27 minute read
innovative business modelsPlanning the alternative
“Design for disassembly requires a different way of thinking yet carries many positive side effects that are activated by the extra thought put into the product. Many of them will effect the use on a daily basis from the beginning, some will be harvested in the future and some will affect the planet as a whole.”
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- K. Guldager Jensen, Architect, Senior Partner 3XN and Director GXN-
(1) N. Roome, C. Louche, (2016), Journeying toward business models for sustainability: a conceptual model found inside the black box of organisational transformation, Organ. Environ. 29, 11-35 (2) G. Cai, D. Waldmann (2019), A material and component bank to facilitate material recycling and component reuse for a sustainable construction: concept and preliminary study, Springer Nature, https:// doi.org/10.1007/s10098-019-01758-1 Design for Disassembling can be effective just when all its phases of collection, assessment, management, reassembly or recycling of buildings’ materials and components are planned globally through Circular Economy. As above mentioned, the built project is just a phase of a wider circular system that keeps together all the actors involved in its construction, from the production of its materials and components to its complete disassembling and further regeneration, in terms either of reuse or recycling. Therefore, the shift towards a Circular Economy and Design for Disassembly is a complex process that cannot be realised by product and process innovation alone but rather via profoundly altering the logic of value creation of current production and consumption systems (1) and through the creation of new ad-hoc organisations. Therefore, Circular Economy needs to invest also urbanity and society, in order to create those preconditions for its effciency in the construction sector. Hence, the introduction of the new organism of Material Bank and of the Business Models of both Leasing Economy and Sharing Economy, as preconditions to fnally present planning principles to shape new circular cities and neighbourhoods of the future. . The concept of Material Bank and Material Passport
Deconstruction can permit an appropriate recovery of components and materials for either reuse or recycling in the most cost-efective manner and with a substantial reduction of embodied greenhouse gas emissions. For this reason, as above described, the potential
reusability of materials and components shall be planned globally, in order for all the phases of collection, assessment, management, reassembly or recycling of materials and components to realize cost-effectiveness, material-effectiveness, and high reusability degree during the construction phase. In this regard, in terms of Design for Disassembly, when it is possible to disassemble something without damaging the materials from which it is made and access them years later without any loss of quality or value, you can start to see everything as a material bank, where you save up
for the future. In this vision, buildings are our future material banks, providing substantial economic advantages for stakeholders of the future. Te material and component bank is a manager who is responsible of the transfer of materials and components from deconstructed structures to new structures. According to Cai and Waldmann (2), the presence of an independent agent working as a material bank in the process of Design for Disassembly could help to handle dismantling and post-dismantling processes through:
1. the global planning of deconstruction and selective dismantling, to extract and collect recyclable and reusable materials and components;
2. The extraction and selection of reusable and recyclable materials; 3. The assessment and improvement of the quality of materials and components, so that they can be reused, providing better performances. 4. The certifcation of materials and components;
5. The storing and selling of materials and components, in a factory or center shop of the bank.
The core aim of the Material Bank is therefore the creation of a cadaster of secondary
resources, of a database of materials and components to promote their direct reuse in the next cycle of construction activities. Notwithstanding, the availability of certifed informations concerning both components and materials about their dimensions, conditions and performances, is a pre-condition for future maintenance and next reuse and recycling. For this reason, the concept of Material Passport becomes relevant, as an important supporttool of circularity, that ensures the ability to gain access to all the relevant informations describing a building component or material.
Material passport acts as a design optimisation tool, as well as an inventory of all materials embedded in a building and displays the recycling potential and environmental impact of buildings. (3) As the Material Passport concept is quite new, there are only a few studies on that topic so far. Nevertheless, today, in view of Design for Disassembly, it becomes crucial. As reported by Ellen MacArthur Foundation (4), today due to lack of information on building contents, only 20–30% of construction and demolition waste is recycled or reused. Moreover, since each building material and component belongs to a specifc context and is defned by its own features and technologies, it is of utmost importance to obtain detailed knowledge about them, in order to program eventual future scenarios.
In this regard, technology such as Building Information Modelling (BIM), as a method to address design decisions concerning the overall Operative Life of the building and its fnal dismantling, can help turn buildings into banks of materials and in transmitting components’ informations.
