Profile

I am an assistant professor in urban geography at the University of Amsterdam. My research focuses on the politics of housing, housing inequalities, and socio-spatial inequalities. I live in a apartment in the Transvaalbuurt in the east of Amsterdam. 

Some highlights: 

• In 2017, I defended my PhD thesis "Inequaltiy in the gentrifying European city" cum laude (with distinction);
• In 2019, I was awarded the prestigious NWO VENI Grant for my project "Investing in inequality" (2020-2023);
• In 2022, I published my popular-scientific book Uitgewoond with publisher Das Mag (available in bookstores and online).

Public writing

Although I enjoy academic writing, I get a lot of energy out of popular-scientific writing for a broader audience. Over the past few years I have written op-eds and essays for most major newspapers (NRC, Volkskrant, Trouw, Parool, FD) as well as a broad range of other printed and online media (including OneWorld, Sociale Vraagstukken, Socialisme en Democratie, De Helling, Economische Statistische Berichten, VPRO Tegenlicht). 

Between 2019 and 2021 I wrote a bi-weekly column for the website of the Dutch tv-channel RTL Nieuws. 

I regularly appear on TV to comment on the housing crisis (including Buitenhof, Talkshow M, Nieuwsuur), in documentaries (including VPRO Tegenlicht, BNNVara Opstandelingen, Half Holland Dakloos), on radio, in podcasts, and in written media. 

Uitgewoond (book)

In February 2022, my book Uitgewoond was published by Das Mag. In this popular-scientific book I addres the politics behind the current Dutch housing crisis. The book has been nominated for the 2022 Prinsjesboekenprijs (best political book of the year) and the NPO Radio 1 non-fiction book of the year.

Read interviews about my book in:

• NRC
• Trouw
• Parool
• Follow the Money
• Vice
• De Correspondent
• RTL Nieuws
• Sociale Vraagstukken
• De Architect
• Vers Beton

Research

A common thread in my research is that I aim to combine political-economy perspectives on macro-level processes with quantitative analyses of micro-level outcomes. Below I highlight some of my main research topics and selected publications.

For a full overview of my academic publications, see the publications tab on my profile or Google scholar. 

VENI project: investing in inequality

In July 2019 I was awarded a VENI grant by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) for my project Investing in inequality: how the increase in private housing investors shapes social divides. The research project runs from 2020 to 2023. 

Housing increasingly serves as a site for investment. Structural housing-market transformations contribute to the rise of private housing investors buying property to rent out (“buy-to-let”). This project investigates the rise of private investors in the Netherlands, and investigates consequences for access to affordable housing, uneven wealth accumulation, and spatial inequality. 

Some of the findings derived from this project have already been published in peer-reviewed journals:

• I have analyzed and theorized the class position of (Dutch) landlords in Economic Geography (published 2022). 
• Together with Richard Ronald, I have analyzed the revival of Amsterdam's private-rental sector - showing how politics have promote a form of "regulated marketization" (Environment and Planning A, 2020)
• Together with Manuel Aalbers, Jelke Bosma and Rodrigo Fernandez, I studied how the growth of the Dutch buy-to-let market is the outcome of financialized homeownership running out of steam (Housing, Theory and Society, 2021).
• Together with Barend Wind and Rowan Arundel, I analyzed the revival of the private-rental market in Groningen - a booming university city. Among other things, we reveal a dominance of small-scale landlords but an important trend towards property concentration (Urban Geography, 2021)
• Together with Rowan Arundel, I have shown how homeownership rates have been declining among young adults and low-income households, and especially in major cities. We argue it is crucial to take into account the intersection of age, class and geography rather than relying on simplistic generational narratives (Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 2021).

Justin Kadi, Christian Lennartz and I edited a special issue on landlordism and multiple property ownership for the International Journal of Housing Policy (published 2020). We wrote the introduction to the issue, in which we conceptualize different forms of multiple property ownership. 

Gentrification and segregation

During my PhD (2013-2017), I did research on gentrification. While most gentrification research focuses on spatial processes in specific neighbourhoods, I wanted to unravel the influence of gentrification on socio-spatial inequalities at the urban or metropolitan level. 

