1
From the habitational solutions to the habitat as a social construction.
From the right to housing, to the right to live! Carles Llop Torné1
The logics of the 0ikos or for an ecology of living. A starting point to focus the question of sustainability, on the subject of the habitat. I would like to place properly, from my point of view, the theme that approaches this summary of reflections on sustainable housing. The environmental sustainability is clearly based on the reduction of the consumption of resources and energies necessary for the new productions of habitats; in the reuse of the existing patrimony before the generation of new stocks, and the permanent recycling of materials and of resources before producing new. I would like to to affirm that, from this perspective, the production of new habitats -stricto sensu- can never go in favor of the sustainability because it always presuposes the reduction in environmental patrimony. However, if we consider the factors of cultural quality that incorporates any constructive action: the infrastructuring of the territory, the construction of new architectures; the production of housing is also necessary to understand it as a generation of new resources (artificial but necessary) for the human life. It is from this perspective, eco-centered around the man, where it makes sense to approach/tackle the fascinating challenge of contributing to the habitability of the persons. The production of housings, to give answer to the basic right (but not attained)
of
housing for any citizen, for his/her family and for his/her
community, is systematically perverted when it is only approached as a quantitative subject. Housing as a product of consumption, marketized and reduced to the expression of a space between walls, an object trivialized and an alienator of the consumer society. In this, the daily life and their needs lose their axiological value, determining of the meaning and the form of the home, to cause a popularized constructe that even takes other names, curiously an expression of a mutilated house (the “flat”, the 'ceiling' of the habitacionals solutions of the countries in development to quote some evident enough...). The diabolical words and significance that man has used for naming a house ('Cuarto', I 'Piso', 'Techo'...) identify clearly how, and up to what levels, its meaning has been eventually perverted. The 'sustainable habitats to live-in ', are a different thing alltogether. In thinking, producing and using them,
one not only searches not to generate wastes nor to waste the natural
capita, but instead looks for the added value with the increase of the cultural capital that means to create efficient housing, functional, comfortable and beautiful, looking both at the
1
This article contains contributions that have been elaborated together with the partners of JLParquitectes: Sebastià Jornet, Joan Enric Pastor
quality of the typology, as well as of the forms of diversification in its aggregation and configuration of the neighbourhood islands. If nature was perfect, architecture would not be necessary2 ... The constructions of housing facilitate the act of inhabiting, but not all become architecture nor create good habitability conditions. The reasons for the architecture start from the first shelter. The world history as a history of histories has, in the history of dwelling, probably the most wonderful and controversial, field of research. From the primes of the humanity, from the primary and primitive shelter until the more developed forms of the intelligent houses, the habitat is the dock of the antropocentric culture from where to be located in the world, from the most intimate and domestic environment, and from where construct the relation and understanding of the city3; and become citizens. The social marginality, cause and effect of the incapacity to live living decently, provokes the habitacional crisis, and the resulting space becomes a place to spend the night, insalubrious, an infrahabitat in the best of the cases. One only needs to revise the national and international reports that describe the state of the housing in the World, to notice the permanent deficit situation, the inequity in the offer of housing, and the extreme ordinariness with which the great majority of private productions approach the topic of housing. A decent housing is it as long as it is part of an integral worthy architecture that includes from the house, to the neighborhood, to the city and to a territory worthy. The architecture
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of housing starts then in the first surroundings of each person -the intimate one- and extend on the framework of shared spaces formed by the public space and the collective space. The architectures of these infinite spaces condition and determine the relations of the individual with each, and among them. The degree of assembling among the individuals and the architectures end up determining the quality of life, to the extent that, psychologically, the environment will be cause and effect at the same time of the deepest admirations and of the most destructive rejections. Only an architecture of quality can produce a good habitat. The full environmental sustainability requires social equity in the production of housing. Picked up in many constitutions, the right to a decent housing is almost a universal right4. However the problem of the access to housing is a planetary challenge that affects millions of persons and marks the most determining social inequalities of the social poverty.