If used from the design phase, BIM platforms can bring together the entire supply chain, and enable the end-customer to know what is in the building, and what the building and its components have been used for (4). Hence, BIM could contribute on waste minimisation (5), even if, for other older structures, BIM model may not be available (2). Teir maintenance and repairing in fact usually start when safety and durability issues are already there.
Several studies tried to combine BIM technology to Radio Frequency Identifcation (RFID). RFID is a system that uses radio waves to read and capture data and, in the framework of Design for Disassembly, its adoption could be useful in terms of resource management, logistics, tracking processes and safety, as it would carry and store materials’ and components’ ID. Even if more expensive, Radio Frequency Identifcation system has several advantages over barcodes, QR codes or other ID technologies (6) and it has been used already in diferent other sectors of industry in the past . Today, from Circular Economy and Design for Disassembly perspective, its integration to BIM technology could lead to creating a cyber-physical system, forming a bridge between the physical and the virtual tool of Design for Disassembly. Furthermore, both BIM and Radio Frequency Identifcation’s benefts can be better leveraged in combination than in isolation (7). Te application of both these two tools could be even more impressive when speaking of adaptive facades. Real-time information regarding changes in their environments and loads and past events could be stored to improve their future performance or maintain serviceability. In this way, producers could gain real-time feedbacks adapting ad hoc changes to facades components. Anyway, still, the facade industry has a long way to go and, in any case, current literature shows that the transition toward circularity still requires a better understanding of material fows and stock.
(3) M. Honic, I. Kovacic, H. Rechberger (2019), Improving the recycling potential of buildings through Material Passports (MP): An Austrian case study, in Journal of Cleaner Production 217, 787-797, Elsevier, https://doi.org/10.1016/j. jclepro.2019.01.212 (4) Ellen MacArthur Foundation and ARUP (2019), Urban buildings system summary, https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/ assets/downloads/Buildings_All_Mar19.pdf (5) O. Akinade, O. Lukumon, M. Bilala, S. O. Ajayia, H. A. Owolabia, H. A. Alakaa, S. A. Bello (2015), Waste minimisation through deconstruction: A BIM based Deconstructability Assessment Score (BIM-DAS), in Resources, Conservation and Recycling 105,167–176, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j. resconrec.2015.10.018
(6) R. Flanagan, C. Jewell, W. Lu, K. Pekericli, (2014), Auto-ID. Bridging the physical and the digital on construction projects, The Chartered Institute of Buildings, University of Reading (7) F. Xue, K. Chen, W. Lu, Y. Niu, G. Q. Huang, (2018), Linking radio-frequency identifcation to Building Information Modeling: Status quo, development trajectory and guidelines for practitioners, in Automation in Construction 93 241–251, Elsevier, https://doi.org/10.1016/j. autcon.2018.05.023
ECONOMIC INVESTMENT SOCIAL INVESTMENT
Quality improvement
Li b rar y of c o m p onen ts
Storage Upcycle Recycle Downcycle
Dismantling process Certification
H o u s i n g Un it
Dismantling plan
ACCESS TO MATERIALS’ INFORMATIONS
The organism of Material Bank and its tasks. BRIDGE BETWEEN STAKEHOLDERS ECONOMIC SAVINGS
Research, in this regard, needs to focus more on the real material availability at least at a city scale based on their properties, to reliably estimate the percentage that can be reused and considered on the material banks of cities.
Moreover, handling this kind of precise organisation would require some eforts from diferent parts. Te bank shall rely on specifc qualifed experts, able to use specifc tools (as BIM technologies and Radio Frequency Identifcation) and shall be made of the collaboration between all the stakeholders of this construction chain.
Currently, policymaking and research are trying to act in this direction. Te BAMB project, (Buildings As a Material Bank), funded by European Commission within Horizon 2020, tries to create ways to understand and increase the value and reuse of building materials. Tey experiment through the construction of prototypes and pilot projects to hypotheses that building materials can sustain their value and avoid materials’ wastes. In this regard, the city of Reburg marked an important stepping stone, as the world’s most circular city (8). Here, Circular Economy is defned by using Design for Disassembly and the consequent realisation of a Material Bank; through knowledge dissemination and the development of new industry and circular social dynamics; through new technologies and the improvement of virtualisation.
