On the afternoon of Tuesday 31st January 2023 at the Custom House, Dublin, we will launch URBACT IV and provide an overview of the call for Action Planning Networks.

Come join us on the day to receive practical tips in getting started, and the opportunity to hear of testimonies from past URBACT project participants in Ireland!! At the event you will also hear from other speakers on the importance of integrated and sustainable urban development at the local, regional and national levels, as well as the value of participation in EU projects!

The agenda will be paperless and will be communicated to registered attendees in advance! Please register here: https://t.co/xQcDvA0Ydy

How do towns and cities maintain the momentum for collaborative actions and innovation created in their URBACT Local Groups (ULGs)? And what structures can be put in place to continue the ULGs’ role after URBACT projects end? Answers to these questions are crucial to consider with the end of another cycle of Action Planning Networks in the URBACT programme. Anamaria Vrabie, Eileen Crowley and Wessel Badenhorst unpack three possible strategies that each ULG can consider, stemming from their practitioner experience and a ‘fireside chat’ workshop they organised together with the URBACT Secretariat at the 2022 URBACT e-University.

Before we begin, please also consider using these additional resources, complementary to this article:

• Watch the video of our fireside chat during the 2022 URBACT e-University.
• Read the innovative governance models handout we compiled.

And now, let us share with you some of the transformative stories we have generated, witnessed and supported in the cities of Cluj-Napoca (RO), Dublin and Cork (IE). We reference these cities, not as overall good practices of innovative governance models, but rather in an effort to make things as concrete as possible, in order to understand the structure, context for emergence, and expected impact of such innovative models.

Strategy #1: formalise your ULG work into an innovation lab

In the last 15 years, there has been a strong development of innovation labs connected to public administrations. These labs can take a variety of shapes and sizes, depending on their governance model. Some operate at governmental level, some at city level. Some are mandated to specifically improve the delivery of public service, while others are tasked with prototyping solutions for emerging challenges or with the support of emerging technologies. It is useful to think about these labs as a quadruple helix living lab at the intersection with a research and development department specifically linked to a public authority. Each lab can opt to use one or more innovation methodologies, from human design thinking to behavioural insights.

For an overview of some of the most active labs at global level, this survey and this report can be useful places to start as, like ULGs, such labs convene a wide array of city stakeholders.

In Cluj-Napoca, Romania’s second largest city with a population of around 400 000 people, it was actually a failed attempt to win the title of a European Capital of Culture (ECoC) that proved a catalyst for the emergence of their innovation lab. The Cluj-Napoca Urban Innovation Unit (UIU) was a programme proposed in 2017 by Cluj Cultural Centre, an NGO comprising at the time around 60 cultural organisations and public authorities, that had prepared the ECoC strategy.

Designed in partnership with the Cluj-Napoca municipality, UIU would actually have a limited lifecycle of four-five years, in order to test what innovation approaches would be best for Cluj, while building more innovation capacity locally. If successful, the unit would be fully transferred in the local municipality. This aspect is quite relevant for towns and cities facing either a low trust in public sector actors or insufficient capacity. It allows a state or non-state actor to break the vicious circle of questioning how such a complex structure should be governed, by proposing a test-run for a limited period.

Two pilot projects of the Urban Innovation Unit: temporary use of public space in a residential neighbourhood (left) and engaging artists to promote the use of public transportation for youth (right).

So, how can URBACT cities use an innovation lab structure as a vehicle for the governance and implementation of their Integrated Action Plan (IAP)?

Building on the city’s strategic documents, similar to URBACT Integrated Action Plans, the Cluj-Napoca Urban Innovation Unit (UIU) was mandated to develop pilot projects in three thematic areas: future of work, urban resilience and urban mobility. The three themes were chosen as the most relevant for emerging challenges of Cluj as a growing city. In addition, all three topics required collaborative solutions and coordination – a sole city actor such as the public administration, universities, NGOs or businesses, would find them hard to develop alone. This report describes the 15 lessons learned of the unit between 2017-2021, as well as pilot projects in each thematic area.

