Social innovation for regenerative buildings: Insights from Austria.

doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-2083658/v2

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Social innovation for regenerative buildings: Insights from Austria.

https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-2083658/v2

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Decarbonizing the construction and operation of buildings is essential in achieving sustainable development and mitigating the climate and ecosystem crisis. While considerable progress has been made to reduce energy and emissions from building operation, from a whole life cycle perspective, current building practices still struggle to provide housing within planetary boundaries. Beyond technological innovation, strategies are needed to reduce building-related environmental impacts while ensuring adequate spaces for a regenerative and distributive circular economy. Social innovation is needed to support the implementation of sustainable development goals and reduce emissions in the building sector.

This article investigates pioneering building projects from Austria and the various social innovation strategies they successfully deploy to enable alternative model of regenerative spatial production. The strategies include co-creation and participatory design processes, crowd-based financing and co-ownership, as well as dedication to sharing and circularity. The study analyzes three building case studies that showcase successful social innovation in housing. The case studies are situated in different spatial contexts, including reactivating the countryside, revitalizing newly developed neighborhoods, and bringing new life to abandoned buildings. Despite the potential benefits of social innovation, this study finds that current real estate market hardly supports the development and realization of alternative housing models. In response, innovative models of housing are often driven by the initiative of the inhabitants and supported by dedicated individuals in local governance and public service.

This study provides insights and guidance on how social innovation strategies can support alternative housing projects and which governance, financing, and ownership models may enable the implementation of regenerative buildings at scale.

Architecture, Design and Planning

Environmental Economics

Urban Studies

Social innovation

Housing

Lifestyle

Demand-side action

Sharing Economy

Cohousing

Sociocracy

Buildings

Construction

Whole Life Carbon

Life Cycle Assessment

GHG emissions

Reduction pathway

Decarbonization

Mitigation

Adaptation

The need for regenerative models of housing

“Limiting global temperature increase needs demand-side actions and lifestyle changes." [1]

37% of global, energy-related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions arise from activities across the life cycle of buildings - material production and processing, transport, energy for building operation, maintenance, repair, eventually deconstruction and end-of-life processing. The magnitude of this figure highlights the importance of buildings in context of the climate crisis. Here, buildings are both an important part of the problem as well as a field with strong potential for being part of the solutions. However, current practices in building design, construction and also modes of use, hardly manage to provide buildings within Earth’s environmental boundaries [2], while providing the necessary functions and services required for a just green transition aimed for in Europe and beyond, e.g., as suggested in the European Green Deal and the New European Bauhaus initiative.

In their experimental analysis of “absolute sustainability” target values and comparison with existing residential building case studies, Brejnrod et al [3] showed that none of the investigated buildings were able to meet the ambitious albeit necessary target. Recent meta-studies on the topic of life cycle GHG emissions, such as that by Röck et al. [4], further showed, that even benchmarks already used in practice, such as the 2000 Watt society target values in Switzerland, are hardly met by current building practice, with most buildings vastly overshooting the life cycle emission target. That study further highlighted the importance of reducing life cycle emissions, focusing on so-called embodied GHG emissions, those related to material production and processing throughout the life cycle. Here, a point for particular attention are the “upfront carbon” emissions, emitted during the material production and construction process stages. In recent studies on the topic [5] these upfront emissions are shown to be responsible for about ⅔ of the whole life cycle embodied GHG emissions and their reduction is crucial for enabling effective climate mitigation pathways. The topic of climate targets, GHG emission budgets and related benchmarks for buildings has been discussed in more depth in a synthesis article by Habert et al., which addresses both the complex nature of the issue, as well as points out harmonized ways of establishing carbon budgets for building, showcasing existing examples from countries across Europe [6]. High quality residential buildings provide the foundation for safe and sustainable lifestyles. Residential buildings further represent the majority of both existing buildings in the European building stock [7] as well as most of the new construction activity expected in coming years and decades [8]. It is therefore crucial to enable sustainable models of housing for both existing and new buildings, in order to reduce GHG emissions to support implementation of sustainable development goals (SDGs) and a just green transition towards regenerative societies.

Recent studies investigating potential trajectories for reducing building-related emissions through strategies of technological advances in material production and material efficiency, show that particularly a reduction of area per capita can substantially reduce GHG emissions across the life cycle of buildings [9]. While potentially effective, such measures of reducing per-capita floor area are commonly considered just and feasible only if supported by social innovation that enables inhabitants to overall benefit from a reduction in (individual) floor area, e.g., if compensated by and accompanied with the provision of high quality spaces and functions for shared, common use.

