A first session in October addressed ‘Regulation of Residential Rentals in European Cities’. A panel comprising Dr Irina Domurath (Central U Chile), Prof Christoph Schmid (U Bremen) and Prof Marco Loos (UvA/ACT) explored pathways and attempts to mitigate rising prices in rental housing markets around Europe. Different strategies and reactions by legislators, courts, local government and civil society, it emerged, set a strain on the role of law in addressing this challenge.

A second session in December was dedicated to the question ‘Who owns the City? Urban Property Regimes in and Beyond Financialized Real Estate’. In a vivid discussion, Prof Manuel Aalbers (KU Leuven), Prof Amnon Lehavi (Harry Radzyner School of Law/Herzliya) and Dr Joanna Kusiak (U Cambridge) stressed the transformation that the entry of financial investors into the housing market has entailed, and how traditional legal tools of urban governance lose their grip. By consequence, private and economic law instruments gain a bigger role. 

The series will be continued on January 31 with a keynote by Leilani Farha, former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing. Her talk will be titled ‘The human right to housing – Local and global struggles’.