Public institutions, in this regard, as neutral mediators between users and industries could assume the role of building materials’ and components’ bank, forming an integrated territorial system that could work from the micro to the macro scale, through the formation of a net of regional or urban building banks integrated into a wider complementary territorial smart grid.
Te urban project of Sidewalk Labs, an urban innovation company working to make cities more sustainable and afordable for all (9), mentions the ambition to create an integrated territorial system of Material Banks, sharing informations and materials, in order form a library of building parts that could be combined in thousands of ways, developing a digital management system that coordinates the entire supply chain from conception to completion. (10)
In Switzerland, the project by Experimental Unit NEST (UMAR – Urban Mining and Recycling, 2018), emphasized the possibility for the building to be at the same time a material laboratory, temporary material storage and a public repository of information. Heisel and Rau-Oberhuber, analysing with Madaster (a register of material and products) this project, demonstrated at the same time not just its circularity (96%), but also the reliability of Madaster Circularity Indicator as a design tool and the capability of materials passports to document material stocks and fows within a circular built environment (11). Anyway, so far within the Madaster database, there is no other circular case study with a comparable level of detail to the one of UMAR.
Last but not least, the project Resource Row, in Copenhagen, by Lendager Group represents a good example of how part of the components originating from old structures without Design for Disassembly can be directly reused in a new structure. Trough the use of selective smart demolition, architects used a cutting process to extract monolithic modular blocks of the external facade made of bricks, in order to stack them up to create the external walls of the new project. Tis innovative approach made it possible to recycle bricks and give them many lives instead
(8) https://www.bamb2020.eu/future/ reburg/ (9) https://sidewalklabs.com/ (10) Side Walk Labs (2019), Toronto Tomorrow. A new approach for inclusive growth. Part 2: The Urban Innovations, https://sidewalktoronto-ca.storage.googleapis.com/ wp-content/uploads/2019/06/23135715/ MIDP_Volume2.pdf (11) F. Heisel, S. Rau-Oberhuber (2020), Calculation and evaluation of circularity indicators for the built environment using the case studies of UMAR and Madaster, J. Clean. Prod. 243, 118482. doi.org/https://doi. org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.118482 On the right: Lendager Group, The Resource Row, Cutting process Photo: https://lendager.com/en/ architecture/resource-rows/
Next page: Lendager Group, The Resource Row, Work in progress Photo: https://lendager.com/en/ architecture/resource-rows/
of just one – which results in a reduced CO2 emission in the construction phase: by reusing the walls from the abandoned dwellings as new facade elements, you save CO2 and virgin materials, while also getting a new building with history and character from day one. (12)
Therefore, the bank could pave the way for effectively performing a further and repaid reuse of components and perfecting current recycling of materials, to contribute a more sustainable built environment.
. The business model of leasing
While in a traditional (linear) production chain the concept of value is related to proft, based on how much customers are willing to pay the ownership of a product delivered by a provider, in the realm of circularity, the concept of value is understood more broadly to encompass a wider range of stakeholders, such as value chain partners, the environment and society (13). Hence, defning Circular Economy Business Models depends on the value chain structure, identifying material reuse processes, transportation distances, site conditions, and quantities of materials. One of the most successful business models for capturing value in Circular Economy is the performance-based model, also known as Leasing Business Model. According to this concept, instead of conventionally selling products, it’s possible to ofer products as services, with a lower cost up front.
