Affordable housing was the focus of UGoveRN’s roundtable at the AESOP Annual Congress in Istanbul on July 8, 2025. Convened by Ebru Kurt-Özman (UGoveRN) and Nuno Travasso (University of Coimbra), and chaired by UGoveRN founder Prof. Tuna Taşan-Kok, the session gathered speakers from Turkey, the U.S., Portugal, Italy, the Netherlands, and Germany to exchange experiences on governing housing under fragmented systems and political constraints.
The discussion highlighted a wide spectrum of regulatory approaches: from land value capture strategies in Los Angeles, to the political use of housing investments in Turkey, Italy’s planning agreements with developers, Portugal’s municipal housing strategies, and Berlin’s social preservation zones. Together, these cases revealed how tools are designed, contested, and adapted within different governance cultures. Rather than seeking universal solutions, the roundtable underscored the importance of understanding institutional context, political negotiation, and equity outcomes.
Questions of transferability, distributive impacts, and the role of intermediaries were central, with panelists stressing that housing regulation is as much about governance structures as technical design. By bringing these perspectives into conversation, the session offered a comparative lens on what it takes to make housing policy work in practice. It marked a starting point for UGoveRN’s ongoing effort to build a shared framework for analyzing affordable housing regulation across diverse urban contexts. You can read more about the event on our Blog.