Early on in the existence of the Cluj-Napoca Urban Innovation Unit, their proposal for future of work, co-produced with the municipality and other key stakeholders, won the Urban Innovative Actions third call for funding, making Cluj-Napoca the first city in Eastern Europe to receive this type of European grant. This brought considerable funding and legitimacy for the lab, but narrowed down the type of pilot projects it could engage in. Nevertheless, reflecting on the emerging legacy of the unit, there are already a few tangible results:

• Concrete solutions found at city level on how to better support cultural and creative industries as an emerging sector of the local economy;
• Supporting academics to make their research usable for evidence-based policy;
• Develop new funding mechanisms that can allow community groups to work with the public administration as peers;
• Strategic partnerships and new sources of funding accessed by the city;
• Consolidated capacity for the public sector to use risk-prone methodologies such as prototyping;
• Successful transfer of tested innovation practices in a newly established department in the municipality starting from May 2022.

Thus, an innovation lab may provide a useful governance model to monitor the implementation of the URBACT IAP, being tasked to implement pilot projects together with ULG members. These pilot projects are not necessarily the comprehensive actions described in the IAP, but rather Small Scale Actions for each of them. This enables continuous engagement and a refinement of some of the big ideas planned by cities to accomplish their ambitious vision.

Strategy #2: keep a stable relationship among key city stakeholders, even if informally

In Ireland, a partnership model was initiated in the city of Cork with the aim of regenerating the city centre and reinvigorating the city space. Located in the south-west of Ireland, the city of Cork has achieved some success in taking a partnership approach to the revitalisation of its city centre in recent years. The council was rewarded for their innovative governance model in 2021 when they won the Chambers Ireland Excellence in Local Government Awards.

Cork city has a population of about 220 000 people. For a period, the city centre was losing population, and businesses in the area noticed a decline. In 2014, coinciding with a changeover in city management and the appointments of the city’s first female chief executive, a study was commissioned to kick-start transformative actions to revitalise the city centre in partnership with a wide range of stakeholders. The study made two key recommendations: create a cross-sectoral partnership to drive change; and employ a city centre coordinator – someone to act as the human face of the council, to liaise with businesses, broker relationships and facilitate action.

Weekend morning yoga on the board walk in Cork City centre

The city implemented these recommendations and set up two key groups. The first consists of approximately 20 cross-sectoral representatives, including local politicians, business owners and representatives, public transport representatives, members of the Gardaí (police) and some council staff. The second group consists of members of the city council senior management team, with one manager together with an urban planner, responsible for a designated area within the city centre. Action plans and progress reports are revised each year to help realise the aims of these groups.

Change came about slowly in the city, one step at a time. Early years were focused on forming relationships, building trust and some small quick wins. The council focused mainly on showing their support for businesses by trying to animate the public space and attract people into the city centre. This was done through a variety of soft catalyst-type projects such as chalk workshops, street theatre and street art, all proving very popular and helping to animate the space and to build trust between partners.

Over time, seeing the benefits and enjoyment to be gained by public space animation, momentum started to grow with several businesses undertaking their own initiatives in this area. Examples include weekend morning yoga on the boardwalk instigated by a local coffee shop owner and the city’s infamous long table dinner which started in 2017. This was led by 12 restaurants in the city centre, feeding 420 guests in one of the city’s main thoroughfares.

Cork’s long table dinner feeding 420 guests (left) and one of the newly pedestrianised streets in the city, catering for an increase in outdoor dining (right).

Of course, there were stumbling blocks too, and some initiatives met with great resistance. As the famous motivational author Louise Hay says however: “resistance is the first step to change”. The City Council’s attempt to pedestrianise the main street in the city for several hours a day initially met with great opposition. In spite of this, the City Council held firm and increased their commitment to work in partnership with stakeholders to find solutions and support the continued reinvigoration of the city centre. The cross-sectoral stakeholder group met 13 times over the summer of 2019, intent on co-creating solutions to the city’s challenges. In the end, these stumbling blocks proved to bear great fruit, and working together through these challenges served to strengthen and solidify vital relationships across sectors and between stakeholders.

