not hard to find, and is achingly stark to view.  Here are a few of the most unfortunate devolutions that I found:

The view of a school and playground between 15th and 16th St., near Martin Luther King Blvd., July 2009