Last October, drOp partners gathered in Elva for the usual meet-analyse-plan meeting. But the highlight of the two days was the visit of the Estonian pilot neighborhood.
Brainstorming at the same table is still one of the best ways to move forward in a project. From the three different cities (Ermua – Elva – Matera), partners realised there are similar barriers when it comes to district regeneration: how to successfully engage citizens. The situation in practice shows that it is becoming harder and harder to build a sense of community. ‘Why should I be worried about this?’ is a common theme. This is most of the times paired with the residents‘ skepticism: ‘For so many years nothing changed. Why now?’
But every problem comes with a solution. Following its experience as an European Capital of Culture, Matera gained many valuable insights on how to develop a community. Good communication and a participatory approach are essential to implement new ideas, even when resources are limited. The best projects too can be rejected without proper involvement of the residents.
Elva shared its own experience on reaching out to the residents. So far, the approach was threefold: send out a questionnaire; when not enough data available to the municipality, go in the field to observe; and finally go and meet the people. It may seem like an ordinary idea, but the citizens appreciate it when they see their voices matter.
Partners were already familiar with the context of the Estonian neighbourhood on paper. But being able to see it in real life made a crucial difference, especially by understanding the cultural differences. The biggest problems in Elva: apartment buildings dating from the 80′, with some of them never having been renovated; lack of public utilities and badly organised parking spaces.
The Estonian Union of Housing Associations EKYL presented an overview of the national context. The apartment associations are a very important link between the state and owners, supporting a large scale renovation. A study of the Tallinn Technical University showed that state subsidised renovations can be budget neutral.
So what is going on in the drOp project at this moment? Partners have advanced on defining a co-governance model, on planning a strategy for the local economic development, and on analysing the social housing contexts in Europe. What is next? Using all the available data to advance from a strategic level to a design one in the Integrated Renovation Methodology. ⚡
Welcome to the first newsletter of the drOp project!
We want this channel to be your way to receive updates with our latest activities, spotlights and news related to district renovations, social housing and social innovation. Since the project’s kick-off in October 2022 our team has completed the analysis and diagnosis of the demo case district (Santa Ana in Ermua, Spain) identifying the strengths and opportunities of the neighbourhood. A comprehensive study of the city and the district has been conducted covering the general local conditions, urban mobility and accessibility, the energy consumption and needs or the economic ecosystem among other relevant fields.
This information is taken as the basis for designing the steps of the co-creation process that will involve the citizens and local actors with the objective of identifying jointly the main areas for intervention and selecting and prioritising the key projects. We organized a local first co-creation workshop with citizens and local stakeholders in May 2023.
In addition to this, we are conducting an analysis of social contexts and districts at EU level aiming at understanding the different needs with the final objective of maximizing the replication potential of the renovation methodology. For that we are deeply studying the social housing stock size, typology of buildings, energy performance and energy labels, regulations and strategies, obstacles, and challenges in different EU countries. This report will be finished in autumn.
In the framework of the peer learning activities a first study visit took place in Matera in May 2023 where all the consortium members had the opportunity to learn about different social and cultural initiatives carried out in the municipality and how they have contributed to foster social engagement. In October we will visit Elva to see in place how digital tools are used to promote citizen’s participation.
We are also very happy to have established contact with our sister projects ProLight and Supershine and other initiatives such as agree or Affordable Housing Initiative . We have already jointly participated in EUSEW 2023 and ISHF 2023 and we are really excited about the possibilities of a very fruitful collaboration ahead of us!
If you want more information follow us on our social media channels and visit our website!
drOp had the chance to take part in the Tech Camp event, organised as part of the International Social Housing Festival 2023, in Barcelona this past June.
At the start of the session, Martin Willemart, Policy Officer within European Commission’s DG GROW, introduced the Affordable Housing Initiative (AHI). It was launched along the Renovation Wave, with the objective to support 100 lighthouse renovation districts by 2030. What is important to underline is that it goes beyond the scope of social housing, with the focus being at the neighbourhood level.
The strength of AHI shows thanks to the fact that it works on several levels. It encourages EU-level cross-sectorial partnerships; it channels the necessary resources to foster innovation and experimentation (drOp, ProLight or SUPERSHINE being a few examples); and it supports social innovation, through events such as the European Social Innovation Competition (EUSIC). Sorcha Edwards, Housing Europe’s Secretary General, saluted this type of initiative as usually the institutions tend to work in Brussels in silos. Through the European Affordable Housing Consortium (SHAPE-EU) project, Housing Europe was tasked by the EC to put together some guidelines of the initiatives that succeeded, so that others could become inspired to act too.