Figure 1 provides a compilation of relevant perspectives on “sustainability” and the evolution of the concept from three, more or less equal, “pillars of sustainability” – society, economy, and environment – towards an integrated vision of sustainable development within planetary boundaries. Within the latter, economic prosperity, rather than being equal or even superior to the other aspects (social, environmental) is based on a social foundation which again builds on a well-functioning environment as its base.

An example of the traditional understanding in context of buildings and sustainable construction, shown on the bottom left of Figure 1, is the widely used German DGNB sustainability assessment scheme, which, while adding further aspects to the mix, suggests a complementary view and weighting of the different aspects. On the right-hand side, an integrated vision if shown either as concentric circles, or as the safe and just operating space, as depicted in the doughnut economy, bottom right. At the center, a version of the integrated vision for sustainable development within planetary boundaries, as proposed by scholar at the Stockholm Resilience Center. By the analogy of a “wedding cake”, it utilizes the sustainable development goals (SDGs) and promotes that fulfillment of the goals relating to planetary boundaries, a healthy and functional natural environmental, are providing the necessary basis – a prerequisite – for both sustainable social and sustainable economic development.

While we empathize with the emerging understanding of an integrated vision for sustainable, or even regenerative development within planetary boundaries, we do not claim nor aim to comprehensively represent all relevant perspectives in the present study. Rather, we are accepting that established perspectives on sustainable construction and the related assessment frameworks alone are insufficient tools for understanding and promoting the kind of transformational changes required on both the production and consumption-side and that we have to let our view be shaped by the emerging social innovation practices in the housing context.

Social innovation for regenerative housing

The term “social innovation” describes novelty through the generation or application of knowledge to address social problems and needs, so Solis et al. propose [10]. The authors suggest that social innovation can be “linked to grassroot innovation, institutional innovation, transformative innovation, inclusive innovation, territorial innovation and environmental innovation” [10].

An inherent element of social innovation further is the central goal to enable socially responsible practices, rather than profit-driven social entrepreneurship [11]. To this end, Solis et al. suggest to view social innovation practices in function of different contexts and territories [10]. We consider this particularly true when investigating social innovation in the context of housing, where different contexts and territories provide different problems and needs and hence require adequate, place-based responses.

The emerging needs of social innovators and social innovation ecosystems were further investigated by Audretsch, Eichler and Schwarz [12] The authors suggest that social innovation can have a substantial contribution to solving or at least mitigating many of the most pressing grand challenges, such as addressing the climate crisis and a just and green transition. Their study highlights the growing interest in social innovation as a potential way forward in solving the grand challenges and the need to investigate the implications, potentials as well as needs of innovators in social innovation practice. Recent studies applied the concept of social innovation for analyzing sustainability-related aspects of housing. For example, Marchesi and Tweed investigated social innovation for circular economy in the context of social housing [13]. They identified that social innovation promotes alternative practices for resource use and circularity in cities. Furthermore, a recent study by Khatibi [18] examined innovative models of housing by example of cluster cohousing, a form of collaborative housing with a focus on Central Europe through a socio-spatial approach.

Objective and research questions

The objective of this study is hence to investigate the potentials, strengths and weaknesses of different social innovation strategies found in three recently established (co-)housing case studies. Each of the projects is perceived as applying promising models of social innovation for housing, and, indeed, sustainable development. Guiding our analysis are two main research questions (RQs):

Which emerging approaches of social innovation can be identified in contemporary (co-) housing projects to enable sustainable models for spatial production, ownership and use?
Which economic and/or environmental synergies (or trade-offs) do the different social innovation strategies, e.g., co-ownership, co-funding and shared-use, lead to?

In this study we approach the research questions based on the investigation via five dedicated lenses, i.e. focus topics that also structure our analysis, are: 1) Context, place and building typology; 2) Design process and participation; 3) Organizational structure and decision making; 4) Financial structure and ownership; 5) Ecology, energy and emissions.

Case study housing projects

In this study, we investigate and analyze different models of social innovation in housing based on three recently completed building case studies in Austria. The case studies - see Figure 2 - are situated in a broad range of spatial contexts: re-activating the countryside, vitalizing a newly developed neighbourhood, or bringing new life to abandoned, existing buildings.