These strong partnerships and cross-sectoral structures in place in the city are what enabled the city to respond dynamically and quickly to the shock circumstances brought about by the pandemic.

Together, city stakeholders worked quickly to develop a response plan and to rapidly roll out activities to ensure the city centre remained an attractive and inviting space for people in the midst of the pandemic. The city quickly set in train the pedestrianisation of 17 streets within the city centre, the development of cycle lanes across the city, increasing cycle parking, creating attractive outdoor spaces with public parklets and street cleaning and supporting the development of streets for outdoor dining.

So, how can an informal partnership structure become a vehicle as a post-project structure for governance and implementation of actions in the IAP?

The post-ULG structure can aim to become a go-to forum for other emerging challenges of the city.

An example of some winter-proofing measures on one of the city quays

For example, in Cork, thanks to the highly effective and innovative governance models in place for the management of the city centre, the city has been hugely successful in accessing national funding for the winter proofing of many of its newly pedestrianised streets, enabling year-round outdoor dining even in the often inclement Irish weather!

From small soft measures in the beginning to a visible increase in momentum, the city today is truly transformed. Cork showcases a city offering that competes on par with some of the most well-known and magnetic cities across Europe. This is the power of partnership and taking a collaborative approach to city development.

This approach is highly replicable and transferable even across varying contexts. Investing in a partnership model can lead to effective and positive transformations of an area, the time and commitment involved does pay off. People, partnerships and leadership are essential. Motivating factors including some soft measures, quicks wins, awards and the showcasing of inspirational good practices can all drive momentum. A clear vision, dedication and commitment however are all vital links to connect a vision to reality. An important lesson we can learn from Cork is that their partnership journey is just as important as the destination. While the city’s physical transformation is impressive, it’s the embedding of this collaborative culture and the institutionalisation of cross-sectoral governance models within the city’s practice that is truly valuable and surely heralds only the beginning of this city’s transformational journey.

Strategy #3: consider business-led governance structures such as Business Improvement Districts (BIDs)

In countries like Ireland and the UK, legislation was introduced in past decades to enable businesses in a defined commercially zoned area to form a company that will take on aspects of governance and carry out certain actions. The legislation allows for a business community to form a Business Improvement Districts (BID) company after holding a plebiscite in the ‘BID Area’ where more than 50% of businesses voted to form the company on the premise of a proposed five-year strategy. If the vote is positive, then a board of directors is constituted with the representation of the local authority ensconced.

Typically, the BID Company will then set up a few working groups that involve local stakeholders focusing on needs identified in the strategy. The BID Company is funded through levies paid by all businesses in the BID area, i.e. the Business District, which are collected by the local authority and then transferred to the BID Company. This amounts to a ‘tax’ paid by businesses in addition to the annual rates owed to the local authority. It also means that businesses have an interest to secure the best return for their contributions. This drives the dynamic of the BID Company as a place-oriented governance structure.

So, how can a BID Company become a vehicle as a post-project structure for governance and implementation of actions in the IAP?

Key stakeholders involved in a Business Improvement District

The aim of the post-ULG structure can be summarised with the following main features:

1. A structure that coordinates the alignment of stakeholder needs in the designated area;
2. A structure that provides and supports leadership in the designated area;
3. A structure that can facilitate delivery of actions and the measuring of impacts.

In the case of business districts, the stakeholder interests that should drive future development are not only those of landowners or large employers. An interesting case study is the former large industrial estates that have transformed into mixed use business districts, i.e., with new clean manufacturing, office, education, retail and residential uses. One example of how this can work is the Sandyford Business District in Dublin, Ireland.

More than 20 000 people work in Sandyford and 6 000 people live in Sandyford. There are approximately a thousand businesses in the district, ranging from multi-nationals like the Microsoft European HQ to many SMEs. Six years ago, the businesses voted to form a BID Company. Last year, the mandate for the company was renewed with a second plebiscite.

Poster for the Sandyford BID Company

The Sandyford BID Company developed a comprehensive strategy with actions for the next five years covering not only the marketing of the district, but also greening of the district; significantly increasing active transport infrastructure for walking and cycling; increasing permeability and access to the district; and using new technologies to make the district ‘smarter’.