Leasing represents a shift from an ownership economy to an access economy, or ondemand economy, as access to an asset takes precedence over ownership. Customers pay for the time or usage of a certain product, for either a short or long contract period. Nevertheless, the ownership of that product remains throughout the entire lifecycle to the provider, who is responsible of its design, usage, maintenance, reuse, remanufacture and recycling. Tis kind of system is opened both to individuals and companies and can be developed through diferent business strategies, according to the degree of accessibility. In case of Pay per service unit, customers pay each time they use the service, while the provider, responsible for all life cycle costs of the product, is incentivised in designing an optimised product for usage, maintenance, reuse, remanufacture and recycling. Ofce printers are an example of this system. Customers pay the number of pages printed, the paper and ink required, the servicing; the manufacturer, instead, provides a working machine and the consumables to go with it. In case of Product renting or sharing, customers pay to access the product for a certain period and other customers sequentially will use the product. It’s the case of car sharing, for instance. Product Lease means that, even if the ownership is still retained by the provider, the customer has continuous access to the product. Te provider typically controls, maintains and collects the product at the end of the leasing agreement. It’s the case of Philips pay per lux, above mentioned. We speak of Product pooling, instead, when the product is simultaneously used by many customers. A typical example is car-pooling where multiple people use the product at the same time.
Over time, leasing has became a lever of circular economy, as it allows a closer relation between customers and industries. It ofers the possibility for producers to have a better understanding of the users’ need, providing
(12) lendager.com (13) N.M.P. Bocken, S.W. Short, P. Rana, S. Evans (2014) A literature and practice review to develop sustainable business model archetypes, J. Clean. Prod. 65, 42–56, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j. jclepro.2013.11.039.
The owner
The client
The product
(14) https://www.tudelft.nl/bk/onderzoek/ projecten/green-building-innovation/ facade-leasing/facade-leasing-pilotproject-at-tu-delft PAY PER SERVICE UNIT
PRODUCT RENTING / SHARING
PRODUCT LEASE
PRODUCT POOLING faster innovation, and for the customer, consequently, to gain a higher level of satisfaction concerning the provided service. Moreover, it gives an alternative to the classic make, use, toss model by creating reuse options based on repairing and reselling products, with a reduction of the volume of raw materials and energies and thus of wastes generation.
Recently some academic researches has tried to use this business model to reform the housing sector, rethinking the traditional way of conceiving the house as something fxed and permanent. Te Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment of Delft University has especially deepen this topic in relation to the element of facade. Te research concerns the development of a circular business model based on the use of multifunctional façades as performance-delivering tools (14). For this reason, in September 2016 a consortium of companies, ranging from component suppliers to façade fabricators, installed a pilot project, replacing temporarily a section of the façade on the low-rise building of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Sciences at TU Delft, seen as an icon of modernist architecture quickly reaching technical obsolescence. Till now, this project has demonstrated two facts. It has displayed over time the state of art of facade integrated technologies and the need to fnd solutions for the development of contracts, fnancing structures, and operational services to turn Façade Leasing into a feasible and implementable proposition. Moreover, the project demonstrated how Façade Leasing could accelerate the market uptake of new building technologies, with an optimisation of the reuse and recycling of components and materials within the construction industry, by keeping these technologies in the hands of their manufacturers. In 2018 the project consortium has received further funding for the upscaling of this research pilot project to a large scale practical demonstrator case-study. Te target building, methodology, and objectives of this new project stage are currently being discussed and therefore results and fnal considerations are not available yet. Tis last demonstrator case-study focuses on the theme of policy, bringing together architects, builders, developers, and managers of buildings, as well as lawyers, fnanciers, scientists, and business developers, to produce the frst practical example of a Façade-as-a-Service performance contract.
Researchers have great expectation regarding the application of this model. By outsourcing the management and upgrade of technological systems to the suppliers responsible for developing them it’s possible to achieve higher performance and lower at the same time the initial investment. Moreover, circular loops would be facilitated, as suppliers who retain the ownership of their products have a signifcant incentive to extract maximum value from them as they reach the end of their service-life (14).
The concept of sharing economy
Te business model of leasing is partially link to the Business Model of Sharing Economy. Tis term refers to the sharing activity of underutilised assets with the help of it-based technology. As Leasing Economy, Sharing Economy demonstrates the beneft of capturing value with short-term access-rights to a product or service (15).
The bottom idea is to share items’ ownership between people who don’t make full use of them and thus couldn’t pay them back fully through their constant use: People Don’t Need a Drill. They Need a Hole In The Wall (16).