2
Thus I have heard tell Jean Philippe Vassal, and thus I attributed him this poignant reflection. The “house is our corner in the World. It is as it is often said, our first universe. In reality a cosmos” Gaston Bachelard tells us. (1992, p. 34). Bachelard, G., La poética del espacio, Fondo de Cultura Económica, Col. Breviarios, núm. 183, Buenos Aires, 1992, 281 p. 3
4
From the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, until the Spanish Constitution of 1978
The problem of the housing always has to be formulated from the management of the habitability and, consequently it has to bring up the subject from an integral optic that goes from the typologies of the housing and the residential patterns of the habitacionals sets, until the city like as great union of communities of neighbors and confederation of neighborhoods. A conception where each house is the basic piece that, due to fractal or organized iteration, produces neighborhoods articulated between them in the conformation of the great conjunction of pieces: the city, complex, variable, and multiform. The understood environmental sustainability, then as an equivalent to the social equity, requires a regularity of the productive process and management of the housing, "making to prevail the right to housing and the social function of the property, to the estate business and to the character of dinamitzador of the economy that has the sector of the construction, through the intervention on the part of the governments."5 In front of these measures exclusively assistencial and remedial, it is necessary, then, a 3
decisive policy of social equity that, as the social movements , active in a new way to
understand the housing project, remember and reclaim, it allows "to invert radically the process of loss of purchasing power, to eradicate the exclusion and the poverty, to encourage the work and the social economy of solidary nature"6. To intervene in the market is one of the fundamental challenges in order to change the logics of production based on the consumption, for some renewed logics based on service.
There is no housing without inhabitants, nor city without citizens, and sustainability without sustainabilists, neither "sustainable housing" without inhabitants, citizens and sustainabilists. Perhaps the last claom is vehement, but we will accept or will agree that it is true. The houses should not be only a construction, but the spatial expression of the forms of life and of their inhabitants. In the generic term "of inhabitant", and going down the scale in its categorization, we can consider a very wide variety of the same ones among which, an advanced society has to be specially sensitive towards the young people, the old people, the immigrants, the persons with conditioning social problematic, those with difficulties in accessing housing and that live (still nowadays and beyond developing countries) in shacks, infrahabitats, in debris, or in habitats that do not give a suitable answer for their needs; or to those that do not have a house. They are all, inhabitants who need to feel citizens with full rights, with autonomy, and capacity of social emancipation. But it is not sufficient to
5
Making mine the declarations of " Respolis - Civic Initiative for the Political Responsibility" http://cat.jobdoneorimgone.net. 6
Ibid. Respolis
have a house, because citizens without patterns of sustainablist behavior do not make that their house, their neighborhood, the city and by extension, the territory, will be so. The housing, then has to be conceived as a service which is necessary to manage as a process and not as a product. To be sustainable it should be considered like water, a resource recyclable and of shared use by the successive generations that will inhabit it, and therefore, should subtract the value of change that determines in the capitalist and liberal societies, at least, to mark up the excesses that its consideration provokes as a speculative value. A certainly vehement proposal and perhaps naive, but not impossible, if we consider that it can achieve a progressive increase of the stock of protected housing with the different modalities and public regimes, which they ensure, in the process of correlative displacement of users that improve of housing conditions and that is known with the name of “filtering”, a numerous stock of varied , accessible and diversified offer.
A model of territory from inhabiting for an active policy in the social production of housing. There is not a territory more sustainable than the one that is not wasted. The production of business housing, land consuming,
can never construct the territory well. A strategic
occupation of the territory always starts from a development model that is not neutral: construct to produce business, or construct to address the necessary services and adjusted to the needs of the citizens? Consequently, the factors, which condition the normal development of the housing market, and which can be classified into the following four big blocks7, need renewed postures of the distinct agents who configure the social framework : 1. The economic policy, that regarding the 'monetary policy and of regulation of the financial system in general' has to establish the threshold between the costs of housing and the adequacy of the credits and incentives to ac4cess the different
types of housing,
tutelary or protected; hitting in an innovative way in the regulation of the free market approximating the prices in the corresponding cadastral tasacions. A 'fiscal Policy linked to the housing that regulates the transactions intervening about the added values in an efficient way and in a real cost of the tax imputation. 2. The renting policy, that has to be primarily for the regulation of the abusive prices through a public stock of regulation and dotted with enough aids for the diverse social vectors.
