Shared projects and symbiotic collaborations: Shenzhen and London in comparative conversation

This paper presents ‘shared projects’ and the ‘symbiotic’ relations they engender to capture accounts of state and society actors collaborating to turn individual constraints into collective opportunities for pursuing urban experiments which are institutionally-shaped but also institution-shaping. The concepts are developed through a sequential and recursive comparison – that is, a ‘comparative conversation’– between a case of urban village upgrading in Shenzhen and Community Land Trust Development in London. The paper uses a pragmatist approach to capitalist transformation as a starting point for comparison between these supposedly ‘incomparable’ cases. I build both heterogeneous and generalisable accounts of the pathways and progressive potential of collaborations on shared projects by recursively composing analytical proximities across the cases and their contexts of state entrepreneurialism and austerity localism. Theoretically, this paper contributes to scholarship which focuses on the contingency and complexity inherent in urban transformation. State and society actors are seen as potential collaborators working pragmatically to solve systemic problems without necessarily targeting wholesale systemic change. Methodologically, it contributes to ongoing attempts to demonstrate the positive relationship between experimental comparisons and conceptual innovation through staging a ‘comparative conversation’.

Investing in community: community land trusts and affordable housing in Calgary

The cost of affordable rental units in Calgary is amongst the highest in Canada, despite a rental vacancy rate that is 3 percent higher than the national average (Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, 2017). Nearly 1 in 5 Calgary households are struggling to pay for shelter costs and as of 2016, more than 42,000 households were spending more than 50 percent of their incomes on shelter, putting this population at a greater risk of becoming homeless due to job loss or from some other unexpected financial hardship (City of Calgary, 2017). Counter to popular belief, economically depressed communities with weak rental and housing markets such as Calgary following the 2015 collapse of the oil and gas sector can be subject to a critical lack of affordable housing. A soft housing market cannot make up for an insufficient range of affordable and non-market housing options. In other cities facing similar challenges, especially those in the United States, the formation of Community Land Trusts has proven to be a viable solution for providing both affordable rental and affordable ownership opportunities for residents who are struggling to afford the cost of housing in their area. This paper explores whether the Community Land Trust model is an appropriate tool to augment Calgary’s limited supply of affordable housing and will end with five recommendations to encourage the adoption of the Community Land Trust model in Calgary. Key Words: affordable housing, affordable ownership, Calgary, community land trust, small-scale affordable development.

The ‘community' in community land trusts: the role of community control in pursuing community land trust activism

Housing in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA) is increasingly unaffordable due to rising housing costs. Community land trusts (CLTs) have recently emerged as a tool for providing affordable housing in the GTHA. This paper investigated the form that CLTs should take to ensure its long-term success for providing affordable housing. Through an analysis of academic and grey literature, the element of community control was identified as being a critical success factor. This paper explored four CLTs operating in American and European contexts to understand whether and how community control was manifested and the resulting implications it had on the CLT and residents. The findings of the paper confirm the importance of community control in the long-term functioning of CLTs, and that community control can be manifested in various forms. Planners operating in the GTHA must therefore be mindful of ensuring that community control is expressed in CLTs. Keywords: Community land trust; affordable housing; community control; Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area

Investing in community: community land trusts and affordable housing in Calgary

The cost of affordable rental units in Calgary is amongst the highest in Canada, despite a rental vacancy rate that is 3 percent higher than the national average (Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, 2017). Nearly 1 in 5 Calgary households are struggling to pay for shelter costs and as of 2016, more than 42,000 households were spending more than 50 percent of their incomes on shelter, putting this population at a greater risk of becoming homeless due to job loss or from some other unexpected financial hardship (City of Calgary, 2017). Counter to popular belief, economically depressed communities with weak rental and housing markets such as Calgary following the 2015 collapse of the oil and gas sector can be subject to a critical lack of affordable housing. A soft housing market cannot make up for an insufficient range of affordable and non-market housing options. In other cities facing similar challenges, especially those in the United States, the formation of Community Land Trusts has proven to be a viable solution for providing both affordable rental and affordable ownership opportunities for residents who are struggling to afford the cost of housing in their area. This paper explores whether the Community Land Trust model is an appropriate tool to augment Calgary’s limited supply of affordable housing and will end with five recommendations to encourage the adoption of the Community Land Trust model in Calgary. Key Words: affordable housing, affordable ownership, Calgary, community land trust, small-scale affordable development.

The ‘community' in community land trusts: the role of community control in pursuing community land trust activism

Housing in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA) is increasingly unaffordable due to rising housing costs. Community land trusts (CLTs) have recently emerged as a tool for providing affordable housing in the GTHA. This paper investigated the form that CLTs should take to ensure its long-term success for providing affordable housing. Through an analysis of academic and grey literature, the element of community control was identified as being a critical success factor. This paper explored four CLTs operating in American and European contexts to understand whether and how community control was manifested and the resulting implications it had on the CLT and residents. The findings of the paper confirm the importance of community control in the long-term functioning of CLTs, and that community control can be manifested in various forms. Planners operating in the GTHA must therefore be mindful of ensuring that community control is expressed in CLTs. Keywords: Community land trust; affordable housing; community control; Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area

The Promise of Property: Legal Optimism and Collective Efficacy in Chicago’s Urban Agriculture District

This article explains how and why community organizers in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood have found promise in the opportunities that property law provides for addressing community problems. Drawing on interviews and ethnographic fieldwork, it examines the creation of neighborhood institutions for Chicago’s first urban agriculture district. These institutions have been informed by memories of slavery and sharecropping, and of the role played by food production and economic cooperation in struggles for African American self-determination. To keep ownership, use, and benefits of urban farmland local, organizers in Englewood founded a community land trust as a way to cultivate a sense of community ownership and control, and as a way to chip away at the alienation that blocks residents from addressing local problems. Prior studies have linked collective efficacy and residents’ individual sense of ownership; the experience in Englewood points to how collective efficacy could also be fostered by institutions that demonstrate collective, African-American ownership of community resources. The article discusses why organizers and residents in race-class subjugated communities may find promise in the sense of sovereignty and legal agency afforded by property.

O cooperativismo habitacional e a gestão coletiva da propriedade como garantia da segurança da posse de populações vulnerabilizadas: O Community Land Trust

O Community Land Trust é um modelo estabelecido com vistas à proteçãode permanência de comunidades vulnerabilizadas em certos territórios. A figurasurge nos EUA, na década de 60, atrelada aos movimentos por direitos civis eà população residente em áreas rurais. O presente artigo buscará avaliar aspotencialidades e os limites da aplicação do instrumento do “Community LandTrust"; no Brasil enquanto prática alinhada aos Objetivos de DesenvolvimentoSustentável (ODS) de “Cidades e Comunidades Sustentáveis”, principalmentequando se trata de um espaço urbano marcado por elevados percentuais deirregularidade e por uma grave situação de desigualdade socioespacial. Talprática se destaca por exigir uma gestão coletiva territorial a qual encontra nocooperativismo habitacional elementos e práticas contemporâneas deautogestão e o modelo que melhor representa valores como a ajuda mútua,democracia, igualdade e solidariedade.