Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

We develop co-agency to explain how heterogeneous factors shape repair and construction in densification, embedding engineering practices in their sociomaterial context. This is supported by findings from expert deliberation on the alignment of adaptation measures with practical constraints.

Paper long abstract

Urban densification is a hybrid process that draws on sociomaterial histories to transform existing buildings toward a more resilient future. It links repair and construction, as the building stock is at once framed as fragile matter determined by past decisions, and as an invaluable resource for adaptation to sociopolitical aspirations. Densification encompasses large-scale interventions that recreate areas, deleting material histories, as well as small-scale measures that preserve structures while transforming their characteristics, uses, and social embedding. It reassembles materials, people, and places (McFarlane, 2020), leading to disparate developments that highlight the fragility and heterogeneity of buildings (Denis & Pontille, 2020, 2023). Whether buildings are maintained, expanded, or demolished, and with what consequences, is a sociotechnical process dependent on conflicting interests and contextual factors.

This contribution investigates how factors like regulations, financing, sociodemographics, infrastructure, and material characteristics shape the relationship between construction and repair in densification. It develops the concept of co-agency to explain how combined, heterogeneous agencies limit and redirect interventions into the built environment, producing unintended consequences for social and environmental justice, including segregation, displacement, waste, and destruction. This approach embeds engineering practices in their sociomaterial context, pointing out constraints on potential action.

Empirically, it draws on group discussions with German experts in planning, architecture, and research, revealing the ambivalent compromises practitioners navigate when aligning sociopolitical requirements for building stock adaptation with regulatory, institutional, and financial constraints. To them, the relationship between repair and construction involves situated negotiations over what should be preserved or changed, and what is feasible.