Achieving sustainable housing affordability through an institutionalist approach to communicative planning: a case study of a new settlements and sustainable urban extensions in England

This study argues for an Institutionalist Approach (IA) to communicative planning to achieve Sustainable Housing Affordability (SHA) outcomes in England. IA combines Giddens’ Structuration Theory and Habermas’ Communicative Planning Theory, argues for a socially constructed view of the world. Currently, the concept of SHA is explained by merging of prevailing discourse on housing affordability and sustainability. i.e. housing affordability is an issue around housing demand and supply disequilibrium, whilst sustainability is achieving a balance between environmental, economic and social aspects of housing developments. Both lenses through which it is understood are problematic and independently are inadequate to capture the effects of 21st -century globalized housing markets, where the household subjectivities are complex and planning has limited control over local housing outcomes. Setting the research design to a single case study with embedded units, the empirical evidence for the study was collected from Dickens Heath New Settlement, Solihull and Langley Sustainable Urban Extension, Birmingham. The findings provide new insights into understanding the concept of SHA that suit the 21st -century housing context and contribute to developing the application of Communicative Planning Theory in the context of new housing developments that aims to achieve SHA outcomes