Sustainable Urban Strategies Through Adaptive reuse for Integrated Neighbourhoods

Cities across Europe are facing a surplus of vacant properties, while the housing shortage is reaching a critical threshold.

Adaptive Reuse (AR) practices are emerging as a convincing approach to address the challenges of escalating housing demands, while facilitating the transition towards a circular economy.

Recently, municipal programs have emerged across the EU to address the housing crisis by extending regulatory flexibility to ease the provision of affordable housing through AR of unused buildings.

As these programs are still in their early development stage, a body of theoretical knowledge or evidence-based guidance in this domain is absent.

The lack of standardized frameworks hampers a comprehensive evaluation of the impacts of projects of Adaptive REuse for Affordable Housing (AREAHs), and no research has been undertaken to determine the extent to which these may contribute to changes in the social and environmental well-being of neighborhoods.

More study is also required to evaluate the role of existing regulatory frameworks in hindering or facilitating the implementation of AREAHs.

SUSTAIN will answer these questions through a comparative analysis of AREAHs in 5 EU cities, so as to: RO1) Assess their housing impact and environmental enhancement valuethrough a quantitative analysis of selected performance indicators; RO2) Identify regulatory roadblocks and/or trailblazing policy instruments that facilitate AREAHsthrough in-depth interviews with experts and discourse analysis of municipal policies; RO3) Assess AREAHs long-term contribution to neighborhood reactivationthrough a longitudinal neighborhood data analysis.

In a context in which municipalities strive to tackle the housing crisis while minimizing their carbon footprints, it is timely and urgent to assess the impact of AREAHs, evaluating wins and drawbacks.

SUSTAIN will provide an evidence base on AREAHs across the EU and reflect on what steps might be taken to expand their scope of activity.