ABSTRACT
Since the 1990s, many cities around the world have established green policies that promised to mitigate climate change. Some cities, such as Freiburg and Münster in Germany, have proved to be more successful in their implementation of sustainability than others. Recently, however, these medium-sized university cities with a highly academic middle class, once forerunners in urban sustainability, are being confronted and burdened with a steadily growing population. Due to changes in demographic transitions and internal migration, their high level of attractiveness and quality of life as well as effective marketing strategies adopted in the 2000s that promoted sustainable urbanism, these cities are now witnessing unprecedented shortages in their local housing markets. As a result, it is not only the lower-income groups that are affected by displacement, but also students and middle-class people are being exposed to the negative effects of local housing markets. Administrators and policy-makers are aware of this situation and are expressing alarm. Yet they lack the necessary instruments to implement affordable housing strategies that are compatible with their sustainability agenda.
Consequently, social and ecological sustainability is at risk. Growth is managed by instruments resulting from the ‘pre-green’ era, including growing suburbanization as the de facto affordable housing policy, market-driven inner-city densification, soil-sealing, and gentrification. Drawing on interviews with policy-makers and administrators, the authors shed light on the new contradictions and controversies that occur between sustainability on the one hand, and growth management and lack of affordable housing on the other.