Sharing is clearly not something new. Internet development though has leaded over time to the emergency of several new business models and new types of companies, reducing transaction costs and making sharing assets cheaper and easier than ever—and therefore possible on a much larger scale. As a result, users can borrow goods from strangers and lend to them, because the Internet has decreased transaction costs between participants (17). Te big change is the availability of more data about people and things, which allows physical assets to be disaggregated and consumed as services. If, before the internet, renting whatever kind of item from someone else was difcult, mainly due to lack of medias, now websites such as Airbnb, RelayRides and SnapGoods emerge to fll this missing connection, matching up owners and renters. New technologies had a great role in this transition. GPS, for instance, let people see where the nearest rentable car is parked; social networks provide a way to check up on people and build trust; online payment systems handle the billing (18).
Te emergency of this new model needs to be probably researched in the context of the postfnancial crisis of 2007-2008, when people, who was experiencing fnancial difculties, started evaluating their consumption patterns and the value of ownership. (19). Nowadays the power of sharing economy is also enhanced by the increasing scarcity of resources, urbanisation, and social and demographic changes.
This kind of collaborative consumption, one of those many terms that can be easily referred to the umbrella concept of sharing economy, has several positive consequences. In economic terms, owners can make money from underused assets, while renters pay less than they would if they bought the item themselves. Moreover, Sharing Economy reduces the environmental impact, as it results in an efcient utilisation of physical assets: renting a car when you need it, rather than owning one, means fewer cars are required and fewer resources must be devoted to making them. (18) In terms of sociality, it facilitates social contacts as it implies the relation with other people and collaboration can also create innovation, jobs and community (20). At an urban level, sharing could bring people together and stimulate social cohesion in neighbourhoods (21). In this concern, surveys show that people in high-density, walkable communities are more likely to trust or socialise with their neighbours, volunteer or vote (22).
(15) A. Daunoriene, A. Drakšaite, V. Snieška, G. Valodkiene (2015), Evaluating Sustainability of Sharing Economy Business Models, in Procedia: Social and Behavioural Sciences 213: 836–841.
(16) M. Yusupov (2018), People Don’t Need a Drill. They Need a Hole In The Wall, in Email Marketing, News & Updates, 24 of September, https://blog.cloudy.email/ people-dont-need-a-drill-they-need-a-holein-the-wall/
(17) K. Frenken, J. Schor (2017), Putting the Sharing Economy into Perspective, in Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 23, 3–10
(18) The Economist (2013), Peer-to-peer rental The rise of the sharing economy, 9 of March, https://www.economist.com/ leaders/2013/03/09/the-rise-of-the-sharingeconomy (19) W. Kathan, K. Matzler, V. Veider (2016), The Sharing Economy: Your Business Model’s Friend or Foe?, in Business Horizons 59, 663–672
(20) N. Krueger (2012), Bridging Town and Gown: Best Practice? An Essay on Growing the Local Entrepreneurial Ecosystem, in International Journal of Business and Globalisation 9, 347–358
(21) J. Agyeman, D. McLaren (2015), Sharing Cities: A Case for Truly Smart and Sustainable Cities, Mit Press, Cambridge (22) C. Montgomery (2017), Tackling the crisis of social disconnection, in Happy City. Walkability, 1st of July
(23) C. Tham (2018), Share, Like, Love: Why designing for the sharing economy is different, in Roca Gallery, 31st of August, rocagallery.com/share-like-love-whydesigning-for-the-sharing-economy-isdifferent
(24) SPACE10 (2018), One Shared House 2030: This Is How You Designed It, in SPACE10, 3 of March, https://space10. com/welcome-to-one-shared-house-2030this-is-how-you-designed-it/ (25) https://homeshare.org/abouthomeshare-international/abouthomesharing/ Next page: Copenhagen FabLab. A free open access, shared and user-driven tool workshop. Photo: http://valby.copenhagenfablab.dk The architectural translation of Sharing Economy usually means designing places to eventually provide human connections: a business event based in sharing goods and services in a free platform. (23) In this scenario, the concept of fexibility turns central, as a way to provide freedom of spaces’ confguration and changes over time, in a continuous process of adaptation depending on needs. People could actively shape the space, feeling a new sense of belonging that makes them participants rather than visitors, taking care of their space. (23) Space adaptation would depend on the diferent degrees of privacy users need, blurring the threshold between public and private and developing potentially interesting social dynamics.