The first case study “KooWo” (Kooperatives Wohnen Volkersdorf) is situated on a former farm 16 km from Graz. It consists of a farm building with today all communal spaces, three terraced house buildings and farmland. The property was purchased in 2015; the group of 40 adults and 30 children moved into the project in the summer of 2019. The second case study is an urban cohousing project with the name “Bikes and Rails”. It is situated in Vienna, in the Sonnwendviertel-Ost, a newly developed urban area next to the new main train station. For four plots there was a concept-based bidding among “Baugruppen”. Baugruppen are groups of people deliberately formed to build (co-)housing projects together, as an alternative to regular offers on the housing market. The project Bikes and Rails won this competition in 2015. In summer 2020, the group of about 31 adults and 12 children moved in. The third case study is the ecovillage “Cambium-LiG” (Cambium – Leben in Gemeinschaft). It is situated on the premises of former barracks next to the small town Fehring in Eastern Styria. Since moving in 2017, the barracks have been transformed bit by bit on a do-it-yourself basis. After a two-year-lease the group finalized the purchase in 2019. Today, around 45 adults and 25 children live in the ecovillage, which is supposed to grow in the future.

Mixed method approach

Our analysis applies a mixed methodological approach based on case study analysis and inspired by methods from fields of architectural design research, cultural anthropology, as well as quantitative sustainability assessment.

Literature review. Review of the available literature on the particular projects as well as underlying concepts and methods for understanding financial, organizational, structural frameworks of the case study projects. The analysis presented here is hence informed by the review of existing literature, general statistical information on the topics, e.g. land prizes, rent costs, to name just a few.

Drawing research. The drawing research method can be divided into two approaches: i) Spatial Drawings: axonometric views of the buildings and its surroundings - as a method of understanding and visualizing the plot structure and building typology. ii) Structure Drawings: Visualization of the organization of ownership and funding, internal organizational structures – for enabling understanding of interconnections and co-dependencies of spatial and organizational system.

Participation observation research. Visits to the individual projects are at the heart of our research approach. Interviews and guided tour may intermingle here as the researchers take part in community activities, such as lunch together in Cambium-LiG, or a tour with children to their favorite playgrounds along the river at the KooWo property.

Semi-structured interviews (on-site). Interviews with building design professionals and users at the project location, served as an important element to comprehend the process and context of each case study. The selection of interview partners aimed at capturing different perspectives by talking to building design professionals as well as the clients, i.e. the inhabitants who, depending on the project, are often also the clients, co-funders and co-owners. For building design professionals we focused mostly on the architects, who in some cases also acted as initiators of the projects.

Life cycle assessment (LCA). To obtain an indicative estimation of life cycle-related carbon footprints of the different case study projects, we investigate both embodied and operational carbon emissions of the case study project. For embodied carbon estimation, we apply a statistical building LCA approach which builds on data from the meta-study on whole life cycle carbon of buildings of [4,5], which provides indicative values for embodied carbon of different types of buildings, considering their structural material and providing values per life cycle stage over a life cycle of 50 years. Our assessment of operational carbon builds on information received by the users for energy consumption, with own calculations acc. to Austrian OIB guidelines (RL 6).

Context, place and building typology

KooWo.

The cooperative housing project KooWo is situated on a former farm in the village Purgstall, twenty minutes by car from Graz, Styria. The plot of land is 3.6 hectares big. The entrance to the property is via a farm building from the 1950s – as shown in Figure 3 (top section). Behind there are three new buildings with wooden lamella facade, together they frame the village square of the community. There are some apartments at the edges, but the majority of the private units are duplex terraced houses. In the duplex typology, the kitchen is facing the village square while the living room connects to a private terrace on the back. There is a 2.2 meters deep extension zone at the entrance, called “Selbstausbauzone”, which the residents could design and build by themselves. The ensemble is surrounded by two creeks, meadows and fields, where the KooWo community started growing their own produce. The farm building was transformed into the central communal building with a range of shared spaces – a community kitchen with dining area; a so-called “KooWorking Space”; multi-purpose room; children’s room; library; guest rooms and “mattress camp” (a dormitory with mattresses on the floor); rooms for therapy, music and workshops; administration rooms; as well as spaces for storing the agricultural yields and the food coop [14].

Bikes and Rails.

The urban cohousing project Bikes and Rails is situated in Sonnwendviertel-Ost, a newly developed urban area next to Vienna’s new main train station. Two characteristics of the new quarter next to the Helmut-Zilk-Park are the pedestrian promenade and small-scale parceling with different allocation procedures – see Figure 3 (middle section). For four plots there was a concept-based bidding among Baugruppen organized by the wohnfonds_wien, an institution by the City of Vienna. The project Bikes and Rails won this competition in 2015 with the idea of a bike shop and neighborhood café on the ground floor. A multi-story winter garden facing south, is completely glazed, allows insights and brings liveliness to the public space. The residents enter their apartments from the winter garden – it serves as an individual loggia space in front of the entrance and as a communal area at the same time. All apartments additionally have another balcony. On the first floor, there is a shared flat which is provided to refugees. On the ground floor there is the bike shop and a café bar area which is supposed to be a meeting space for the neighborhood. Behind there is a large communal room that can be opened up to the bar by folding doors. The basement has a large bike cellar and a rehearsal room for the many musicians in the group. The roof terrace with elevated planting beds and seating furniture is used communally.

