The following project aims to establish scientific cooperation between the Faculty of Geography (University of Belgrade) and the Institute for Urban and Regional Research (Austrian Academy of Sciences). The primary objective of this project is to enhance the capabilities and facilitate knowledge transfer to young researchers and PhD students from both teams by to providing a platform for in-depth exploration of urban housing regimes, within the framework of comparative.

This project looks into the housing markets and policies of two capital cities, one of which belongs to the European periphery, commonly neglected in urban studies. his project discusses two capital cities – Vienna and Belgrade, which are characterised by very different historic pathways and market structures, and which are embedded in different regulative frames and welfare regimes. While Vienna is dominated by a rental market with strong regulations and by a large social housing submarket, Belgrade displays a delayed, but radical post-socialist transformation towards an ownership market with weak regulations.

The main intention of this project is twofold: firstly, it contributes to comparative housing research, as focused on two cities which have not been discussed together so far. Secondly, it intends to adapt the concept of urban regime to regimes on the housing market, which will be a conceptual frame to explain the different implications of global macro-trends (financialisation) on urban housing markets.

For this purpose, we will analyse the development of urban housing regimes in the two cities between the early 1990s and present time. By doing this, we will consider three dimensions, allowing a more structured comparison of the urban housing regimes: firstly, the policies, regulations and political power relations, second the actors and the financing system of the supply side of housing markets, and finally the resulting housing stock.