According to a survey published by SPACE10, a research and design lab focused on sociality and sustainability, the interest of people in sharing living spaces within small groups, from 4 up to 25 components, will increase by 2030, not just as a way to save money, but as a solution to have a satisfying social life (24). Part of the reason is that young people increasingly choose not to live with their families until they get married, but instead fnd a place of their own. Another part is the rise in divorce rates. An interesting fnding regards the interest in living with people with diferent backgrounds and ages, forming a natural social mix. In this regard, home-sharing models are also beginning to support more vulnerable groups in society. For example, intergenerational home sharing for the young and elderly is solving issues of loneliness and afordability. (25)
Sharing spaces could also be related to rhythms of use. As above mention, the same space could adapt to diferent functions depending on time or more spaces together could work as a unique integrated system. Technology, in this vision, could have still a role. Te start up Spacious is exactly based on this concept. In San Francisco and New York City it provides an intermediary platform that connects restaurants and customers, showing real-time tracking about fuxes of people and enabling the customer to select spaces that are less busy, helping at the same time less-known places to be attractive.
Due to the current pandemic of Covid-19 surely the concept of sharing economy has experienced a sharp slowdown. Notwithstanding, this kind of Business Model has still its importance in view of current Environmental conditions and on-going urban policies. Moreover, new platforms, as the above mentioned Spacious, show how Sharing Economy could be used also in view of social distancing, providing the conditions for social life over a pandemic. Nevertheless, Sharing Economy still lacks of an integrated and organic regulation in order to solve problems related to tax system and to workers’ rights, (let’s think, for instance, to gigeconomy). Te post-pandemic, asking for an improvement, or at least an adaptation, of innovative business models, could be a good moment to solve also these issues.
. What urban policymakers can do
Core urban benefts of a Circular Economy development path include the possibility to reduce the need for new construction, improve urban land use, reduce construction and operational costs, and increase resource-efciency, while strengthening local economy. Design for Disassembly and circular urban policies needs to be closely integrated to be efective overall. A building can last for over a century and more, which means how cities address their
urban housing needs today, both in construction and management terms, will defne urban development for decades to come.
In this regard, innovations within the construction and housing sectors can, if applied with a circular economy approach, provide the solutions we need to face the above mentioned problems regarding demographic growth and urban drift. By integrating Circular Economy principles early in the urban development process, planners can ensure that cities’ infrastructures are conducive to the efective reuse, collection, and redistribution of resources such as water, organics, industrial by-products and building elements, in order to provide at the same time sustainability and afordability. Tese following strategies and case studies, combined with innovative Business Models and to new processes of Design for Disassembly and Material Bank, could help planners to design new Circular cities.
. Planning for compactness
Planning compact urban spaces and land-use can reduce energy consumption, still providing liveable, functional, and socially mixed neighbourhoods with a dense structure made up of small-scale urban blocks and compact street patterns. In this regard, more than 30 years ago, the city of Curitiba started to grow using a compact city development strategy, which entailed mixed-use development and densifcation along fve transport corridors served by a bus rapid transit (BRT) system. Te development strategy has helped to improve the use of urban land, increase public transport use, and reduce the demand for private transport fuel. Today, Curitiba is one of Brazil’s wealthiest cities, and the city has managed to maintain some of the lowest congestion and transport costs in Brazil (around 10% of income) (26).
. Planning with the context in mind
Site specifc urban planning can reduce energy and materials’ wastes by using local available resources. Te plan for the regeneration of the Old Oak and Park Royal districts, in London, based on Circular Economy principles, goes in this direction. Te plan aims to create more than 25,500 new homes and 65,000 jobs in 640 hectares of residential and industrial area, ensuring at the same time optimal local materials circulation. In this regard, by capturing local resources such as water, heat, organics, and solid waste for reuse and using underused space for farming, the plan aims to ensure the area’s environmental and economic resilience. Moreover, it strives for the development of an exemplary world class neighbourhood underpinned by new business models, as well as new cultures of collaboration, innovation and community engagement (27). Key opportunities are for buildings, ftouts, infrastructure, and spaces to be designed for reuse and disassembly from the outset, as well as resource-efciency, sharing, and adaptability.