The BID Company’s approach is to work in collaboration with local stakeholders, including the local authority and residents, with the aim to build a sense of place and community.

The statutory BID structure ensures that the BID Company has a steady funding stream for the next five years to implement its strategy. The BID Company has however learnt from the previous five years that it is even more important to build the trust with key stakeholders to create a culture of collaboration. This in turn will ensure synergies in the use of resources and a collective responsibility for the future development of the business district.

There are significant elements from the structure of BID Companies which cities could transfer to their own governance structures for their commercial areas or business districts. The attraction is the certainty of sufficient resources for action implementation together with an approach to build relationships with key stakeholders, thus creating a vehicle for ‘distributed’ place leadership which also involves the business leaders in the city.

And a bonus, #4: let’s keep the conversation open!

We acknowledge that there are numerous other governance models to be considered. Our purpose was to start this conversation and make use of the incredible knowledge resources that exist in the URBACT programme – URBACT cities pioneering new ways of governance, lead experts with core expertise in innovation and governance, decades of work by URBACT Secretariat members to design capacity-building activities to make collaborative work in ULGs and beyond possible, just to mention few examples. Several workshops within the URBACT City Festival in June 2022 highlighted the continuation of ULGs’ work in many Action Planning Network cities. Whether they live on as legally-binding structures, or informal meet-ups, we look forward to watching these local URBACT-sparked connections keep on thriving!

This article was first co-produced by Anamaria Vrabie, Eileen Crowley and Wessel Badenhorst in April 2022.

Anamaria Vrabie is the Lead expert for the URBACT Tourism-Friendly Cities network. She is a behavioural-informed economist and leader of urban innovation practices with over 15 years of international experience. Since 2017 she has co-designed and managed Cluj-Napoca Urban Innovation Unit.

Eileen Crowley is the Lead expert for the URBACT Resourceful Cities network. She is a project designer and planner. Having worked for almost 20 years in local & regional government, as well as the research sector in Ireland on a broad portfolio of EU funded transnational projects she now works in the private sector as a consultant.

Wessel Badenhorst is the Lead expert for the URBACT iPlace network. He previously worked as the Economic Development Officer in Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, one of the Dublin local authorities. He also was the interim CEO of the Sandyford BID Company and helped develop its new BID Strategy.

While launching a wealth of new tech initiatives including an interactive urban digital platform and 5G network, after a long history of digital innovation, the Portuguese town of Aveiro realised it was time to pause and simplify citizens’ access to public services. Inspired by Gijón (ES) and other cites in the URBACT Card4All network, municipal departments are working together to create a one-stop-shop citizen card for Aveiro.

The small port-city of Aveiro in northwest Portugal has long been known not just for its picturesque street canals and colourful Moliceiros boats – but also for pioneering telecommunication research and digital transition.

Since being named Portugal’s first “Digital City” back in 2003, the municipality has continued to develop as a digital territory for innovation, culminating in the current Aveiro Tech City. This includes a 5G testbed, supported by the Urban Innovative Actions STEAM city initiative (2019-21), in partnership with Altice Labs and other stakeholders to help the city “transition into a knowledge-based economy”.

But one downside of adopting new digital solutions over the years is that Aveiro’s citizens – and the city administration – are having to juggle more and more cards, interfaces and information sources for services around the city, whether it’s to borrow a library book, catch a bus or manage school services.

“The new technological revolution with the wide adoption of a 5G infrastructure and IoT platform will transform the local innovation ecosystem,” says Miguel Sousa, Lead Expert for the URBACT Card4All network. Seeing this as an opportunity to simplify access to services and improve local governance, in 2018 Aveiro joined Card4All, an URBACT transfer network that helps small and medium sized cities learn from Gijón’s (ES) successful Citizen Card.

In Gijón, citizens, businesses and tourists have been using a personalised card since 2002 to access multiple municipal services, reducing bureaucracy and saving time, while also promoting policies of social inclusion, sustainability, smart growth and sustainable mobility. The card acts as an electric wallet to pay for parking tickets, bus fares and access to sports facilities. Cardholders can also enter a personal code to access official documents and the status of applications. And Gijón’s municipal employees can even use their card to open certain council vehicles.