Cambium-LiG.

The ecovillage Cambium-LiG is on the premises of former barracks next to the small town Fehring in Eastern Styria. The area also includes a 16-hectare area of development land, grassland, a forest and outbuildings – see in Figure 3 (bottom section). The barracks are a rigid, two-story solid construction dating from 1960. There is a central staircase and 80 meter long corridors in each direction. From the corridors there are uniform rooms on both sides. In the middle there is a large communal bathroom and a kitchen. The four corridors form four “Grätzl”, an Austria word for quarter, where around 15 people live together. (It is similar to cluster living, where private units arrange around a shared area.) In addition to small kitchens in some of the rooms and to the “Grätzl” kitchens, there is the former casern kitchen on the ground floor. The housing community has established a number of shared rooms scattered around the house: a living room with library and piano, two large seminar rooms, a co-working space, guest room, toy room, sauna, a swapping room for clothes and other devices and the café, the former officers’ mess. What used to be the football pitch, is now the field for growing vegetables and fruit. The workshops and halls are used by the residents as well as by local entrepreneurs. The barracks and the land have been transformed bit by bit on a do-it-yourself basis [14].

Project development and participation process

KooWo.

KooWo was initiated by architect Werner Schwarz, who had been looking for a site suitable for a co-housing project for several years. The property close in Volkersdorf close to Graz was possible after the asking price was lowered two years after the first encounter. A core-group around Werner Schwarz decided to buy this property and develop a co-housing project together. The group collaborated with realitylab, a company that designs social processes, to support the groups development and internal organization, and with schwarz.platzer architects. It soon became clear, that they will base the project on collective ownership. At the same time, Die WoGen was founded, the first cooperative, which exclusively realizes collective housing projects with and for people. In search of their first project, they made contact with the group KooWo and together they developed the first WoGen housing project.

Bikes and Rails.

The project Bikes and Rails was a submitted project of architect Georg Reinberg with a core group to the concept award competition for a site of the City of Vienna in the newly developing Sonnwendviertel. The plots for neighborhood houses and building groups were competitively tendered in a two-stage concept award procedure at fixed prices. These houses are seen as "jewels" on the urban body and are distributed accordingly on the site so that they positively influence the urban planning and user qualities in the entire project area (Temel in [15]). In the following years after winning the bid, the group changed, but the general design idea remained the same. The residents had little participation in the development of the design, they had a say in the form of ownership, the equipment of the shared areas and their own apartments. Bikes and Rails can be described as a politically initiated urban participation.

Cambium-LiG.

The Styrian group “Leben in Gemeinschaft”, short LiG, had discovered an abandoned casern in 2015 through reports in the local media. As the group LiG was too small for the size of the premises, they merged with the group Cambium, who had formed in 2015 after a one-year research project dealing with “How can we manage life in a community?” in Vienna. Thus, two groups had joined, which had been dealing with aspects of joint undertaking inspired by other European eco-villages. “Right from the start Cambium-LiG benefited from professional support in community building, moderation and sociocracy by experts who had lived in housing communities for many years. Cambium-LiG has been developed with a strong ethos of DIY and self-sufficiency. They renovated the barracks themselves, fixed the sanitary facilities, built-in a sauna, or a bathroom of rammed earth.

Organizational structure and decision making

A shared feature of all three projects is that they are self-managed and use principles of sociocracy. Sociocracy is a system of management tools and can be applied by any organization, which is drawn by a common vision. The intelligence of the group is leveraged to find appropriate solutions for community and individuals. Rather than in pyramid-shaped hierarchy, the system is structured in mostly autonomous, connected circles. An example of the sociocratic framework is presented in Figure 4.

The different duties are distributed in subcircles and related working groups. Every circle has a domain, an area of authority. The general circle, consisting of two delegates of each subcircle, represents the general leading and coordinating level. The aim of sociocracy is to make as many decisions as possible in the specialized working groups and not at leading level. In addition, in the plenum, a regular meeting of all members, the most relevant issues are dealt with. According to the momentousness of decisions, they are made in the working group, the working circle, the leading circle or in the plena [16].

