Researching social housing in a global context

Social housing varies from society to society. Globalisation continues to impact on local social housing systems. As researchers, we seek to understand these various social housing systems and their relations to broader economic, societal and global trends; we seek to identify the interests that drive social housing, learn from successful innovations and propose practical innovations. The adequacy of our results depends upon the adequacy of our methods. This paper argues that current methods are no longer adequate to the task of dealing with the complexity of social housing in a global context. It examines four issues critical for social housing research: theory, interdisciplinarity, a scientific approach and making progress. It introduces a new framework for collaborative creativity, Functional Collaboration. This is a set of eight methods that integrates the diversity of current methods. It is a scientific, collaborative, cyclical and global approach oriented to progress in social housing.