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Across the world, the housing crisis is escalating. Mass migration to cities has led to rapid urbanisation on an unprecedented scale, while the withdrawal of public funding from social housing provision in Western countries, and widening income inequality, have further compounded the situation. In prosperous US and European cities, middle- and low-income residents are being pushed out of housing markets increasingly dominated by luxury investors. The average London tenant, for example, now pays an unaffordable 49 per cent of his or her pre-tax income in rent. Parts of the developing world and areas of forced migration are experiencing insufficient affordable housing stock coupled with rapidly shifting ways of life. In response to this context, forward-thinking architects are taking the lead with a collaborative approach. By partnering with allied fields, working with residents, developing new forms of housing, and leveraging new funding systems and policies, they are providing strategic leadership for what many consider to be our cities' most pressing crisis. Amidst growing economic and health disparities, this issue of AD asks how housing projects, and the design processes behind them, might be interventions towards greater social equity, and how collaborative work in housing might reposition the architectural profession at large. Recommended by Fast Company as one of the best reads of 2018 and included in their list of 9 books designers should read in 2019! Contributors include: Cynthia Barton, Deborah Gans, and Rosamund Palmer; Neeraj Bhatia and Antje Steinmuller; Dana Cuff; Fatou Dieye; Robert Fishman; Na Fu; Paul Karakusevic; Kaja Kühl and Julie Behrens; Matthew Gordon Lasner; Meir Lobaton Corona; Marc Norman; Julia Park; Brian Phillips and Deb Katz; Pollyanna Rhee; Emily Schmidt and Rosalie Genevro Featured architects: Architects for Social Housing, ShigeruBan Architects, Tatiana Bilbao ESTUDIO, cityLAB, Frédéric Druot Architecture, ERA Architects, GANS studio, Garrison Architects, HOWOGE, Interface Studio Architects, Karakusevic Carson Architects, Lacaton & Vassal, Light Earth Designs, NHDM, PYATOK architecture + urban design, Urbanus, and Urban Works Agency

Procurement systems that favor real-estate profits above all else, combined with design and construction processes that involve architects only in discrete ways, have further foreclosed architects’ engagement with the full design and delivery process, especially in terms of collaborative interactions with potential occupants, limiting their capacity to intervene positively in residents’ lives. In London the average tenant pays 49 percent of his or her pre-tax income towards rent,6 while neighborhoods in Sydney lost 10 to 20 per cent of their teachers, firefighters and other ‘key workers’ from 2006 to 2016 as housing prices soared and those residents moved to further-flung locales.7 History tells us that improvements in housing for people with lower incomes often come not from benevolence towards vulnerable populations, but out of the self-preservation of the more powerful, against the spread of disease or to prevent uprisings. Since terms for the range of publicly and privately funded types of housing covered differ regionally — for instance “affordable housing” is typically defined in the U.S. as costing no more than 30 percent of a household’s income, and in the U.K. as 80 percent of market rate — terminology is defined within the articles themselves. Beyond these definitions, the question for communities facing displacement amid skyrocketing market-rate rents is “affordable for whom?” Housing units designated as affordable by governments, the product of negotiations between developers and local authorities, often remain out of reach for low-income residents.