Social housing in Portugal and Italy: methodological issues and empirical inferences of a comparative study

This working paper aims to clarify some aspects of social housing in Portugal and Italy in order to start a comparative analysis of the interventions in social housing neighbourhood’s case studies in the two countries. Divided into three parts, the paper initially discloses an explanation of methodological issues for a housing comparative study, especially for the Southern Europe countries, continuing with the description of housing concepts used in Portugal and Italy and concluding with a preliminary comparison. Despite having the same percentage of social housing, Portugal and Italy are different in the way how to deal with it and this research longs to explain it.

The study offers methodological directions on how to conduct a housing comparative research and displays a starting comparison on statistical data, political genealogies, normative concepts and historical frameworks. The purpose is to settle a theoretical basis and reveal some outcomes from the analysis of the social housing in the two countries. This work seeks to contribute to the general debate of comparative housing studies of Southern Europe.

Keywords: Social housing, Housing policies, Comparative analysis, Portugal, Italy

Complete e-WP here.

About the author:

Caterina Francesca Di Giovanni is an architect and a PhD student in Urban Studies at the ISCTEIUL/ FCSH-UNL, with the CIES-IUL as hosting institution and Rita Ávila Cachado as her supervisor. Her research is funded by FCT (SFRH/BD/130465/2017) and focuses on integrated interventions in social housing with an interdisciplinary approach. She holds a master’s degree in Architecture from University of Palermo and a postgraduate in Urban Planning in Public Administration-City and Land Management at the Sapienza University of Rome. She was successful in some architectural competitions and she worked in Italy for local associations about heritage promotion and local development. In 2017, she developed a research into the project exPERts – “Making sense of planning expertise: housing policy and the role of experts in the Programa Especial de Realojamento” – with which she continues to collaborate.