Aveiro decided to start designing their Citizen Card by learning from three main public services that until now have their own separate cards:

1. Schools, as currently children need two or three different cards as they move from kindergarten through to high school – for buying lunches and supplies, staying after school, or accessing certain buildings;
2. Public libraries;
3. An upgraded bike sharing system, due to launch in 2020.

The card could also enable quick access to the museum, wi-fi, and sports bookings. And the system should allow more services to be added later, whether they are run by public or private entities.

The aim is to have a first version of the one-stop-shop Citizen Card ready to test by mid 2020, and reach at least 35,000 of the region’s 40,0000 inhabitants in the first year.

“We need to make things more efficient, simple and clear for people,” says Aveiro’s Card4All project manager Maria Angela Cunho, responsible for the Economic development and innovation sub-unit. “The initial phase is connecting what already exists. Having one interface will simplify people’s lives.”

Relevant municipal department chiefs met early on and agreed a structured plan for the two-year URBACT project. “It’s a huge thing to get them to work together on one card!” says Cunha.

With the goal to “improve city performance, fostering technological development and innovation as a contribution for better policies and services”, this URBACT Local Group (ULG) meets every few months – sometimes with their Card4All European partners and URBACT expert. It includes people working on the following:

- Mobility (for bikes, buses and parking);
- Education;
- Sports;
- Culture (for libraries, museums, the theatre, youth and elderly, and tourism);
- IT (for public wi-fi);
- the Front Office that deals directly with citizens.
 

Each department acts as an intermediary with their own stakeholders, often operators of external services such as transport, energy or food supply companies who may join the card later.

Next transnational steps

Armed with questions defined by the ULG, interviewers recently set off around the city to meet citizens face-to-face and understand their priorities for local public services. This insight will help Aveiro start working with external developers to prepare a public tender for the Citizen Card’s development. Then, early in 2020, members of the ULG – including the city’s tech department and external developers – will travel to URBACT Good Practice city Gijon for an intensive meeting with their peers there. That will help Aveiro finalise the public tender.

“I think it’s important to see Gijon’s experience because it shows that it’s possible. They’ve added lots of services, even external services. It helps to have a goal, something to look at,” says Cunha.

“The Municipality of Aveiro has a large experience in transnational collaborative projects where the city acquired knowledge and gained relevant experience in the design and implementation of strategic plans to support economic development and RD&I activities,” says Sousa, Card4All Lead Expert. “I believe that the transnational cooperation experience speed up the digital transition in Aveiro.”

Avoiding digital pitfalls in local governance

Providing access to essential services and listening to all voices in decision-making, including those of the less privileged and most vulnerable - these are just two fundamental elements of good local governance for cities to have in mind when developing digital tools. Others are to ensure the city has necessary IT skills in-house, and the resources to answer new messages from citizens.

Christophe Gouache, Lead Expert for the URBACT ActiveCitizen network recently launched in Agen (FR) to promote better local governance, warns that for cities, “the biggest danger facing citizen participation and local democracy is to rush into the ‘digital promise’… and to suppress other, low tech, modes of participation”. By this he means collaborative events like neighbourhood meetings, or workshops with inhabitants. “Digital is only a tool, a complementary channel of connection with inhabitants,” he adds.

Meanwhile, the Aveiro Tech City scheme includes the development of a single urban platform with multi-source data-collection to support decision-making by the mayor and elected representatives, civil servants, and citizens. André Costa, Head of Economic development and entrepreneurship, says the platform will be similar to those of larger cities like Dublin, Barcelona, Milan – and could take up to a decade to develop. “At any moment,” says Costa, “our mayor will be able to know the city’s level of revenue. He will be able to know the number of processes requested for the requalification of urban buildings. He will know the level of CO2 emissions that we are able to reduce once we’ve implemented electrical buses, electric engines in our municipal boats, and electrical ferry boats. And we’ll be able to inform our citizens so they know the results and the outcomes of the investments being made.”

