ABSTRACT

This project draws on a precise comparative, inter-disciplinary methodology to examine the inter-relationships between contemporary investment flows into the housing markets of major metropolitan centres and the governance arrangements and public policy instruments that are designed to regulate them.

Our case studies are the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area, Greater London, and Grand Paris. The project asks what is governed in major cities and draws on two streams of analysis: mapping and explaining the types of investment that are shaping housing production in the 3 cities; and developing understandings of the effectiveness of public policy instruments that are in place to regulate them.

The project is timely as major cities have been faced with unprecedented development pressures as their populations and economies have expanded and their built environments have become highly attractive locations for global investment. These pressures have been particularly acute in the production and consumption of housing, where the impacts of investments on markets, citizens, and places are generating a widely perceived crisis and set of governmental challenges to produce affordable housing.