ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors explore how world events have shaped the context of housing research – from the collapse of communism in central and Eastern Europe, the push towards European integration and the impact of the Global Financial Crisis. They shows how the rise of the East Asian economies is also attracting the attention of housing researchers, and that this may serve to weaken the Eurocentrism that still prevails in the field. The authors examine how the world has changed and how comparative housing research has developed. The academic study of housing has changed radically since the editors of the Journal of Housing and the Built Environment special edition highlighted the methodological challenge to comparative housing research. The financial crisis of 1997 exposed weaknesses in the developmental welfare states and prompted a strengthening of state involvement in welfare in Korea and Taiwan.
