COMMODIFYING DANISH HOUSING COMMONS

Housing was a backbone of the Danish welfare state, but this has been profoundly challenged by the past decades of neoliberal housing politics. In this article we outline the rise of the Danish model of association‐based housing on the edge of the market economy (and the state). From this, we demonstrate how homes in private cooperatives through political interventions in the context of a booming real estate market have plunged into the market economy and been transformed into private commodities in all but name, and we investigate how non‐profit housing associations frontally and stealthily are attacked through neoliberal reforms. This carries the seeds for socio‐spatial polarization and may eventually open the gate for commodification – and thus the dismantling of the little that is left of a socially just housing sector. Yet, while the association‐based model was an accessary to the commodification of cooperative housing, it can possibly be an accomplice in sustaining non‐profit housing as a housing commons.     

Visions of the North-West

Like so many European cities that developed city planning to handle urbanization and industrialization in the late 1800s and early 1900s, the municipality of Copenhagen (Denmark) discussed, planned, and erected new neighbourhoods for the growing working-class population on the city outskirts. In doing so, the politicians and professionals expressed different visions of the working class and its territories, thus creating a symbolic space of representations alongside the physical spaces of the actual neighbourhoods. Taking the north-west neighbourhood of Copenhagen as a case, I investigate the socio-historical construction of this neighbourhood from the early 1900s to 1950. Drawing on a selection of state policies and municipal plans and debates, as well as on public debates among the professionals who took part in building the new neighbourhood, I analyse the symbolic struggles involved in the construction of the neighbourhood and the population that was meant to live there.     

Green industry development in different types of regions

ABSTRACT

At the regional level, the imperative of sustainable development often manifests itself in an emphasis on developing green industries. However, regions vary in their preconditions for achieving this. In this paper we link regional preconditions to various pathways for green industry development. This provides the foundation for identifying place-based policy implications for growing green industries in different types of regions, grounded in the emerging perspective in innovation studies on transformative innovation policy. The paper thereby helps to understand the pathways for greening the economy in different regional contexts and how such green pathways can be promoted through policy.