. Mapping the building stock to rethink the asset management
Setting out a clear roadmap and strategy for the urban building stock is crucial to inform and direct policy levers with long-term consequences (25). As above mentioned in view of the creation of a Material Bank, informations about the available assets of cities in terms of materials is essential. In view of Sharing Economy, instead, knowledge about the existence of underused spaces can lead to the increasing utilisation of publicly owned buildings by making them available for use, implementing city dynamics. In this regard, the experience lead in New York City is quite interesting. Te city has a large number of publicly owned vacant lots. A citizen-driven pilot project, 596 Acres, thus, created
(26) Ellen MacArthur Foundation and ARUP (2019), Planning for compact, connected cities, https://www. ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/assets/ downloads/1_Buildings_Planning_Mar19. pdf (27) ARUP, OPDC, LWARB (2017), Circular and sharing economy scoping study for Old Oak and Park Royal
an interactive crowdsourced map of vacant space, and assisted neighbourhood - led campaigns to turn inner-city land into community space, such as gardens, farms, and playgrounds that support social cohesion and efective land use. Moreover, through convening and partnering with residents and platform providers, and through regulation, urban policymakers can also support home and ofce sharing in a manner that preserves the benefts while mitigating unintended negative consequences. If buildings and rooms are designed by intention for sharing and multi-use, the benefts of these opportunities can be amplifed.
. Providing affordable housing for everyone
Making spaces affordable to those who otherwise cannot afford it, creating stronger social bonds through space leasing and sharing, is a way to support different vulnerable social groups in a cost-effcient manner. Covering the affordable housing gap with the use of innovative public procurements is essential to make liveable cities. In this regard, as above mentioned, Social Housing development can have an important role. Nowadays, the state of art of afordable housing is mainly characterized by building quality compromised by costs savings objectives, low-end implementation standards and lack of maintenance operations, which produced time after time performance obsolescence in the dwellings and a bad perception from inhabitants and community (28).
Today it can redeem from its historical association to simple cheap housing becoming a sector of development for social enterprises and an opportunity to reply to the increasing housing demand. Te sector shall lower the entrance to the public housing market, including the grey area (29) of outsiders, members of middle class fallen into poverty, not involved in afordable housing programs, but not able to buy a private house. Moreover, it shall provide a diversifed range of rents, to reach a remarkable social mix of tenants and hence avoid the ghettoisation of disadvantaged groups and this could be easier when considering new fnancial and funding models, integrating private and public sectors and fostering new partnerships’ models.
. Fostering the concept of vicinity
In order to avoid monofunctional urban segments that would cause situations of obsolescence and vacancies, city governments shall push toward the generation of policentric cities. Te concept of vicinity shall be central in order to provide urban dynamics in every part of the city, avoiding in that way the development of peripheries.
(28) V. Gianfrate, C. Piccardo, D. Longo, A. Giachetta (2017) Rethinking social housing: Behavioural patterns and technological innovations, in Sustainable Cities and Society 33,102–112, http:// dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2017.05.015 (29) G. Napoli (2015), The economic sustainability of residential location and social housing. An application in Palermo city, in XLIII incontro di studio del Ce.S.E.T., 257–277.
What Urban Policy-makers can do
Urban planning based on compactness
Compact settlements can reduce energy consumption. It means planning and designing liveable, functional, and socially mixed neighbourhoods that have a dense structure made up of small-scale urban blocks and compact street patterns.
Site specifc urban planning
It looks at local natural and social resources, with the aims to ensure the area’s environmental and economic resilience.
Informations concerning spaces of the city
Be aware of our cities’ weaknesses is the frst step to improve it and make it stronger and cohesive. Undefned spots in fact are the more potential ones.
Rethinking the asset management
Increasing utilisation of publicly owned buildings by making them available for use through sharing schemes.
Providing affordable housing for everyone
Creating stronger social bonds through space leasing and sharing, as a way to support different vulnerable social groups in a cost-effcient manner.
Fostering policentric cities
The concept of vicinity shall be central in order to provide urban dynamics in every part of the city, avoiding in that way the development of peripheries
