Ways of Residing in Transformation (PDF)

Mervi Ilmonen is Research Fellow at YTK Land Use and Urban Studies Group at Aalto University. She has a wide experience of both nationally and internationally funded research projects and management of research. Her main fields interests in research and teaching are urban studies, urban culture, housing and urban policies covering questions from developing suburbia to creative city. Her latest publications concern the significance of corner stores in the production of urban culture and a living urban environment. Though coming originally from social policy, she has a long-standing experience in interdisciplinary research. She is active in several national and international expert groups in planning and urban studies: a council member of AESOP (Association of European Schools of Planning) since 2008 and Deputy Chair of AESOP Congress 2010 in Helsinki, a board member of EURA (European Urban Research Association) since 2002 and organizer of several NSBB (Nordic Group of Housing and Urban Research) conferences. She is also a long time editor of the Finnish Journal of Urban Studies.

Katrin Paadam is a Dr Professor of Sociology at the School of Economics and Business Administration at the Tallinn University of Technology. Her theoretical interests lie in conceptualizing ways of residing in also symbolically charged spatial-architectural settings as they relate to the construction of meanings, identities and well-being of individuals, along residential histories and social practices, especially in the structural conditions of transforming societies. Together with her team she has been engaged in research of public and private rental housing issues, related market strategies and policies; the latest research include practices in residential and public spaces within processes of waterfront regeneration, urban renewal, gentrification, spatial conversion. She has been a partner in interdisciplinary European and Nordic urban housing projects, also in the research on European identities, and involved in NSBB activities. She was a co-coordinator of the Nordic-Baltic researcher network Visurf and co-coordinates CIB W069 on Residential Studies.

Eli Støa is a Dr Professor of Housing at the Faculty of Architecture and Fine Arts at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Her research and publications have mainly been on issues related to sustainable residential practices and the interplay between housing architecture, values and use. This covers questions related to the meaning of second homes, the role of architecture in transitions towards a low-carbon society and the interplay between social and environmental sustainability. Lately she has also been engaged in research on housing for refugees and asylum seekers looking into how architecture may affect understandings of others and us. Støa is active in the European Network of Housing Research (ENHR) as one of the coordinators of the working group on Housing and Urban Sustainability. She was the first editor of a book titled Utopia Revisited - Towards a Carbon-Neutral Neighbourhood at Brÿset (Fagbokforlaget 2014).