Project: Research

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.

In tracing socio-ecological controversies in Swiss cities, the project pursues three objectives:

1. First, the analysis of housing controversies contributes to a relational understanding of Swiss urban (residential) development. Across seven subprojects (SPs), we advance a comparative case-study analysis of prominent socio-ecological housing controversies in Zurich and Geneva. These include controversies around how to maintain housing, densify and plan cities and invest in the built environment. Moreover, in thinking relationally about responsibility, we endeavour to trace global geographies of responsibility.
2. Second, these empirical contributions provide the grounds for developing novel conceptualizations of responsibility and operationalize them for the urban realm.
3. Third, analysis of how to produce responsible innovation translates new responsibility practices into urban policy. A systematic comparative analysis and knowledge transfer strategy serve to gather the emerging insights in agenda-setting publications and practice-oriented outputs that support cities in their responses to socio-ecological threats.

While not exhaustive, these controversies cover the most pressing concerns currently debated in the context of socio-ecological crisis. “The Responsible City” tackles these controversies through disciplinary expertise in sociology, urban studies, planning, architecture, and geography and at different scales of analysis, including a relational analysis that brings Zurich and Geneva in comparative conversation with other sites.