Aveiro’s Card4All will be designed to link in with this new urban platform. It would be technically possible to produce a mobile app to access public services virtually instead of printing individual cards for everyone. That would save costs, not just on producing the cards, but also acquiring, installing and maintaining card readers. But Cunha says a physical card is still necessary for children, the elderly, and other people excluded from technology: “I guess for now we have to have both solutions”.

Summing up the project, José Ribau Esteves, Mayor of Aveiro, said, “The Card4All project is a part of our global initiative – Aveiro Tech City – that intends to support the City of Aveiro transition into a knowledge-based economy, while providing better services to our citizens and visitors. Economically, we aim at competing with the stronger national economic centres, being able to attract and retain the necessary talents for our economy to grow and produce more added-value, making Aveiro a more competitive city globally. Socially, we intend to provide better services to our citizens using digital tools, and Citizen Card will play a very important role in this regard.”

Further reading on urban governance
A chapter from the Future of cities report by the European Commission’s Knowledge Centre for Territorial Policies.

URBACT Knowledge Hub TechPlace: https://urbact.eu/digital-transition

The differences between European cities are even larger than between countries – depending on political colours, cities within the same country might have totally different answers to the same challenges.

Here is a short overview of positive examples, i.e. cases where cities achieved success to mitigate or prevent the problems on the housing market – either through subtracting land out of the property market (i.e. limiting speculation) or through creating additional resources to make housing affordable. The sources of the information are international meetings and the very informative book of Patti-Polyák (2017).

Community-led housing models

According to Patti-Polyák a diversity of community-led housing (CLH) models have emerged across Europe including the Danish co-housing model focuses on shared spaces and environmental sustainability and the traditional cooperative housing model in Germany, Switzerland and France - which are undergoing a renewal with a focus on democratic governance and anti-speculation. Meanwhile, the Anglophone Community Land Trust model that aims to pull land out of the property market, is progressively gaining a foothold in continental Europe.

Community-Led Housing projects are costly and require investments exceeding the financial capacity of most inhabitants, particularly low-income households. To be viable and to leverage sufficient economic resources, community-driven housing initiatives need to organise a wide range of actors around their project and attract external funders. For example, the organisations Stiftung Trias and Edith Maryon Stiftung are acquiring land for non-profit purposes and providing long-term leaseholds to civic actors with the aim of enabling non-speculative housing developments. Community-Led Housing projects usually start by aggregating their economic capacities and financial means in the form of savings. Resources that were put in common are then used to leverage further public and private funding. In fact, the success and adaptability of Community-Led Housing models depend largely on the capacity of inhabitants to negotiate external funding at favourable conditions (at low interest rates, for instance) and to advocate for public support mechanisms, such as public guarantees or enabling public policies.

Since 2015 Barcelona (ES) introduced new models for affordable housing. One form of this is based on giving public land to cooperatives. Javier Buron Cuadrado, Housing Manager of Barcelona city council described this model in the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona (November 2018), starting from the point that in Spain cities do not have power in housing policy, as this is regulated on regional level. Even so, Barcelona has set up the Right to Housing Plan 2016-2025 with the aim to create more than 18 000 affordable housing units, mainly on rental basis. New ideas are used, such as building temporary places and using rooftops. Barcelona also tries to negotiate with the settlements of the metropolitan area, where at least 75 000 affordable units are missing. All types of financial and technological ideas are discussed, especially how to build faster and cheaper. Barcelona is open to all solutions existing in other cities, coming from residents and the academia, to find answers to the affordable housing challenge.

The Community Land Trust (Patti-Polyák) is an interesting Anglophone model. This is an organisational form in which communities come together to address housing issues. Perceiving a need, a group starts to look for land. This can be in the form of raising capital from an ethical lender for buying land, asking for municipally owned land or through private negotiations with a farmer. The next step is building new houses or redeveloping existing houses into affordable homes. When the community achieves ownership of the land, they can make housing on it affordable. They can sell homes or properties, at about half the market rate. It can be a shared ownership model, or be a socially rented model.

