Kyushu University [Geerhardt Kornatowski (Associate Professor) Faculty of Social and Cultural Studies, Department of Cultural Studies]

Geerhardt Kornatowski

Last modified date：2024.04.13

Associate Professor / Department of Cultural Studies / Faculty of Social and Cultural Studies

Presentations

1.	Geerhardt Kornatowski, Not Size, but Quality: 'Public Subdivided Flats' as a Pragmatic Solution to Deteriorating Living Space in Hong Kong, Shrinking Domesticities Tokyo Seminar, 2023.07, Hong Kong is perhaps the epitome of shrinking domesticities. This presentation discusses recent social housing initiatives for poor households living in subdivided flats. These flats, often managed through co-living arrangements, are representative of an increasingly unaffordable housing market with low tenancy control on the one hand, and lagging public housing supply on the other. In response, third sector organizations have experimented with underutilized private housing to provide small but livable housing units to underserved populations, primarily in old inner-city neighborhoods. Based on interviews with social housing providers and social workers, I will argue that while the shrinking of space (for the benefit of developers and owners) is rather an accepted fact, it is the systematization of substandard subdivision practices that has become the main target of social intervention by non-governmental interest groups. I will mainly refer to the case study of a homeless organization, in particular how it approaches the aspects of property negotiation, fundraising and qualitative design. Finally, the presentation will consider the practical implications for inclusionary housing for vulnerable populations in the East Asian urban context..
2.	Geerhardt Kornatowski, Nudging Informality through “Nonabstract Pragmatism”: Hong Kong’s Social Housing Movement and the Experiment of “Public Subdivided Flats”, Society for Hong Kong Studies Annual Conference, 2023.06, [URL], Hong Kong's current housing policy is in a state of flux. While the 2014 Long-Term Housing Strategy was remarkably hesitant about the 'practicality' and 'quick-fix' approach of third sector-led social housing, the government has recently come up with its own quick-fix solution to the housing shortage, most notably through its Light Public Housing Scheme. Set against this background, this paper will examine the role of what is now loosely framed as the social housing movement and its current strategies for providing decent, transitional housing outside of formal policy. I argue that the movement's experimentation with informal but very pragmatic and concrete means of housing provision has had an important (though not always conspicuous) impact on the housing landscape, particularly in the old urban areas. The movement itself is primarily a response to the failed informality of subdivided flats, especially after the 2011 Fa Yuen Street fire. The initial objective of social housing is to provide an adequate intermediate step between substandard private rented housing and public rented housing. Through interviews with key stakeholders, I examine the actual experiments that took place during the materialisation of this type of housing and the current initiatives that have evolved beyond its primary objective..
3.	Kornatowski, G., The ‘social housing’ trajectory in Japan’s core city-regions: Accessibility to (not affordability of) housing in the context of ageing and depopulation, International Social Housing Festival, 2023.06, [URL].
4.	Pragmatism as Key in Hong Kong’s Housing Policy: The Case of the Community Housing Movement.
5.	Geerhardt Kornatowski, What about gentrification at face value? A perspective of (re)densification on the Nishinari Special Zone Project in Osaka, The 10th East Asian Regional Conference in Alternative Geography (EARCAG), 2022.12, [URL].
6.	Geerhardt Kornatowski, Wing Shing Tang, Community Housing: The People's Road to Housing Provision and Affordability?, Future is Public: Housing as a basic right (preliminary to the Our Future is Public Conference), 2022.10, [URL].
7.	Kornatowski, G., Inclusivity through care infrastructures: A focus on transitory workers in the Fukuoka city-region, The 11th East-Asian Inclusive Cities Network Workshop, 2022.08.
8.	Solidarity networks for foreign workers in Japan: From the perspective of “community hubs”, [URL].
9.	Rimi Khan, 閔鎭京, 朝倉由希, 南田明美, Geerhardt Kornatowski , 在留外国人のための文化政策と都市—日本およびアジア諸国の事例比較から, 九州大学アジアウィーク2021多様な文化と社会包摂の未来を考える, 2021.10, [URL].
