Affordable housing is increasingly developed, financed and managed by a mix of state, third-sector, market and community actors. This has led to the emergence of various hybrid governance and finance ...arrangements. This development can be seen as part of a general long-term neoliberal trend in government policies, and social, cultural and economic developments. It is therefore likely that the hybridity and variety of governance and finance of affordable housing will continue to grow. This article discusses innovative hybrid arrangements from Austria, England and Italy, in which governments, private and non-profit actors collaborate to increase the supply of affordable housing. These cases illustrate how the provision of affordable housing in a neoliberal context can benefit from the involvement of market actors and communities. Nevertheless, they also show that governments continue to play a crucial role in initiating and facilitating these arrangements.
Building costs play a significant role in determining the affordability of a housing project, and these depend to a large extent on design choices. This paper is based on the premise that ...collaborative design processes, or co-design, used in collaborative housing (CH) in Europe reduce building costs and consequently increase the affordability of these housing projects. However, research remains scarce on the extent to which CH is an affordable solution from a design perspective compared to affordable mainstream housing (MH), in which no co-design is used. Therefore, this paper aims to fill this knowledge gap by assessing the impact of design choices on building costs in CH and MH. To this end, we developed a simulation model to compare the building costs of CH with MH based on their design choices. Findings indicate that CH represents a more affordable and space-efficient solution when compared to MH, if we look at the building costs per unit. This is because CH provides less expensive units while it includes larger common spaces and extra quality. These results help to refute existing claims about the unaffordability of CH design solutions.
Despite the significant growth of the literature on adaptive reuse, little is known about the specific criteria unfolding throughout the different phases of the adaptive reuse decision-making ...process. To address this gap this paper aims to provide a comprehensive, state-of-the-art overview of the decision criteria for adaptive reuse throughout the adaptive reuse process. Through an integrative literature review with a systematic search strategy, three phases are substantiated: pre-project phase, preparation phase, and post-completion phase. This paper finds that despite the similarities between the different phases, with a predominant repetition of economic and architectural categories, more specific environmental decision criteria are still overlooked. The findings underscore the necessity for additional research on circularity within the adaptive reuse process, emphasizing the significance of the often overlooked implementation phase, crucial for practices like disassembly. By offering a novel process perspective on AR decision-making, this study contributes to the growing discourse on adaptive reuse and provides a basis for further enhancement of AR decision-making frameworks.
•The decision criteria show a considerable amount of similarities between the different phases in the adaptive reuse process.•There is a lack of general holistic intervention options in adaptive reuse multi-criteria decision-making models.•The implementation phase is largely overlooked in the literature on the adaptive reuse decision-making process.•Circularity needs much more attention in the current adaptive reuse discourse.
The built environment can become more sustainable by gradually replacing building components with circular ones. Kitchens are a logical component to be made circular, given their relatively short ...lifespan, product-based nature, and affordable prototypes. Since various designs for circular kitchens can be developed, understanding the feasibility of these designs is crucial for their successful implementation. This knowledge, however, remains limited. Therefore, this article aimed to determine which types of circular kitchens are feasible. Circular kitchens available or announced in the Dutch housing sector within the past five years were compared using an adapted version of the CBC generator, a comprehensive design framework for circular building components. The comparison included the Circular Kitchen (CIK), developed as part of an international research project. Data were sourced from manufacturers’ websites and online publications supplemented by interviews with two outliers to verify the results. The analysis encompassed seven circular kitchens, with two developed by established manufacturers and five by start-ups. The manufacturers mostly communicated about their kitchen’s physical design. The established manufacturers’ circular kitchens were found to be more similar to their non-circular kitchens, while start-ups applied more radical innovations. Furthermore, the kitchens that had a frame structure using technical materials or a panel-based structure using biological materials were more likely to be feasible. These findings can facilitate future circular kitchen development by improving these kitchens’ feasibility, thus aiding the transition to a more circular built environment. Furthermore, this research contributes scientifically by adapting a comprehensive design framework (the CBC generator) to compare circular designs.
In the context of social vulnerability, the house is an important social and economic resource to cope with poverty. However, low-income homeowners face constraints to maintain their houses, ...negatively affecting the quality of their dwellings, buildings and neighbourhoods. In the case of Chile, current studies have shown high levels of housing deterioration due to the lack of maintenance, but more knowledge is needed to understand the problems behind this poor management process. One important challenge is to consider an integral approach, beyond the technical dimension, that includes organisational and sociocultural inputs. Therefore, this paper presents the results of an exploratory study about the nature of the management problems in the context of Chilean low-income condominiums. The method considered semi-structured interviews with Chilean homeowners, researchers and professionals from the private sector, municipalities and central government. Main findings show the interdependencies between sociocultural, organisational and technical dimensions of the management problem; and the relevance of the sociocultural variables to perform technical maintenance activities. A better understanding of the nature and relationships among the management problems will provide better tools to improve current housing management models.
This chapter briefly reflects on European social housing models and mainly discusses opportunities for housing cooperatives in the Dutch housing system. Since the introduction of the new Housing Act ...in 2015 in the Netherlands, there are legal opportunities for social housing tenants to form cooperatives. However, in practice, this does not happen a lot yet. From our analysis of the Dutch housing systems it is concluded that it is unlikely that it will take place on a larger scale, among others due to a lack of tradition (path dependency) and support from housing corporations – the main owners of social housing in the Netherlands.