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“Recomanacions per a la Socialització de (l’Accés a) l’Habitatge a Catalunya”, Tesina del Màster en desenvolupament urbà i territorial 2005 – Fundació UPC, Autor: Diego Carrillo Messa, Tutor: Josep Maria Vilanova i Claret, Maig 2006.
3. The urbanistic and land policy, that has to foresee the regeneration of 'public patrimony of the land' in order to regulate the market with the lay at the disposal of the urbanizing process or of the urban transformation, the sufficient and necessary land for the stabilization of the offer and demand, avoiding the private retention of land or the speculative operations of the market. 4. The housing policy, which includes: a. The creation of a sufficient stock to attend to the demand of officially protected housing (HPO), balancing and making the offer of private promotion compatible, proposing a suitable programs of associated aids; and a deciding and powerful production of public promotion housing as a guarantor of the more decided policies of social construction of Housing. In front of the disarrangements that are produced among the distinct factors that end up drawing a precarious reality, regarding the resolution of the needs of housing, one believes, then, that the positive equation is in the articulation of measures in relation to the social function of the housing, the control of prices, the public participation in the management of the estate market, and in the establishment of measures and fiscal policies that in any case serve to recycle generated added values that need to have effects on a major public action in this field. Updated project of new residential Neighborhoods; a contribution “in-course” from Catalonia: the Strategic Residential Areas (ARES).5 The multiple recent policies of the Government of Catalonia on the subject of housing are looking for efficient proposals to make feasible probably one of the most basic rights of the person for his/her human development: the right and the possible access to housing. A right unambiguously based on the dignity of all people without distinction of sex, age or status to live in safe conditions and hygienically suitable in their house, culturally and socially fertile in the community relations, the interaction and the exchange. A right, then, in favor of the habitability. In this context of a renewed interest and assets to make axis of the policy of the government, in our context of Catalonia, I think that steps of a giant to restore are being made, from the public sector, are being given for a suitable instrumentation of territorial strategies, urbanistic planing and actions in neighbourhoods under transformation and in the planing of new neighborhoods that reply to the fundamental principles of an integral project. One of these is the set of measures that defined in the "fold of recommendations for the drafting of the Directive Plans and the Strategic Residential Areas"8.
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Elaborated by the team of architects of Jornet-Llop-Pastor Architects, dated 30 April of 2008, for the Generalitat de Catalunya, through the Catalan Land Institute, and in coordination with the General Direction of Land Policy and Strategic Actions, and the General Direction of Housing of the Generalitat de Catalunya.
