Il ritorno della questione della casa in Europa

The old and never fully resolved Wohnungsfrage is back in Europe. The exponential growth of house prices and rents, and the crisis of the home-ownership model put the "hous-ing question" back on the agenda. Even there, where, as in the German-speaking countries and northern Europe, a different orientation has been chosen, focusing on renting and cooperative ownership, signs of a gigantic malaise and housing demand that remains unfulfilled are ap-pearing, as the case of the Berlin referendum on the expropriation of large property ownership has shown. The long-forgotten issue of public housing and its role in the balanced growth of the city thus resurfaces. In the section of the review that these pages introduce, an initial explo-ration is attempted through four reflections on this complex web of problems. [Publisher's text]