Decisions in sociocracy are made by the principle of consent. In contrast to a consensus, a consent does not need full accordance of opinions and views. The consent is reached, if there are no grave objections to suggested solutions. If solutions for challenges are searched for, the group produces suggestions, that are then evaluated by asking the amount of resistance they arouse – no objection, little objection, severe objection. Severe objections have to be justified with regard to the aims. In case, problems could not be solved due to severe resistance, they can be postponed or delegated to the next higher level. With this culture of decision-making, problems in the group can be recognized systematically and enable a greater amount of participation of the individual in the shaping of the housing project than conventional, majority-based decision-making would do. The special thing about consent is that objections are welcome, because they lead to even better solutions regarding the overall intentions [16].

Financial structure and ownership

KooWo.

KooWo is the first built project of the cooperative Die WoGen, which was founded in 2015 to support collective housing projects. As presented in Figure 5 (top section), the buildings and the land are owned by the cooperative. The KooWo association rents the premises from the cooperative. As indicated in Figure 5, all residents are both association and cooperative members and as such, co-owners of all buildings of Die WoGen. For financing, every household paid 550 € of equity per square meter of their allocated flat. The monthly cost is 12.50 € per square meter, this includes the pay-back of the loan, the individual rent and all operating costs for the shared spaces. When the loan is repaid after 30 years, the monthly costs will be lower and thus secure affordable community housing space for a long time to come. In the event of exit, the investment may be withdrawn again, index-adjusted and after deduction of depreciation.

Bikes and Rails.

Bikes and Rails is part of the organization habiTAT, which promotes self-governing and solidary forms of housing. It follows the model of the Mietshäuser Syndikat in Germany, where around 173 house projects have already been supported since its foundation in 1996[1]. The aim is to develop affordable housing and withdraw it from the speculative market. As shown in Figure 5 (middle section), the system is the following: Together, the house association (Bikes and Rails) with 51 percent, and the national organization (habiTAT) with 49 percent, founded a joint Ltd (Bikes and Rails GmbH), which acquired the property. The asymmetrical distribution of power is important: It guarantees the housing association freedom of design and establishes a veto right for the umbrella organization, which can be used against the sale of the house. The house was built by the non-profit developer Familienwohnbau and purchased by the Bikes and Rails GmbH after its completion. The concept-based bidding by the City of Vienna meant a fixed, reduced price for the land plus municipal funding over 25% of the costs. For the remaining amount, the group applied for a bank loan and started a crowdfunding campaign. Together with 250 friends and supporters the group raised 1.5 Mio. €. Residents themselves contributed to the crowdfunding, but were not obligated; it was important for the group that it should be possible to join the project without having private funds. The monthly living cost is now 10 € per square meter.

Cambium-LiG.

Cambium-LiG chose the principle of the wealth pool (in German “Vermögenspool”) to finance the project – see in Figure 5 (bottom section). The wealth pool is advertised as a sustainable approach for impact investment or long term depot for private people and small communities. The concept does not foresee a payback, but (yearly) dividends in the range of inflation rates, to stabilize value. In this participatory form of funding, the residents and supporters deposit money on a joint account that is held in trust. In the case of Cambium-LiG, the full sum of 2.2 Mio. € could be collected by 250 supporters. For the future residents, the group agreed that a deposit of approximately 2,000 € per adult would be adequate. But there is no obligation to contribute, as a financial entrance hurdle was to be avoided in order to enable the use of property. The monthly expenses are also tailored to suit a person’s financial standing. The guide value per adult stands at 250 € usage rent plus 100 € contribution for the association. Children are cooperatively financed by the community. Based on the individual consumption, each adult member pays 7 to 10 € per day additionally into a food box. In the former casern canteen, they cook for the community twice a day.

Ecology, energy and emissions

KooWo.

The KooWo project, being situated in a rural region, from the onset aimed to incorporate farming and agricultural co-production as part of the project, pursuing an idea of partial self-sufficiency towards supporting food sovereignty. The new buildings in the KooWo project are a mixture of mass timber and timber frame construction using straw and other bio-based materials for insulation. Figure 6 shows our analysis of the estimated carbon footprint of the building(s) in the KooWo project, i.e operational and embodied GHG emissions across a life cycle of 50 years. We find that the KooWo project, out of the three case studies, has the lowest emissions for new production and construction (A1-3, A4-5) and also shows the lowest carbon emissions related to operational energy use (B6) as well as maintenance and replacement (B1-4). However, when comparing the whole life carbon performance with the “net-zero carbon transition design target” suggested at the last world sustainable built environment (WSBE) conference [17], we observe that, considering the full life cycle, the project might end up just above the carbon target of 500 kgCO2e/m² (10 kgCO2e/m²/a * 50 a).

Bikes and Rails.