In the book, the case of the Granby Four street Community Land Trust is described in details. In a poor area of Liverpool (UK), a former residents association was re-created as Community Land Trust in 2011. They met up with a few partners and began to draw plans together for an urban regeneration process with very small incremental stages. In 2012, the association won a small urban garden competition, the result of which got noticed by the Steinbeck Studio social investment organisation. They saw what was happening in the neighbourhood, liked the idea of citizens being active in the community and offered a £ 500 000 loan. From that moment, Liverpool City Council also began to take notice and started discussions with the Community Land Trust, finally deciding to transfer 10 properties over to the Granby 4 Streets Community Land Trust. The Community Land Trust holds the land in trust, separating its value from the building on it, and it fixes the price the buildings can be sold for later. Any value increase is locked in by the Community Land Trust for community benefit, so the profit motive has been cut out.

Using public land in new way

Berlin (DE) is well known as a city of pioneering attempts to change the usual market oriented models. During a long period of experimentation with temporary use projects, and initiatives mobilising protests against large-scale development projects like the Media Spree, the idea emerged to develop economically sound and secure models of tenancy, based on long-term rental contracts or cooperative ownership arrangements. An example for that is the StadtNeuDenken initiative with a new concept for privatisation (Patti-Polyák). The basic idea is to change the privatisation mechanisms from the highest bid to fixed prices and the best concept.

This idea was soon adopted by the municipality of Paris (FR) and shortly after the victory of Anne Hidalgo in 2014 their own top-down version of concept-based privatisation was launched in a series of competitions. Besides defining affordable housing goals, Hidalgo and deputy mayor Missika launched the urban development competition: Reinventing Paris. 23 municipally owned sites were selected in Paris – some in quite deprived and remote areas to sell public land, linking sales price to its future use. In an attempt to foster innovation in real estate and extending the scope of urban commons only multi-disciplinary teams could win, and the final users had to be included from the beginning. The competition was very successful and since then two new rounds were launched, on a similar basis.

Municipal regulation against housing speculation

Vienna (AT) is known worldwide for sustainable and inclusive urban development, of which housing policy is one of the corner-stones. The city is probably the biggest public landlord in the world with 220 000 public rental units. A particular challenge recently was the quick growth of the city, having in the last years 12-20 000 people moving yearly to Vienna. This means a need for building at least an additional 6 000 housing units yearly. There is, thus, a growing interest for land, suitable for new housing.

Vienna recognised quickly, that in the case of open competition the interest of international investors would lead to the increase of prices of the scarce land reserves for housing. One of the leading principles of urban development in Vienna is the inclusivity of the city, avoiding changes in the housing market that would push certain strata out. In order to avoid price increases as consequence of speculative capital investments, making housing in the longer term unaffordable, Vienna reacted quickly. A new regulation is about to be introduced, limiting access of investors to real estate that is potentially suitable for affordable housing. The regulation aims to maximize the purchase price for the land, introducing a rule so flats cannot be sold for 40 years to maximise the rent of new units. Moreover, another new decision requires that half (later 2/3) of any new housing projects should qualify for the affordable housing model, determined by the city. These are important initiatives by the public sector to regulate the market, to avoid price increases - as a consequence of financialisation of housing.

Need for cross-country agreement on the social understanding of housing

For the moment, the efforts to handle the negative consequences of the financialisation of housing lead only to limited results on a national level and the local attempts face even more challenges.
For example, Sorcha Edwards from Housing Europe reported on a Dublin (IE) case, where a local group was bidding for an empty standing building to turn it into social housing, but their position was hopeless as their competitor was the largest US pension fund.

It is clear that international cooperation and joint efforts are needed to strengthen the social aspect of housing, as opposed to the market commodity understanding of it. In the Vienna Housing for All conference a range of ideas were raised on how such an international effort could be initiated.

EU or national government intervention

Barbara Steenbergen, International Union of Tenants, emphasized that mergers between real estate funds are going on in order to avoid national taxation. The EU and national governments should find out ways to keep housing affordable: real estate investors should be limited or stopped at all to buy up the existing affordable housing stock.