Three sister projects came on the stage to explain by concrete examples what AHI means. Naia Merino, the coordinator of the drOp project and representative of the Ermua Municipality was the first one to take the floor. The main goal of the project is to develop an Integrated Renovation Methodology, that aims to transform social housing districts into inclusive smart neighbourhoods. The work of the project will be organised on three main levels: strategic, divided into the diagnosing and planning stages; design, which will focus on prioritisation and project design; and intervention, where there will be an intervention plan and assessment. To achieve this, citizens engagement will be an essential dimension.
Momir Tabakovic, from the University of Applied Sciences Technikum Wien, presented the ProLight project. It aims to test a standardised approach in six demo sites and energy communities, which will act as incubators of technological, social, regulatory, and market solutions. ProLight will identify methodologies able to foster European lighthouse and pocket districts. Innovation clusters will be created through empirical analysis of districts in Austria, Finland, Greece, Spain, Italy, and Portugal. Lastly, at the end of the project blueprints for renovation will be provided and energy and climate-aware communities will be created. Citizens engagement will once again be a central theme.
Paola Zerilli, from the University of York, gave a brief insight on the evolution of the Super-I project: its aims is to provide a significant contribution towards generating investments and collecting data on energy efficiency refurbishment in the social housing sector. She put forward the case of the Italian pilot, comprising two social housing developments, with 251 units to be extensively renovated, with another 128 to be demolished and rebuilt. In terms of funding, the social housing provider will be responsible for covering the investment costs, collaborating with financial institutions, or using government loans.
Riccardo Coletta, from APRE, intervened in order to complement the presentation with the angle of the SUPERSHINE project. As part of its general objectives, the project will analyse the financial situation of three lighthouses situated in Denmark, Italy and Latvia; will support innovative financial solutions such as Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) or Green Public Procurement (GPP); and will provide tools to support local SMEs in redefining the process of their products and systems from the point of view of design, production, logistic and business models by adopting technologies, ultimately to address essential needs of social housing residents.
The University of Mondragon, Tecnalia research center and the municipality of Ermua organized and coordinated a participatory workshop that brought together relevant and varied local agents, municipal staff and technicians of the drOp project itself. This workshop was held on Tuesday 4th July, at Izarra Centre in Ermua and brought together about twenty-five interlocutors for three hours.
This workshop is part of the process of defining the strategic plan to project the regeneration of the Santa Ana neighborhood. During the event, a brainstorming session was held to reflect about the neighborhood and to gather the opinions of the groups on their vision for the future. These projections included a general and sectorial vision of different areas of work (social-cultural, economic, digital and physical/environmental), in order to define possible future scenarios for the district. The participants discussed resistance to change, population loss and aging, accessibility to buildings, parking, energy rehabilitation, improvement of public space and its accessibility, proximity to services and the city center, and solar power, among other issues.
The original article is available in Spanish here.
The Tech Camp, organised by the Affordable Housing Consortium Initiative, SHAPE-EU project during the International Social Housing Festival 2023, will be a two-day event by and for affordable housing renovation experts and practitioners that will address the difficult technical challenges related to renovation, such as ready-to-market sustainable solutions and materials, the use of advanced technologies, smart solutions, and efficient use of state-of-the-art technologies, among others.
As a lighthouse district demonstrator, drOp will be part of the event during the first day, with a session focusing on how can the Renovation Wave be implemented within the affordable housing sector, together with its two sister projects: ProLight and SUPERSHINE. Below you can find the programme of the first day.
PROGRAMME
8th June 2023
@ VIP Room, Palau de Congressos, Barcelona
PLENARY SESSIONS
Moderator: Anna Gumbau
OFFICIAL OPENING
9:00 Bent Madsen, Housing Europe President of the Board
9:10 Paul Cartuyvels, ECTP President
DEMONSTRATING THE RENOVATION WAVE IN THE AFFORDABLE HOUSING SECTOR
The Affordable Housing Initiative (AHI) is part of the Commission’s Renovation Wave strategy for Europe, which aims to green buildings and reduce carbon emissions. The AHI includes piloting 100 renovation and construction districts with a smart neighbourhood approach to pave the way for other renovation projects across Europe. But how should these districts be renovated? What principles should the public, social and cooperative housing providers follow that would bring about the socially just energy transition? A number of organisations across Europe have taken up this challenge of developing and demonstrating innovative approaches to achieving the renovation targets while engaging citizens and developing local communities, socially and economically.