The basic contents of this document propose "to make neighborhoods" while "to make city and cure the territory". Because of that a set of guidelines and measures are proposed to give a balanced answer to the new demands of for housing. The fundamental principle is that this has to be located in neighborhoods that make city. Because of that it considers that these neighborhoods facilitate social exchange, make possible the civic growth of the persons in community respecting the identity of all of the citizens and favor the expression of the diversity of the persons, and their economic capacity to have a worthy, economically accessible
housing,
and
espacialment
adjusted
to
the
diverse
familiar
projects,
monoparentals or of variable geometry. To contribute to the good management of the territorial dynamics of Catalonia, in a frame of institutional cooperation and of harmonization of the public initiatives with the diverse private sectors, it is necessary to promote the constant and quality research in the production of spatial and functional forms and structures of the new residential areas in Catalonia and their adequacy in the new territorial implantations, for its articulation with the pre-existent city, and for the increase of the quality of life, the curing of the territory from the prospect of the sustainable ethics, and from the high demand to construct the new landscapes of urbanity. Because of that, from the 'learned lessons' in the praxis developed by the Catalan Land lnstitute, together with the perspective work carried out about other experiences of promotion of residential land and in the context of the generation of good practices that have to represent the concretion of the arranged policies, and the legislation on the subject of housing, displayed, a series of key points are brought up by the ordering the land, the project areas, and the habitability of the residential fabrics. The Strategic Residential Areas (ARE), that are proposed to be developed, have to constitute a new generation of spaces, with regard to the main activity of housing as well as the economic one, as well as the social aspects, territorial, environmental, landscaping, energetic, management and conservation, for a good urban habitability in contact, the closest possible, with its surrounding natural environment. We have to hope that the AREs have an accurate design for the habitability of the buildings, the urbanization and the free spaces, that permit to reach new thresholds of quality in terms of living conditions, the stimulus and motivation in improved working conditions, and at the same time reduce the physical and psychological stress of the citizens. The key points of the new areas have to guarantee the three basic principles: -
Diversity, understood as a Basic principle of any ecosistema
-
Identity, understood as Basic principle of any settlement
-
Sustainability, understood as a Basic principie of any development.
The new areas have to be based on good residencial architectures, that have a good variety of habitats, arising from the principle of flexibility in the layout/distribution of spaces to
enhance livability, in 'well urbanized plots' that create diversified 'urban fabrics', well articulated with the territory and natural systems, in areas socially economically and spatially well-planned. For this reason, we can establish the following guidelines and measures: - Programmatic: 1. Diversification and mix of housing programs to favour social integration il'interacció habitability in diversity civic 2. Mix of uses of housing with other areas of equipment, endowments, services and economic production etc. 3. Properly placing the new areas in strategic positions, with plan patterns depending on the territories and cities where they are implemented: • reinforcing the existing urban structure to leverage the investment of fixed capital developed • taking advantage of the conditions of centrality derived from the accessibility of public transport (Transport Oriented Developments, TOD) • the extension of the existing grid, articulating based on
new public spaces and
equipped to act as new urban axes and hinges, • the development of specific territorial areas where it is needed to apply the policies of enhanced growth derived from the territorial planning program, • the enlargement of nuclei and polarities close to first level urban infrastructure (airports, ports, stations and intermodal hubs,...) • strengthening the newly created territorial nodes to create city under the Project of Sectors of Strategic Economic Activity (SAE's).
4. Set the objectives that will govern the model and the planning guidelines
that will
prefigure a morphological pattern (spatial dimensions) and a barrial fabric (civic dimensions): . the way it has to be, where it has to be, how its execution and its posterior maintenance have to be managed through a precise definition of the type of Residential Area, depending on the program of uses and predominant, activities (compatible and incompatible). . Determination of the location, the land model, the ordering, the urbanization, the standards of the project and the expected architectures. . Determination of the process of planning and the process of execution. . Determination of the scope of the conservation, the generation of resources and of the managing organ that can manage the whole process. - Projectual: 1. Diversification and mix of typology of housing with the community space for a spatial richness of the urban fabric.