A European housing forum

Kieran McCarthy, Member of the EU Committee of the Regions, Councillor of the City of Cork (IE), suggested organizing a European Housing Forum. In the Committee of the Regions housing, it should be taken more seriously, it cannot remain one of the last priorities.

A set rate of income share, a basic right and the end of VAT

Evelyn Regner, Member of the European Parliament (S&D), pointed to the European Semester as one of the possibilities, where housing could be included without making huge changes in the basic documents of the EU. She suggested including the principle that people should not spend more than a given share of their incomes for housing costs. Housing should be acknowledged as a basic right. The EU should take steps to achieve housing-related expenses without or with little VAT, which would bring a real decrease of housing costs to normal people.

The European Semester

Jörg Wojahn, Representative of the European Commission in Austria, also mentioned the importance of the European Semester, turning soft law into a harder tool. Already today large sums of EU money, some EUR 1,5 billion is invested into housing. Also, loans from EIB and some parts of the Juncker fund (for the energy efficiency in buildings), should be taken into account. However it is clear, that e.g. energy efficiency investments make housing more expensive, thus such investments have to be acknowledged as long term financial commitments, and should be made exempt from the deficit rules. The European elections are a good moment to vote for candidates who agree in the importance of urban and housing issues against the dominance of agriculture and other investment goals.

EU and municipal responsibility

Lea Ortiz, deputy mayor Barcelona complained about dozens of evictions weekly in the city (against all efforts of the municipality), and about the fact that investors are buying up growing parts of the city. She also suggested turning to Europe, influencing the upcoming EP elections. The view that “housing is not responsibility of the EU” should be changed. Sustainable and just cities cannot be achieved without a growing public influence on the housing markets and the EU has a large responsibility to achieve that. The movement of cities - the emerging municipal cooperation - should push housing to become part of the discussions in Europe.

Banning private equity fund investments and airtime at the G20   

Leilani Farha, UN Special Rapporteur on adequate housing suggested putting the financialisation of housing on the agenda of G20, as the finance ministers of this group are of crucial importance. After food security, housing should be on their agenda. Private equity funds should be banned from investing into residential housing just as investments into harmful environmental investments is already prohibited.

A basic human right

In her passionate speech at the Housing for All conference Leilani Farha emphasized that gold is a commodity, but housing not – it is a human right. Seizmic, paradigmatic shift is needed, as the present problems are not only market failures, but so is the lack of viewing housing as a human right. All levels of government have to show up and adopt comprehensive, human rights based housing policies. Housing must be based on laws protecting basic rights, and strategies must be based on the rights of people. She announced the establishment of a new movement: SHIFT, which already has 25 signatory cities, including Barcelona, Paris, Amsterdam (NL), Seoul (KR).

Housing is a human right which should not be sold to the highest bidder.

Progress in the EU on housing

Compared to the situation a decade ago, there is some progress in the handling of housing in the European Union. Within the EU Governance (European Semester, Macroeconomic conditionality, Reform Support Instrument, Rule of Law) housing is not considered exclusively from a competition policy perspective, but also as a matter of the Rule of Law in which basic human rights are slowly gaining some importance. There is a chance that fundamental rights will become one of the horizontal enabling conditions in the post-2020 Cohesion Policy regulation.

On the other hand, according to reports of the Corporate Europe Observatory, there are discussions going on between the lobby groups of the sharing economy sectors (including Airbnb, Uber, etc.) and the Commission departments responsible for competition and free market regulation. The outcome of these negotiations is not yet known, but the EU approach may unilaterally support the forms of collaborative economy against the will of national and local governments to constrain the platforms in order to protect affordable housing. In practice, the regulations on Airbnb introduced in Barcelona, Amsterdam, Paris, Lisbon (PT), etc. might be annulled by the Commission as hurting the competition law.

Housing is one of the sectors where the fight between the competition and solidarity aspects is the sharpest. There seems to be a long way to go to achieve socially justified limitations on international capital investors, i.e. regulating the financialisation of housing – without limiting private actors in their will to invest along non-speculative principles into social/affordable housing.

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"The housing paradox: more financing - less affordability?" - previous part of this article by Ivan Tosics can be read here.