As the name suggests, mobility is at the core of the Bikes and Rails project. Bike mobility is an integral part of the project. The new building of Bikes and Rails is built as concrete frame structure, with internal walls, envelope and facade realized in timber. Furthermore, the building was designed following a passive house energy performance rating. However, analyzing our estimate of the carbon footprint of the building – see Figure 6 – in comparison with the other case studies over a life cycle of 50 years, we observe the highest carbon emission profile for both the production and construction stages (A1-3, A4-5) as well as the full life cycle overall. Even more than the KooWo case study, this project does not meet the carbon transition design target. While it may stay within a fictional carbon budget of 500 kgCO2e/m² considering upfront emissions from production and construction as well as energy-related emissions from building operation over 50 years, a consideration of to-be-expected emissions from use-phase related processes such as maintenance and replacement (B1-4) as well as the end-of-life processing (C1-2, C3-4), will overshoot the target for this otherwise promising project.

Cambium-LiG.

As mentioned, the Cambium-LiG project is situated in an existing building complex. Members of the community made many small changes in and around the buildings, yet for a long time no external design professionals were involved for large-scale adaptations or additions. Now, the group aims to join forces with external professionals, like architect Georg Reinberg (Bikes and Rails architect), to implement new ecological measures such as addition of PV panels, green facades, greenhouses, a biotope for natural sewage retention. Similar to KooWoo, Cambium-LiG has a focus on food sovereignty and aims for partial self-sufficiency, with several acres of land used for agricultural co-production. The community aims to extend their agricultural areas further in the future. Investigating the project’s estimated carbon footprint, see Figure 6, we now have a different situation than for the other projects when considering the emissions related to production and construction processes. As the project started by re-suing and reviving an existing, abandoned former casern building, we consider the emissions of the original buildings’ production and construction outside the system boundary for this comparison. From this perspective, the carbon footprint of the Cambium-LiG project’s buildings only starts at the use stage, with emissions such as those related to maintenance and replacement (B1-4) and certainly operational energy consumption (B6). Here we see clearly, that the project has the worst energy performance out of the three case studies, strongly increasing use-related carbon emissions. Yet still, when considering the previous production and construction of the existing structure out of scope, and focusing solely on the use phase and eventual end-of-life processes, the Cambium-LiG buildings show the lowest, i.e., best carbon life cycle performance out of the three projects. Even staying below the “carbon transition design target”. The Cambium-LiG group, which has occupied the previously abandoned building since 2017, could have decided to demolish the existing building and construct a new one in its place. Our perspective considers that the re-use of the existing structure leads to an absence of emissions from a potential demolition of the existing building as well as construction of a new building. As for the other groups and projects, we include the emissions related to the decisions of the groups. The authors believe it is important to support sustainable development of the built environment that applies circularity principles and utilizes the potential of existing structures wherever feasible.

[1] Mietshäuser Syndikat, online at: https://www.syndikat.org/chronik/ (accessed September 16, 2022)

Synthesis: Social Innovation Strategies

In Table 1 we provide a synthesized overview of the different social innovation strategies identified in the three case study housing projects.

Table 1: Overview of Social Innovation Approaches identified in the three case studies.

Topic \ Project	Koowo	Bikes & Rails	Cambium-LiG
*Context, place and building typology*	New development in rural area with increased functional density; Collective use of a revitalized farmhouse (community center)	New development in urban area; Various impulses to the surrounding commnuity, e.g. with a neighborhood café (consumption-free)	Re-activation of abandoned building; Co-living in “Grätzls” (cluster housing)
	Various shared spaces and resources for collective use (outdoor and indoor)
*Project development and participation process*	Multi-stage participatory design process (6 workshops) with architects and experts for social processes	“Concept competition” for building plot organized by the City of Vienna	DIY and self-building; Daily communal meals;
*Organizational structure and decision making*	Applying various principles of Sociocracy (dedicated working groups for topics relevant to the community and/or the housing project; feedback cycles between working groups and "lead circle"; decision-making through consent; etc.)
*Financial structure and ownership*	Different innnovative models of collective ownership (different legal structures and combinations)
*Financial structure and ownership*	Part of the cooperative DieWoGen for collective housing projects	Part of habiTAT, a network of solidary and self-managed housing projects; Crowdfunding (directs loans); No obligation to provide private funds to join project	Wealth pool (Vermögenspool) participatory funding; Per capita-accounting (not per sqm); No obligation to provide private funds to join project
*Ecology, energy and emissions*	New buildings as light-timber construction; Re-vitalisation of existing building; On-site renewable energy generation	Passive house performance; Focus on bike mobility, car-free development;	Reactivation of abandoned building; Sufficiency-based concepts for shared (re-)use of spaces and (renewable) resources.

