Kordel & Naumann: Rural Housing in Crisis
In The Rural Housing Crisis: Analytical Dimensions and Emblematic Issues, Stefan Kordel (Geography, Friedrich Alexander University, Germany) and Matthias Naumann (Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development, Germany) argue that while much attention has been paid to the housing crisis in urban regions, the crisis of sustainable housing availability in rural settings is both relevant to wider debates in housing studies and crucial for successful political action to address the need for just and inclusive housing.
Kordel and Naumann define the rural housing crisis as a shortage of affordable and sustainable housing and an inability on the part of public and private institutions to meet this shortage. Finding housing a useful lens through which to research inequalities in rural areas, the authors argue that the same factors underlying the urban housing crisis are in play in rural areas.
Based on the literature on rural housing issues and drawing on current work in crisis research, the article identifies three current issues as emblematic of the rural housing crisis: (1) financialization/assetization of rural land and real estate, (2) residential mobility in rural housing markets in the form of demand for rural housing and short-term/unforeseen influx to rural areas, and (3) rural gentrification entailing significant changes to supply and demand in markets and a revaluation of rural communities as desirable places to live. Employing various analytical lenses, Kordel and Naumann discern how different manifestations of crises—from the global financial crisis to the COVID-19 pandemic—affect housing accessibility.
The authors conclude by discussing how the notion of a rural housing crisis can provide a point of departure for future research and political action. Noting that the rural housing crisis and its solutions are primarily questions of political economy, the authors point to the increasing commodification of land and observe that the rural housing crisis is inextricably intertwined with questions of sustainability. They suggest that rural planning and development is primarily a question of housing and that resilient communities must reflect and serve the particularities of their own diverse and specific regions. Kordel and Naumann conclude that the search for an alternative rural development that is just and inclusive depends on a vision of rural places that transcends dichotomized understandings of rural areas as simply either ‘dying’ or ‘idyllic.’
