The purpose of this paper is to explore the challenges of an old low-standard urban district with a strong historical and cultural heritage and propose more sustainable renovation solutions, ...acceptable for the residents and municipality. The challenges of physical renovation or refurbishment are complex due to poor condition of the buildings, municipal ownership and governance, mixed management with community and low rents, which are insufficient to cover the costs. The paper discusses the proposed solutions of living standards, supported by the research in two directions: (i) available resources and reuse of materials, (ii) developing a renovation guidance for inhabitants from the building physics perspective, including indoor environment quality. Challenges related to energy efficiency are addressed from the decision-making perspective to overcome the barrier of lack of motivation to invest in energy-efficient measures at the individual and community level. The interdisciplinary approach complements engineering-focused studies with a focus on the comfort conditions and the influence of occupant habits in sustainable buildings. The methods used were literature review, case studies with observations and survey, looking to cover all technical, social, and historical aspects of sustainable renovation of cultural heritage buildings with the same level of importance. Results show that to keep a sustainable, low-cost urban living model, instructions for self-renovation are a valuable guidance for non-professional actors to make more sustainable choices. In conclusion, we can emphasize that inhabitants are accustomed to lower living standards, so the project is aimed to present the proper solutions for improvement as a balance between new sustainable technical solutions, personal self-renovation skills, habits, and health.
This paper provides an overview of the current state of research on the evaluation methods of participatory processes in smart cities. Specifically, it aims to identify and analyze existing ...evaluation methods and frameworks for public participation (PP) in smart city development. The study focuses on the evaluation of participatory processes to find key indicators and enable an assessment of PP from multiple perspectives. A scoping literature review was conducted to analyze the past ten years of scientific literature on the topic. Relevant literature was retrieved from Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar, and articles were selected based on a set of criteria to ensure quality and relevance. We found that digital participation, also known as “e-participation”, is the most used method either exclusively or mixed with in-person methods. The level of participation achieved was mostly limited to the first two degrees of PP (i.e., information and consultation), and only a few papers addressed the highest degrees (i.e., agenda-setting and co-management). The impact on participants was mostly related to knowledge and skills, awareness raising, and satisfaction with the process and method. This paper highlights the potential to upskill citizens and enhance their understanding of sustainable urban development, fostering their commitment to achieving the United Nations’ sustainability goals for climate change mitigation in the urban context.
This paper addresses the main challenges in climate resilience of the building sector, including climate adaptation schemes, energy efficiency, and mitigation approaches. These challenges are ...evaluated with regard to the state of the art, research interest, and regulatory issues, providing an assessment of the advances and defining research gaps in the literature review. The review shows that climate resilience mainly deals with larger systems, whereas the field is still developing at the building level. One of the main challenges identified is the institutional response. Many publications state that it is necessary to revise policies and develop legislation; however, this is sometimes hindered by uncertain climate change predictions. The EU legislation currently provides partial coverage of resource efficiency and climate mitigation in the building sector, while the national legislation is delayed. The current situation can impair the competitiveness of the national building sector, causing it to lag behind the goals set for achieving sustainability. From the cost perspective, immediate short-term actions are seen as more expensive, because delays can result in increased risks for major investments. The authorities are currently choosing between rapid and delayed actions, balancing the costs of early actions and the reciprocal costs of delay.
Članek obravnava poglavitne izzive v zvezi z odpornostjo proti podnebnim spremembam z vidika stavbnega sektorja, kot so sheme prilagajanja podnebnim spremembam, energetska učinkovitost in ukrepi za ...blaženje teh sprememb. Izzivi so ovrednoteni glede na najnovejše stanje razvoja področja, raziskovalni interes in regulativna vprašanja, pri čemer se pri pregledu znanstvene literature presoja napredek in opredeljujejo raziskovalne vrzeli. Pregled literature nakazuje, da se odpornost proti podnebnim spremembam večinoma nanaša na večje sisteme, na ravni stavb pa se to področje šele razvija. Eden od glavnih ugotovljenih izzivov je pomanjkljiv institucionalni odziv. V številnih objavah je mogoče zaznati, da sta nujna prilagoditev politik in razvoj zakonodaje, ki ju včasih zavirajo negotova predvidevanja o podnebnih spremembah. Zakonodaja EU trenutno delno pokriva področji učinkovite rabe virov in podnebnih sprememb v stavbnem sektorju, nacionalna zakonodaja pa pri tem nekoliko zaostaja. Takšne razmere lahko zmanjšajo konkurenčnost nacionalnega stavbnega sektorja, kar lahko povzroči zaostajanje za opredeljenimi trajnostnimi cilji. S finančnega vidika so manjše kratkoročne investicije dražje, saj odlašanje s posegi v temeljito trajnostno prenovo stavb povzroča večja tveganja. Pristojni organi se trenutno odločajo med hitrimi in zapoznelimi ukrepi, uravnoteženjem stroškov zgodnjega ukrepanja in vzajemnimi stroški zamud.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to test possibilities of real participation in FM field in response to the energy sustainable demand by using new technologies for better communication. It is ...acknowledged that the technological innovation is a necessary condition to make a city sustainable, though the challenge is not primarily on technology but on service transformation and improvement. Improving service quality requires the participatory and synergetic processes that attract an extra attention to the social and management aspects of urban planning.