After the abolishment of object subsidies for housing construction and renovation in the mid 1990s, Dutch housing associations, the main non-profit housing providers in the country, heavily relied on ...market activities, such as selling homes to owner occupiers, to generate income for their social activities and to contribute to urban development policies. This worked well, which was one of the main reasons that these housing providers could adopt a wide field of operations, including not only the management and development of affordable housing for low-income groups, but also housing in other market segments, plus activities regarding care, welfare, local economy, employment and education. Recent economic and political developments, however, have caused housing associations to return on this path. Central in this paper is a research among Dutch housing associations about their values, strategic positioning and strategies. The research was executed in two waves (conducted in 2010/2011 and in 2013/2014, respectively), each consisting of a panel survey and interviews with selected panellists. This paper presents the results of the second wave. It is expected that after the first wave of the research, new regulations, such as the national implementation of European rules on state support and the introduction of a new property tax, have resulted in a further retreat from non-social housing activities. The analysis shows that this is indeed the case, but that the main shifts in priorities have not taken place directly after the credit crunch, but in later years.
•A new model for circular economy LCC (CE-LCC) is proposed in this article•LCC is adapted to include Value Retention Processes and multiple use cycles of composite products•The model shows to support ...decision making in the development process of Circular Economy products through the case of the Circular Kitchen (CIK)•The most flexible variant of the CIK has a lower total lifecycle cost after a period of 20 years
The building industry is responsible for the highest resource use, amount of waste and emissions of all industries. The principles of the Circular Economy (CE) could offer an approach to create a more sustainable built environment. For a transition towards a circular built environment, a comprehensive assessment method is needed to support the development of circular building products. As a step towards such a method, we developed an economic assessment in the form of a Circular Economy Life Cycle Cost (CE-LCC) model. It is based on existing Life Cycle Cost techniques and adapted to meet the requirements of CE products. The model is developed to (1) consider products as a composite of components and parts with different and multiple use cycles, (2) include processes that take place after the end of use, (3) provide practical and usable information to all stakeholders, and (4) facilitate alignment of the functional unit and system boundaries with LCA. To test the model, it has been applied to the case of the Circular Kitchen (CIK). Three variants of the CIK were compared to each other and the ‘business-as-usual’ case to determine which variant is the most economically competitive on the long term. The model indicates that the most flexible variant of the CIK has the lowest LCC outcome, even when considering multiple interest, lifespan and remanufacturing and recycling scenarios. Although, the model could benefit from further research and application, it can support the transition towards a more sustainable (building) industry.
Towards a circular built environment Anne van Stijn; Gruis, Vincent
Smart and sustainable built environment,
11/2020, Letnik:
9, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Odprti dostop
PurposeThe transition to a circular economy in the built environment is key to achieving a resource-effective society. The built environment can be made more circular by applying circular building ...components. The purpose of this paper is to present a design tool that can support industry in developing circular building components.Design/methodology/approachThe tool was developed and tested in five steps. In Step 1, the authors analysed existing circular design frameworks to identify gaps and develop requirements for the design tool (Step 2). In Step 3, the authors derived circular design parameters and options from existing frameworks. In Step 4, the authors combined and specified these to develop the “circular building components generator” (CBC-generator). In Step 5, the CBC-generator was applied in the development of an exemplary component: the circular kitchen and tested in a student workshop.FindingsThe CBC-generator is a three-tiered design tool, consisting of a technical, industrial and business model generator. These generators are “parameter based”; they consist of a parameter-option matrix and design canvasses. Different variants for circular components can be synthesised by filling the canvasses through systematically “mixing and matching” design options.Research limitations/implicationsThe developed tool does not yet support establishing causal links between “parameter-options” and identification of the most circular design variant.Practical implicationsThe CBC-generator provides an important step to support the building industry in developing and implementing circular building components in the built environment.Originality/valueWhilst existing tools and frameworks are not comprehensive, nor specifically developed for designing circular building components, the CBC-generator successfully supports the integral design of circular building components. First, it provides all the design parameters which should be considered; second, it provides extensive design options per parameter; and third, it supports systematic synthesis of design options to a cohesive and comprehensive circular design.
•Artificial intelligence, digital twins, and scanning technologies support data collection, integration, and analysis for slowing the loops strategies (i.e., maintenance).•The adoption of material ...passports and BIM by social housing organizations causes considerable challenges.•Digital marketplaces facilitate material reuse, enabling the narrowing and closing of the loops.•Social housing organizations rely on insights gained from architects, consultants, and demolition contractors rather than insights gained from analytics when reusing materials.
Digital technologies are considered enablers of circular economy implementation in the built environment. Literature mainly focuses on conceptual or review studies examining the role of digital tools (e.g., material passport and building information modelling) to close the material loops. There is a lack of understanding of how digital technologies are implemented in real-life and whether they offer value to the industry actors. This study conducted a multiple-case study to collect empirical evidence from Dutch social housing organizations actively applying circular principles in new construction, renovation, maintenance, and demolition projects. Our findings suggest that artificial intelligence, digital twins, and scanning technologies support data collection, integration, and analysis for slowing the loops strategies (i.e., maintenance), while digital marketplaces facilitate material reuse, enabling narrowing and closing the loops. This study identified 12 challenges that hinder the broader adoption of digital technologies that are associated with the technological, cultural, market, and regulatory factors.