My paper with Sako Musterd about gentrification and the suburbanization of poverty (published in 2018) is the most-read paper in the journal Urban Geography. We published a follow-up paper in Area in 2021. Together with Wouter van Gent, I anatomized the residential mobility, social mobility and demographic changes that co-produce gentrification (published in Environment and Planning A in 2015) and the influence of gentrification on socio-economic and ethnic segregation (in the Handbook on Urban Segregation in 2020). With Willem Boterman, I have studied how intergenerational support factors into urban gentrification (Urban Studies, 2017) and theorized how age, generation and life course play a key role in contemporary urban transformations (Handbook of Gentrification Studies, 2018). 

I also wrote about state-led gentrification in Amsterdam and the changing geography of market-oriented housing policies (published in Housing, Theory and Society in 2017).

Housing politics

Related, I am doing ongoing research on the politics of housing. Apart from the work already covered above, I have focused on the neoliberal politics undermining the provision of social-rental housing in the Netherlands (with Wouter van Gent, in International Journal of Housing Policy, 2020).

I have also studied how the controversial Rotterdam Act, which excludes certain populations from targeted areas, came into being and its (lack of) effects (with Justus Uitermark and Wouter van Gent in Political Geography and Urban Studies). 

I have studied the housing politics in Parkstad Limburg - a region that struggles with population decline and class change (with Myrte Hoekstra, Marco Bontje and Sako Musterd, in Journal of Urban Affairs). 

Divided housing access and spatial polarization

Rowan Arundel and I collaborate on a line of research in which we study (1) increasingly unequal access to housing and (2) proceses of spatial polarization. Our findings show growing divides by age and class in the ability to buy housing (Transactions of the British Institute of Geographers, 2021) as well as what kind of housing is bought, with important implications for future housing-wealth accumulation (Urban Geography, 2020). We also show that spatial divides are increasing at multiple spatial scales (Transactions of the British Institute of Geographers, 2020). These social and spatial divides do not exist in isolation, but interact and reinforce each other. 

Education

• 2017: PhD in Urban Geography, University of Amsterdam - Cum Laude / with distinction
• 2013: MSc Research Master Metropolitan Studies, University of Amsterdam - Cum Laude / with distinction

Career

• 2022-present: Assistant professor Urban Geography at the University of Amsterdam

• 2017-2022: Postdoctoral researcher Urban Geography at the University of Amsterdam (VENI "investing in inequality")

• 2016-2017: Research Urban Geography at the University of Amsterdam (regional dynamics of life course)

• 2013-2017: PhD researcher Urban Geography at the University of Amsterdam (gentrification)

• 2014-2015: Full-time researcher Centre for Urban Studies at the University of Amsterdam (policy evaluation 'Rotterdamwet')

• 2013: junior researcher Centre for Urban Studies at the University of Amsterdam (young people and housing)

• 2010-2013: Research Master Urban Studies/Metropolitan Studies (MSc.) at the University of Amsterdam GSSS

• 2012: Master Sozialwissenschaften at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin (Research Exchange)

• 2009-2010: Urban Planning and Landscape at the University of Manchester (Erasmus Exchange)

• 2007-2010: Urban Planning (BSc.) at the University of Amsterdam

Publications

Below an overview of my publications in peer-reviewed journals and book chapters. I have not included working papers or popular-scientific papers. 

2022

• Verlaan, T., & Hochstenbach, C. (2022). Gentrification through the ages: A long-term perspective on urban displacement, social transformation and resistance. City, 26(2-3), 439-449.
• Hochstenbach, C. (2022). Landlord Elites on the Dutch Housing Market: Private Landlordism, Class, and Social Inequality. Economic Geography, 1-28.

2021

• Aalbers, M., Hochstenbach, C., Bosma, J., & Fernandez, R. (2021). The death and life of private landlordism: How financialized homeownership gave birth to the buy-to-let market. Housing, Theory and Society, 38(5), 541-563.
• Hochstenbach, C., Wind, B., & Arundel, R. (2021). Resurgent landlordism in a student city: Urban dynamics of private rental growth. Urban Geography, 42(6), 769-791.
• Hochstenbach, C., & Arundel, R. (2021). The unequal geography of declining young adult homeownership: Divides across age, class, and space. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 46(4), 973-994.
• Hochstenbach, C., & Musterd, S. (2021). A regional geography of gentrification, displacement, and the suburbanisation of poverty: Towards an extended research agenda. Area, 53(3), 481-491.

