Abstract

The stronger the centrifugal forces of globalization become, the more people have to be on the move, the more uprooted they feel, the stronger the need for connection and encounter becomes. The desire for ›Heimat‹ is growing. But the digital transformation, which permeates all spheres of society and makes unexpected alliances possible, has little impact on housing, of all things. It favors new living desires that break away from old ideas of order and security and promote hybrid forms of behavior and life. At the same time, the constraints of a capital-driven housing industry are intensifying and rarely correspond to the otherwise common demand-driven goals and purposes of the capitalist economic order. While the digital mode of production and distribution aims for the greatest possible diversification and thus corresponds to the ideal of changeability, the housing market proves to be structurally conservative and usually only finds outdated answers to new demands—with the consequence that a ›right living in the wrong life‹ appears affordable for only a select few.