10.	Geerhardt Kornatowski, Frontiers of non-exclusionary urbanism: Voluntary sector geographies in East-Asian city-regions, Q-AOS Brown Bag Seminar, 2021.07, [URL], Urbanization performs a crucial role in our globalized economy. Yet, this has been and continues to be a process marked by conspicuous inequality, not just in the form of uneven development between rural and urban areas, but increasingly also in the form of social disparity within cities. Unsurprisingly, issues of inequality and social inclusion are high on the UN’s SDGs Agenda. This presentation explores current practices of non-exclusionary urbanism that are spearheaded by consolidated voluntary sector geographies in the context of East-Asian city-regions. It will focus on the spatial features of non-governmental care services through the lens of 'service hubs' which are clusters of low-cost housing and social support services, often located in inner-city neighborhoods. I will draw extensively on the experiences of care services for vulnerable populations in Hong Kong and Singapore as both cities are renown for advanced levels of social inequality..
11.	Constance Ching, Geerhardt Kornatowski, Home-making while homeless: Livelihood and intervention of Hong Kong street sleepers under extreme inequality, RC21 - Sensing the City, 2021.07, [URL].
12.	ヒェラルド・コルナトウスキ, Residential mobility and politics of pragmatism amidst extreme inequality: The case of the Community Housing Movement in Hong Kong, Urban Mobilities in the 21st Century, 2021.07, [URL], For several years now, Hong Kong has been topping the international chart of unaffordable housing. Relating to the rental housing market, this has resulted in a downward mobility of living space for middle class household and arrested mobility in substandard apartments for lower income classes. Grassroots demands on rent control in the private housing market and additional supply in the public housing market have had little to no success. In order to break the impasse of an overheated housing market and the systematic undersupply of public housing, the NGO sector initiated a social housing project—the Community Housing Movement (CHM)—in 2018. This presentation will explore the CHM project as a depoliticized effort to combat arrested mobility in the housing market. It will argue that although important improvements in residential mobility needs of vulnerable households have been realized, the project also sustains the hegemony of a high-profit developer industry. The conspicuous role of ‘co-housing’ in this project will also be addressed..
13.	Constance Ching, Geerhardt Kornatowski, The integrative housing context: Social innovation in home-making for the homeless in Hong Kong, Perspectives on Social Inclusivity, 2021.03.
14.	International Comparison about the Dynamics of Crisis and Innovations in Service Hubs.
15.	Social Housing in Hong Kong: From the Interstices of the Land (Re)development Regime.
16.	Geerhardt Kornatowski, Socio-spatiality of ‘good (urban) governance', Transdisciplinary Approaches to Good Governance (Panel on Politics and the City), 2020.02.
17.	Geerhardt Kornatowski, “Regulating Unpredictability: Contested Migrant Worker Spaces and Voluntary Sector Geographies in Singapore”, The 4th Workshop on the Geopolitical Economy of East Asian Developmentalism (EARCAG-GPE), 2019.11, [URL].
18.	Geerhardt Kornatowski, “Inner-city Service Hubs in East Asian City-regions: Hong Kong and Singapore in Comparative Perspective”, the 9th EA-ICN Workshop, 2019.08.
19.	コルナトウスキヒェラルド, Spaces of ambivalence: Contestation and collaboration in Singapore’s migrant worker service hubs, International Conference of Critical Geography, 2019.04.
20.	コルナトウスキヒェラルド, Inner-city Service hubs in East-Asian context: A geography of voluntary services for migrant workers in Singapore, the 9th Meeting of East Asian Regional Conference in Alternative Geography (EARCAG), 2018.12.
21.	コルナトウスキヒェラルド, ’Inplacement’/’Redensification’: Alternative Forms of Land Revalorization in the Inner City of Osaka, International Workshop on Post-gentrification: Rethinking Urban Redevelopment in the World, 2018.07.
22.	Constance Ching, Geerhardt Kornatowski, Searching, the Way Home: Borrowing the Voices from the Homeless, the 7th EA-ICN Workshop, 2017.09.
23.	Geerhardt Kornatowski, Civic Action 'within Bounds': Framing Advocacy for Foreign Workers in Singapore from a Critical Political-Economic Viewpoint, the 8th Meeting of East Asian Regional Conference in Alternative Geography (EARCAG), 2016.12.

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