That’s the message of a new publication, ‘Modern housing: An environmental common good’, authored by Dan Hill, professor of the built environment at the University of Melbourne, and Mariana Mazzucato, a professor in the economics of innovation and public value.

Seeing housing as a fundamental human right, the authors – Hill is also a member of the Council on Urban Initiatives, of which Mazzucato is co-chair – believe that the challenges of both social and environmental justice are intrinsic to its provision in sufficient quantity and quality, as well as impact on the planet.

“Could we reverse our extractive approaches in order to produce housing that is dignified, durable, beautiful and adaptable, and made available for all, as a common good?” the paper asks. “And could the way that we make common good housing happen also produce clean, safe, healthy, convivial and nourishing shared environments?”

A coherent strategy, they propose, would involve making housing – building and retrofitting – realigned, redeployed and interconnected across an integrated global approach. A new common good framework would acknowledge that the way these dynamics of housing policy and practice play out in the Global North directly affects the Global South and vice versa. Thus, while recognising people’s right to housing, the framework also needs to respect planetary boundaries. If this is to be achieved, housing practices will need to transform around design, construction, care, economy, and more diverse forms of shared living, tenure, ownership and governance, the authors assert.

At the larger scale, there will need to be a shift towards retrofit, reuse and redistribution, using circular materials designed for assembly and disassembly via modular engineering. On a smaller level, more participation through self-build, adaptive, open building systems is required. A revival of public and social housing, says the paper, can “create and direct sustainable and affordable housing markets outside extractive financialisation”, with housing policy and practice articulating and demonstrating “a new policy framework for ‘reviving the common good’”.

Five pillars

Mazzucato references her earlier work that the common good prioritises the “how” of economic activity as much as the “what” through five pillars that can guide policy and practice. These are:

• purpose and directionality – this first pillar promotes outcomes-oriented policies in the common interest;
• co-creation and participation – this pillar allows citizens and stakeholders to meaningfully participate in debate, discussion and consensus-building, providing for shared ownership;
• collective learning and knowledge-sharing – this pillar can help design true purpose-oriented partnerships that drive collective intelligence and knowledge-sharing, as well as resources;
• access for all and reward-sharing – this pillar enables the sharing of the benefits of innovation and investment with all risk-takers, whether through equity schemes, royalties, pricing, or collective funds; and
• transparency and accountability – this final pillar can ensure public legitimacy and engagement by enforcing commitments among all actors and by aligning on evaluation mechanisms.

Underpinned by these five pillars, an economics framework of the common good shifts away from exploiting housing as a speculative financial asset geared towards profit maximisation and value extraction, Mazzucato explains. Moreover, these five tenets are relevant not only for practice but also for governments to perform core policy functions related to governing housing for the common good, the paper adds.

Case examples

Indicating a way forward, the paper points to examples featured in the Council on Urban Initiatives’ case study report, ‘Housing and the city’, published last year and researched and edited by the Council’s Ricky Burdett and others. Case studies include Barcelona, Bogotá, Melbourne and Mumbai, which are described as “working against the grain of local and global orthodoxies, yet each has the DNA to trigger systemic change programmes across their cities and beyond”, while Singapore’s procurement model is hailed as “an example of bold, publicly led, long-term planning, design and delivery”.

In their latest paper, Hill and Mazzucato stress that several of the examples “embody the principle that forward-looking sustainable housing development is intrinsically unlocked by participative, inclusive, socially and ecologically just housing policies for the common good”. Each case study, they say, sketches loose structures that might be formalised and delivered through transformative design and construction approaches, “delivering not simply less bad versions of business as usual but genuinely transformational common good outcomes across connected systems, cultures and places”.

They conclude: “Recognising that the conditions for systemic transformation are in place, possible futures for modern housing must now be made desirable, viable and highly probable – for the common good. For when we are making housing, we are making the future.”