2020

• Hochstenbach, C., & Ronald, R. (2020). The unlikely revival of private renting in Amsterdam: Re-regulating a regulated housing market. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 52(8), 1622-1642.
• Hochstenbach, C., & Arundel, R. (2020). Spatial housing market polarisation: National and urban dynamics of diverging house values. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 45(2), 464-482.
• Arundel, R., & Hochstenbach, C. (2020). Divided access and the spatial polarization of housing wealth. Urban Geography, 41(4), 497-523.
• Van Gent, W., & Hochstenbach, C. (2020). The neo-liberal politics and socio-spatial implications of Dutch post-crisis social housing policies. International Journal of Housing Policy, 20(1), 156-172.
• Kadi, J., Hochstenbach, C., & Lennartz, C. (2020). Multiple property ownership in times of late homeownership: A new conceptual vocabulary. International Journal of Housing Policy, 20(1), 6-24.
• Hoekstra, M. S., Hochstenbach, C., Bontje, M. A., & Musterd, S. (2020). Shrinkage and housing inequality: Policy responses to population decline and class change. Journal of Urban Affairs, 42(3), 333-350.
• Musterd, S., Hochstenbach, C., & Boterman, W. (2020). Ripples of structural economic transformation: The changing social geographies of Dutch metropolitan regions. Applied Geography, 116, 102151.
• Van Gent, W., & Hochstenbach, C. (2020). The impact of gentrification on social and ethnic segregation. In Musterd, S. (Ed) Handbook of Urban Segregation. Edward Elgar Publishing.

2019

• Damhuis, R., Van Gent, W., Hochstenbach, C., & Musterd, S. (2019). The regional and local dynamics of life course and housing. In Moos, M. (Ed) A research agenda for housing (pp. 165-181). Edward Elgar Publishing.
• Hochstenbach, C. (2019). The age dimensions of urban socio‐spatial change. Population, Space and Place, 25(2), e2220.

2018

• Van Gent, W., Hochstenbach, C., & Uitermark, J. (2018). Exclusion as urban policy: The Dutch ‘act on extraordinary measures for urban problems’. Urban Studies, 55(11), 2337-2353.
• Hochstenbach, C., & Boterman, W. (2018). Age, life course and generations in gentrification processes. In Lees, L. & Phillips, M. (Eds) Handbook of gentrification studies. Edward Elgar Publishing.
• Hochstenbach, C. (2018). Spatializing the intergenerational transmission of inequalities: Parental wealth, residential segregation, and urban inequality. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 50(3), 689-708.
• Hochstenbach, C., & Musterd, S. (2018). Gentrification and the suburbanization of poverty: Changing urban geographies through boom and bust periods. Urban Geography, 39(1), 26-53.

2017

• Hochstenbach, C. (2017). State-led gentrification and the changing geography of market-oriented housing policies. Housing, Theory and Society, 34(4), 399-419.
• Hochstenbach, C., & Boterman, W.R. (2017). Intergenerational support shaping residential trajectories: Young people leaving home in a gentrifying city. Urban Studies, 54(2), 399-420.
• Uitermark, J., Hochstenbach, C., & Van Gent, W. (2017). The statistical politics of exceptional territories. Political Geography, 57, 60-70.

2015

• Hochstenbach, C., & Van Gent, W.P.C. (2015). An anatomy of gentrification processes: Variegating causes of neighbourhood change. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 47(7), 1480-1501.
• Hochstenbach, C., & Boterman, W.R. (2015). Navigating the field of housing: housing pathways of young people in Amsterdam. Journal of Housing and the Built Environment, 30(2), 257-274.
• Hochstenbach, C., Musterd, S., & Teernstra, A. (2015). Gentrification in Amsterdam: Assessing the importance of context. Population, Space and Place, 21(8), 754-770.
• Hochstenbach, C. (2015). Stakeholder representations of gentrification in Amsterdam and Berlin: A marginal process?. Housing Studies, 30(6), 817-838.