Context, place and building typology

The three projects have very different typologies: KooWo has mixed typologies based on row houses and apartments; Bikes and Rails features apartments of different sizes, which are used by families, couples and by so-called «Wohngemeinschaften», shared flats; Cambium-LiG transforms the corridors of the existing barracks building into a form of cluster living. All three case studies offer a variety of shared spaces. Most of these spaces are situated on the ground floor/basement and/or top floor, respectively. All three projects provide outdoor spaces, such as roof terraces or gardens, the two rural projects also have shared fields for agricultural use.

Project development and participation process

An observation throughout the projects, which was also raised in the interviews with inhabitants, is that of “critical smallness” but also “critical bigness”. We find is that inhabitant groups are between 50-70 residents across all projects. All projects started with a smaller, “core group” in their early, conceptual stage that is important for carrying forward the idea and taking the first important steps. Only once first milestones are achieved, such as finding a suitable piece of land/plot, the group expands to involve more people. Land for co-housing projects in urban centers is notoriously hard to find without support by local governments. For KooWo this meant to establish the project in a rural area in the outskirts of Graz. Cambium-LiG relied on active support by the local government and a leasing contract before actually acquiring the estate. Bikes & rails emerged from a process strongly supported by political incentives, with the aim of establishing a co-housing project and injecting social innovation in the newly developed quarter. The processes applied in developing the projects are hence of particular interest. For example, approaches such as the dedicated “concept competition” ("Konzeptvergabeverfahren") can encourage the development and implementation of community housing projects. In this procedure, a municipality does not offer the land in question to the best-paying bidder, but decides on a fixed price for purchase that can be concluded by the group offering the best concept. Concepts can be, for example, a communal housing typology, innovative forms of housing or an interesting range of uses from commercial to social or cultural facilities that are in the wider interest of society. [Temel R 2019, S. 98]

Organizational structure and decision making

To activate the collective intelligence and a sense of joint ownership, all projects apply organizational principles and decision making processes based on the lending from the concepts of Sociocracy in their internal, organizational structures. All projects organize their activities with dedicated working groups for topics relevant to the community and/or the housing project, a common element are feedback cycles between working groups and "lead circle" based on a “double-binding”, i.e. two deligates that are part of both groups; as well as the collective decision-making through consent (as opposed to consensus).

Financial structure and ownership

The projects apply innovative means of co-fincancing, some of which have been developed especially for supporting co-ownership in innovative housing projects, such as the co-ownership platforms habiTAT or the Die WoGen, which offer both information on co-ownership projects as well as hands-on support in developing a co-housing project. Other social innovations in the economic context are co-financing via a mix of direct loans and novel tools such as a “wealth pool” (“Vermögenspool”). KooWo and Bikes and Rails calculate the monthly living costs by square meters, Cambium-LiG however functions by a flat amount per adult person. Both Cambium-LiG and Bikes and Rails do not require residents to provide private equity to be able to join the project. KooWo on the other hand does require private equity based on the occupied area (m²).

In our analysis, we find no obvious connection between the local context and site, building typology and other aspects such, such as the models for co-financing and ownership. For example, while the Bikes and Rails project is part of habitat, a neighboring building is a project of Die WoGen. Hence, different co-ownership and co-financing approaches are possible, and do not seem to be defined by project type but rather related to the group structure and preferences. However, building typology likely does influence the financial models under consideration in that it is unlikely that single family houses would be financed in this way. Interestingly, the group behind KooWo and the team of Die WoGen initially met in context of another project and then decided to work together. Overall, our analysis showed that much of the activity and connections are driven by an active network of activists, architects and researchers working to push the agenda on co-housing and innovative models of co-ownership and co-financing.

Ecology, energy and emissions

In terms of regenerative design and resilience, the three projects investigated in this study show promising approaches for satisfying the basic needs of housing (as well as other aspects, such as nutrition, e.g. in the KooWo and Cambium-LiG projects) for their respective inhabitants through co-ownership, co-finance and shared-use of resources. The legal and organizational joint ownership and management structures require groups to systematically consider both shared needs and individual needs in their decision-making processes. This is to exclude a weakening, or even a privatization of jointly created tangible and intangible capital in the future, as it could happen, for example, through a generational change or through separations of couples and families and the subsequent sale of the real estate shares. Our analysis of the whole life carbon footprint of the different projects highlights the potential carbon savings from the use of pre-existing buildings. While beneficial from a life-cycle perspective, the particular project, Cambium-LiG, would still benefit from renovation measures to improve operational energy performance and reduce energy-related GHG emissions in use.

