海角视频

Germany faces a housing policy dilemma: while we urgently need more and, above all, affordable housing, we are exceeding planetary boundaries with our current actions in construction and housing. In metropolitan areas, the rent burden for new leases is sometimes over 40% of average income.

According to the Germany Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development (BBSR), the country needs around 320,000 new apartments annually. However, each new construction causes significant CO鈧� emissions, and already today, around 40% of national emissions come from the building sector. The current need for new buildings and the emissions from the existing building stock exceed Germany’s climate protection goals with conventional construction methods. How do we resolve this conflict and create housing that is both affordable and ecologically sustainable? 

Approach

An interdisciplinary consortium consisting of 海角视频, empirica, Urbi-et, and Netzwerk Immovilien is developing and testing a roadmap for “housing that doesn’t cost the earth.” The focus is on four key areas of action: 

• Transformation and better use of existing buildings:鈥疎xisting building stock needs to be used more efficiently and sustainably renovated to reduce the need for new construction while simultaneously lowering CO鈧� emissions. This includes activating currently unused existing spaces and overcoming technical and regulatory hurdles. 
• Targeted incentives for sustainable new construction:鈥疌reating incentives and frameworks that promote the construction of ecologically sustainable and affordable housing. This includes embedding planetary boundaries in new construction and using life cycle-oriented approaches. 
• Innovative and community-oriented housing forms:鈥疍eveloping and promoting new housing concepts that enable more efficient use of living space and minimize the ecological footprint. This includes flexible floor plans and housing forms that can adapt to changing needs. 
• Simplification of building standards:鈥疘nvestigating the potential for affordable housing through less cost-intensive requirements, such as building type E. This could help lower rental prices and promote resource-efficient construction.

Planetary boundaries

How can we enable housing within planetary boundaries? Six of the nine considered planetary boundaries 鈥� climate change, biodiversity, land use change, biogeochemical cycles, novel entities, and freshwater 鈥� are already considered to be exceeded. This has serious consequences for global changes and the habitability of the planet. Our project aims to respect these boundaries and develop solutions that are both ecologically and socially sustainable. 

Goals

The project aims to develop social, economic, and regulatory solutions that enable socially and ecologically sustainable housing provision. These approaches will be tested through prototypes to verify their practicality. Additionally, new networks will be created to drive and support this change in the long term.