Moderation: Anna Gumbau
09:20 The Affordable Housing Initiative, Anna Athanasopoulou, European Commission
09:30 An energy transition that works for all, Sorcha Edwards, European Affordable Housing Consortium
09:40 Three perspectives of integrated renovation methodologies to transform social housing districts into inclusive smart neighbourhoods.
DROP Project, Naia Gómez, Ermua Municipality
PROLIGHT project, Momir Tabakovic, University of Applied Sciences Technikum Wien
SUPERSHINE project, Riccardo Coletta, APRE, & Paola Zerilli, University of York
10:10 Open Discussion
10:45 Coffee-break
3 BARRIERS HOLDING YOU OFF FROM DISTRICT RENOVATIONS AND HOW TO OVERCOME THEM
For a socially just and affordable Renovation Wave we need to talk about what makes social and affordable housing renovations cumbersome and what opportunities hold the promise to accelerate district level approach. The European Affordable Housing Consortium has identified some of the most pressing barriers from the local stakeholder perspective. The results show an urgent need to innovate the renovation process itself, work more efficiently and aim to achieve higher degree of sustainability. Introducing more integrated project delivery, new business models and financing instruments is also crucial, along with taking advantage of data and digitalization tools. As for social aspects, communication and cooperation are the weakest points causing delays, mistrust, and low citizen interest in renovation. Moreover, the role of the local governments as a catalyst can be crucial for overcoming those barriers. In this panel discussion we will highlight 3 barriers from different perspectives and discuss real case experiments and ideas for turning these obstacles into opportunities.
Moderation: Anna Gumbau
11:00 The need for an industrial approach to provide full renovation packages and scale up the process, Ulla-Brit Kramer (Overijssel Province)*
11:15 A need for mainstreaming circularity principles, Enrico Grillo (Sequas)
11:30 The impact and difficulties of tenant relocation, Sven van Elst (ASTER)*
11:45 Panel discussions
RENOVATING AT THE DISTRICT SCALE: WHY, WHAT AND HOW?
The European Commission will pilot the renovation of 100 districts to pave the way to (re)build quality, liveable, and affordable homes. These districts are renovation projects of reference that go ‘the extra mile’ in terms of technological, social or process innovations. There are already numerous such tried and tested examples throughout Europe, where a combination of smart, circular or modular solutions, eco-design principles and renewables, and resident involvement were developed. For the past year, as part of a collaborative effort, the European Affordable Housing Consortium has been gathering these examples across Europe, which together can potentially form a narrative or ‘blueprint’ to guide local organisations towards delivering the just energy transition. In this session some of that work will be presented. Afterwards, participants will be invited to jointly discuss the question of replicating those examples in other contexts.
12:00 Guidelines for renovating social and affordable districts – the technical component, Stefania Mascolo (GNE Finance), Nerea Gómez (ECTP)
12:10Tbc
12:20 Opengela One-stop-shop to spread urban regeneration in the Basque Country, Andoni Hidalgo (Euroiker)
The ‘OPENGELA’ project set-up two neighbourhood offices in the Basque Country as One-Stop-Shops to give support to the residents of the Otxarkoaga (Bilbao) and the Txonta (Eibar) districts about green energy renovation. Additionally, born out of the premise that the income and repayment capacity levels of a great share of the population was too low to access ordinary bank loans and could only access subsidies or high-interest rate credits, Opengela included a financial mechanism (a mix of public and private funds) that offered loans refundable in 15 years to help those low-income households cover the full investment needed for the renovation of their homes.
12:30 The district scale and the EU regulatory framework – the perspective of the Spanish Presidency, Francisco Javier Martín Ramiro (Ministry of Transport and Urban Agenda of Spain)
12:40 [Panel Discussion] Replicating approaches from early adopters: what works? What does not? What can we learn from good practices?
Gyorgy Sumeghy (Habitat for Humanity), Alberto Rubio (Valencia Government), Andoni Hidalgo (Euroiker), Laura Collini (Tesserae)
Tapas y Prácticas
(networking event)
USING DATA TO IMPROVE THE ENERGY EFFICIENCY IN OUR BUILDINGS
With the development of sensor and network communication technologies, data generation from buildings has increased dramatically in the past years. Extracting value from consumption data, using artificial intelligence and machine learning, makes the building adaptable to the exact needs of the users and optimise the construction and renovation process. In this session, frontrunners will showcase their applications of data analysis and invited to discuss how to improve the way small and medium sized housing providers access data science expertise and learn from their accumulated data to help improve energy efficiency or optimise decision making.
