06.11.2023New SNSF Project: The Responsible City

Together with David Kaufmann (ETH), Hugues Jeannerat (UniNe), as well as Vincent  Kaufmann and Luca Pattaroni (EPFL), Hanna Hilbrandt and Ifigeneia Dimitrakou will work to understand how cities respond to socio-ecological controversies in housing. In the opening decades of the 21st century, cities have increasingly been threatened by perpetual global crises, including climate change, pandemics, financial speculation, and economic restructuring. As the resulting processes of precarization, inequality, and climate vulnerability manifest in cities, they have triggered increasing controversies around how to respond to these socio-ecological crises and negotiate the trade-offs between environmental goals and questions of social justice. “The Responsible City” breaks new ground by placing the concept of responsibility at the centre of these controversies. Empirically, the project focuses on controversies around housing and residential development in two Swiss cities (Zurich and Geneva), where the green transition is entangled with questions of social (in)justice around an acute housing crisis. Emerging controversies about who should deal with, pay the price for, or is liable for socio-ecological crises, as well as to whom responsibility in ongoing transformations is owed, provide an understanding of how urban actors respond to and advance competing moral claims in housing and urban development.