2. Density housing and compatible activities adapted to offer a spatial answer to the social demands according to the various functional areas of Catalonia. 3. Incorporate land with good infrastructure and with a good structure of use and functionality to allow adaptability to the demands for housing and their articulation with the industrial, tertiary, commercial and logistics activities , and a 'pack'
of facilities,
endowments and high performance services: Broadband Internet, GPS, RFID, hotels, restaurants, offices, management, financial services, classrooms, freight forwarders, factories, shops, security, maintenance. 4. They need to have a highway structure and isles that permit the versatility of forms of land subdivision, to accommodate the variety of current demands, and if necessary at the time of its recyclability. 5. A accurate design for the habitability of the buildings, the urbanization and free spaces that allow to host new quality thresholds with respect to the conditions of life, stimulus and motivation in the improved working conditions, while reducing physical stress and psychological for the citizens. 6. Attention to design and the project of the urban landscape as a place privileged by the social reactions and urban culture, based on the street, square, garden, local park, wooded areas and new forms of contemporary open spaces, incorporating the added value of the landscape and patrimony of the city and the territory - Economics: 1. Adapting to the new demands of the housing market, to influence public policy to respond to the social demand and the right to housing, compatible with the capabilities of the different family economies, and consistent with the legislative framework that provisions the access to housing from various modalities. 2. In the development of residential areas it is necessary to anticipate events that will determine and, as a consequence, program them properly, and consequently: • analyze all social, economic, territorial conditioners of mobility, • environmental and landscape that can determine their economic viability, while at the same time advancing with the principles of urban ecology, • analyze, interpret and evaluate these conditioning factors using rigorous tools of diagnos and synthesis: analysis of the receiving environment, spatial analysis of the location, prevision of the spaces of services and equipment, research on mobility, environmental conditions, analysis and assessment of landscape socioeconomic survey, preliminary planning study, market research, economic feasibility study, implementing a system of quality control based on the Strategic Environmental Assessment. - Environmental: 1. They have to constitute a new generation of spaces both in terms of the principal housing activity as well as the economic and social aspects, the territorial environmental,
landscaping, energy and of management and conservation, for a good urban habitability in contact as close as possible to nature and agricultural systems of our territories. 2. A good fit and territorial integration defined by the landscaping quality of the architecture and planned development, as well as an excellent forecast environmental
quality
from
the
ecological
point
of
of measures for the view,
avoiding
the
generation/aumentation of the ecological footprint, including provision for an improved implementation. 3. A careful planning of mobility to generate a good accessibility, minimize trips and avoid their negative impacts, through the streamlining of travel between home and workplace, in order to implement the goal of energy efficiency and pollution reduction . 4. Implement the use of public transport for the accessibility of residential areas in areas well served by adapting the frequency and times; integrating the public transport network within the intermodal transport system, optimizing the location of the interchanges nodes, establishing priorities for the vehicles of collective transport in the design of road networks. - Management: The management of new districts as proposed need to provide us the figure of a manager who looks after the integal management of the quality of the neighborhood. He/she has to direct the planning, the control of urban planning and mobility, the implementation of quality proposals in the areas and environmental and landscape and in the projects of execution of the urbanization. Therefore, this managing entity must have ability representation, liaison and negotiation with the public administations and the various economic and social agents. It should promote joint actions with the entities and admnistrations involved in achieving a proactive proactive and efficient management of infrastructure and services, which permit generate resources for the maintenance and conservation. Summing up, what is proposed in this initial document for the drafting of the 'Tender for recommendations for the drafting of the Strategic Residential Areas of Catalonia' is to establish a comprehensive management process and a "how-to" as a quality trademark to ensure the fullfillment of the objectives and the new model set, the favourable development of the planned activities, the maintenance of facilities and the generation of resources that allows a functional adaptability of the areas to the progressive demands. In short, an instrument for renewing the "archetypes"
from the new social, technical, functional,
economic, environmental, landscape perspectives, adding value to the urban planning of the residential neighborhoods for the sustainable land management. For a new consensus in the social construction of habitat. From right to housing to the right to live! A challenge of old and even stronger of the new millennium, will still be to take care of the habitat. We need a renewed consensus to facilitate the habitability, habitat il'habitage
course. And for that, although it will remain a coveted object and of luxury, we must do whatever possible to prevent that its stays as somethings luxurious. We will continue working instead for it to take various forms, but of worthy space. It is therefore imperative that the house loses its status as a object of the market and continues being the a space of dignity to inhabit. Only a great social equity will allow the management of the local habitability. If it is in this line, the path towards environmental and planetary sustainability is more assured. Fascinating but not easy to push to achieve even higher levels in the commitment to make possible the fundamental right for quality of life and development. From the right to housing as a vindication, we have to increasingly reclaim a right more comprehensive and rich in depth, the right to the pleasure of living in dair and decent conditions.