Design/methodology/approach
This is an evidence-based research, which shows how FM can extent its impact on the build environment and society by bringing the socio-physiological aspect and the community in the central of the planning and design process.
Findings
An “urban” facility manager, through integration of multiple disciplines in a human-centre approach, can become the enabler and implementer of sustainable urban ecosystem, i.e. balancing social, economic and environmental pillars. This requires central involvement of FM in the planning and decision-making processes; therefore, its role and impact should be enlarged and better communicated. The enlargement of the FM's role initially requires an effective communication with people, whose behavioural change are prerequisite for the sustainability transition. The communication between FM and people should be interactive and iterative, in which they both define problems/needs and co-create the relevant solutions.
Research limitations/implications
This paper depicts an evidence-based FM practice, in which the website as an interactive tool is co-designed by the “facility management” students and the citizens to contribute to the real citizen participation in an effective communication process.
Originality/value
The high value for both, citizens and facility manager, is co-created information platform for upgrading the sustainability level and well-being in the communities. The tool is seen as an important starting contribution for the Paris climate agreement, and as a step toward human-centric-oriented urban sustainable regenerating project.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how an Urban Facilities Management (Urban FM) focused summer school in Norway in 2019 impacted knowledge creation, as well as the host and foreign ...educators, along with the international student participants.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper’s data collection is formed as a “post-event study” using interviews and a quantitative survey from both the students and educators to look at the impact of the summer school on the student and the associated educational programs.
Findings
The outcomes of this study indicate that the impact on educators and their educational programs was substantial with regard to their teaching experiences. The study confirmed that foreign experience allowed not just for greater potential for cross institution cooperation for the future but also allowed for the usage of the summer school case studies in host and guest educational programs. For the students, the added value was in the international experience primarily and a chance to study on a case study project. The study was also successful in the dissemination of Urban FM knowledge.
Originality/value
This paper also offers added theoretical value in the development of a model in future projects on how to capitalize on the potential impact of the summer school on educators and students. The possibilities for increased dissemination and knowledge creation in Urban FM is also significant.
It is acknowledged that technological innovation could help in creating individual and social wellbeing, especially as a supportive tool for seeing the benefits of “sharing is sustainable” and ...collaborative actions for social sustainability. The challenge is on technology and on service transformation and improvement, and transparency of impacts for improving operational efficiency. Improving service quality requires participatory and synergetic processes that attract extra attention to the social and management aspects of the built environment. The more values a service contains, the better users engage with them. Facility Management (FM) has the required potential to fill this gap as management is a people-centre discipline. This requires the central involvement of FM in the planning and decision-making processes, therefore its role and impact should be enlarged and better communicated. This paper is evidence-based research, which shows how FM can extend its impact on the build environment and society by bringing the socio-physiological aspect and the community in the central of the planning and design process. It also shows the trend to serve a various group of residents, by developing smart and simple solutions. The communication between FM and people should be interactive and iterative, in which they both define problems/needs and co-create the relevant solutions.
The development of smart cities has seen a shift in governance systems where citizens have gone from mere recipients of services to co-creators. As smart cities rely heavily on Information and ...Communication Technologies to achieve their goals, it is a challenge to engage older populations in digital participatory processes. A project-based learning course was developed at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology to challenge master students across all study programs to come up with ideas for tackling this issue. This paper presents the results of their multidisciplinary collaboration applied to real cases in municipalities in Norway. We find that a transgenerational approach is essential in the design and development phase of participatory methods to ensure better implementation and uptake of technologies.
Considering public participation as one of the key components of "smart cities", efforts have been made by local governments to provide opportunities for citizens to take an active role in smart ...cities planning. This paper presents preliminary results of a collaboration between academics and municipal staff to identify the best practices in terms of public participation in smart and sustainable development projects. From the legal framework enforcing minimum requirements for public participation as information and consultation to the implementation one of the first online participatory budget initiative in Norway; this study analyzes the context in which public participation initiatives work in practice to achieve the highest degree of participation, namely citizen empowerment. Documents provided by the municipality as well as other publicly available ones were analyzed in order to identify the different degrees of public participation at each step of the project. Results from this study indicate that pushing the threshold a little bit higher at each step can help concretizing citizen empowerment at the neighborhood level.
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