At the end of the session, we will introduce societal concerns to the discussion, namely how are residents involved in the process and how to avoid technology or vendor lock-in.
14:00 Welcome note, João Gonçalves, Housing Europe
14:05 Leveraging advanced technologies for the fair green transition, Leandro Madrazo (Ramon Llull University)
14:15 How machine learning can improve decision making in social housing, Elissaios Sarmas (National Technical University of Athens)
14:25 Energy Savings Verification Service: increasing trust on Energy Performance Contracts, Guillermo Andrés Nieto (Veolia)
14:35 Discussion: What can small and medium sized housing providers learn from their data? What is stopping housing providers from collecting and using their data in a widespread fashion? How can we ensure data is private, safe and usage is controlled? How can we protect our data from cyber-attacks? How can we avoid vendor lock-in and keep it open?
Barbara Steenbergen (International Union of Tenants) Elissaios Sarmas (NTUA), Leandro Madrazo (RLU) Timo Wanke (Federal Association of German Housing and Real Estate Companies) Guillermo Andrés Nieto (Veolia).
The session will focus on the co-creation mechanisms deployed to foster inclusive citizen engagement highlighting the need for a thorough analysis and diagnosis of district/neighbourhood strengths and opportunities. Identification of key areas of intervention through the commitment of engaged stakeholders (residents as well as other actors from existing sectors in the area, such as SME, housing associations, etc) and municipal support will lead to developing strategic plans and identifying the capacity-building needs to deploy the neighbourhood vision.
The full list of speakers and the registration link are available here.
Have a look at this project involving a demo in a small town in Spain, while peer cities from Estonia and Italy will share their expertise.
In the industrial town Ermua, near Bilbao in the Basque Country, the Santa Ana neighbourhood with post-war privately-owned multifamily buildings is officially starting the work to become a lighthouse renovated district.
Digitally enabled social district renovation processes for age-friendly environments driving social innovation and local economic development, or for short – drOp is Housing Europe’s new project. This is more than an EU-funded initiative because it is very closely linked to the European Affordable Housing Consortium, SHAPE-EU which is demonstrating what do we mean by sustainable housing for social impact. The goal of the project is to support social housing providers, public authorities, and SMEs to deliver social and affordable housing district renovations, which include innovative features, such as the use of smart and circular technologies and new approaches created and managed jointly with the local communities.
drOp will focus on social innovation and local economic development while integrating new technologies and using a human-centred approach. It will also explore the potential of cultural and creative industries. Similarly, Elva (Estonia) will share its expertise in the digital sector, and Matera (Italy) will contribute with its know-how acquired through being the European capital of culture in 2019.
Social housing has many forms and definitions across Europe. In the context of the Basque Country region, social refers to a post-war privately-owned multifamily building typology. An integrated renovation methodology (IRM) will be developed on a strategic level. This will be done while ensuring that communities living in social districts are fully involved in the process of making their neighbourhoods more accessible, connected, and liveable. Residents will therefore be engaged through co-creation processes. One such goal is to have at least 20% of the population involved. Aiming to create an age-friendly environment is important since Santa Ana neighbourhood population is composed of almost 30%, higher than the municipality and national average. All the results should be replicable in other similar contexts, thus an important effort will focus on creating synergies with relevant stakeholders at a European level.
The main responsibility of Housing Europe will be to manage the communication and dissemination process. Other areas where its expertise will be needed are the creation of an integrated methodology, follow up the renovations, drafting studies or supporting peer learning between the partner cities. The Estonian Union of Co-operative Housing Associations (EKYL) is also part of the consortium, and they will contribute to tasks such as developing the human-centred approach or planning capacity-building opportunities.
The ten in the drOp project: Ayuntamiento de Ermua (ERMUA), Promocion Economica de Ermua Sociedad Anonima (PROMO), Fundacion Tecnalia Research & Innovation (TEC), Mondragon Goi Eskola Politeknikoa Jose Maria Arizmendiarrieta S Coop (MGEP), Elva Vallavalitsus (ELVA), Eesti Korteriuhistute Liit Mtu (EKYL), Institute of Baltic Studies (IBS), Comune di Matera (COMT), Consorzio Materahub Industrie Culturali e Creative (MTHUB), Housing Europe.