Considerations on scalability of social innovation approaches

The question arises if and how these different approaches of socially innovative housing projects can be scaled up, for example through the application in more or larger projects?

Currently, in an environment of a financially heated housing market, the access to affordable land is the biggest obstacle. Besides the high cost, a group of private people is usually slower to close a deal than professional for-profit investors due to, for example, communal decision making processes and less streamlined ways of financing. However, since many conventional investors are not that interested in transforming existing buildings, obtaining existing buildings and preventing their demolition (as was done by Cambium-LiG and partly also by KooWo) might offer a particularly promising approach. In addition, deliberate municipal support can enable access to land and help foster more socially innovative bottom-up projects – such as by implementing concept-based bidding or land lease like in Vienna.

Another consideration is the position of the different stakeholders within or outside the established system of spatial production. In Austria, there is an established and well-functioning system of limited-profit housing associations (gemeinnützige Wohnbauträger). Most of these housing associations have been in existence for decades, building and managing thousands of affordable apartments for a considerable part of society, especially in the capital city Vienna. However, this is not necessarily the adequate framework for alternative, more experimental and socially innovative solutions. To support innovation, the establishment of new associations (or cooperation with existing ones) could be incentivized in order to enable access for innovative actor groups to housing subsidies, expertise and good credit conditions. The association habiTAT and the cooperative Die WoGen consciously decided to operate outside this established system of housing production and started building their own networks. habiTAT, which is connected to the German Mietshäusersyndikat, currently counts seven projects across Austria. The cooperative Die WoGen has now started their third project. Time will tell how these approaches and networks develop.

In this study, we investigated and analyzed three case study housing projects in Austria, which are pioneering social innovation approaches for re-activating the countryside, vitalizing a newly developed neighborhood, or bringing new life to abandoned, existing buildings.

The first research question asked which emerging approaches of social innovation in (co-)housing projects enable sustainable models for spatial production, ownership and use. We find that a social innovation found in all projects are different approaches of collective ownership and sociocratic organization and decision making processes. We analyze the innovative means of co-financing that are applied in the three projects.

Our second research question inquired which economic and/or environmental synergies or trade-offs the different social innovation strategies lead to. On this we find that the social innovation approaches are closely linked to organizational and economic concepts, such as co-ownership and co-funding, of how the inhabitant groups ensure that the qualities established in the projects - such as shared use of resources, shared decision making - are ensured in the long run. The three projects investigated in this study manage to satisfy long-term food and housing needs of their respective inhabitants through co-ownership, co-finance and shared-use of resources. The legal and organizational joint ownership and management structures require groups to systematically consider both shared needs and individual needs in their decision-making processes. At the same time, investigating project buildings’ estimated carbon footprint, we find that even innovative projects struggle to establish their (new) buildings within carbon targets and only the project reusing an existing building manages to stay within the fictive carbon budget.

Investigating commonalities and differences between the three case study projects, we did not identify a clear link suggesting different contexts necessitating one or the other form of organization, decision making, funding or ownership. On the contrary, we find that the different aspects and social innovation described in this article are taken as building blocks and combined to fit the individual needs of the respective group and project. A common aspect all projects share is their being located and constructed in a context that made it financially feasible to take the extra effort required for implementing such innovative housing projects. Furthermore, we want to highlight that the innovative projects presented here, all relied – in one way or another – on support from their respective communities (e.g. via crowdfunding, wealth pool) as well as the good will and at times active support of political decision makers.

As an outlook, we identify a several knowledge gaps to be addressed in future research. Namely, the following questions seem relevant for follow-up investigations: How can emerging approaches of social innovation and their synergies with sustainable development be scaled to be accessible to more people and applied in more places? How can circularity approaches, such as reuse and adaptation of existing buildings be further supported? How can identified environmental trade-offs be overcome to enable regenerative lifestyles, including the required built environment, within environmental limits? In response to the introductory quote from the IPCC, emphasizing that our answer to the escalating climate crisis has to include demand-side reduction and lifestyle changes, amongst many other necessary actions, our findings suggest that lifestyle changes can be supported by the kind of social innovation and social action found in pioneering (co-)housing communities such as the ones presented in this paper.

Declaration of competing interests

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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Social innovation for regenerative buildings: Insights from Austria.

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Abstract

Figures

1 Introduction

The need for regenerative models of housing

Social innovation for regenerative housing

Objective and research questions

2 Methods And Materials

Case study housing projects

Mixed method approach

3 Results

Context, place and building typology

KooWo.

Bikes and Rails.

Cambium-LiG.

Project development and participation process

KooWo.

Bikes and Rails.

Cambium-LiG.

Organizational structure and decision making

Financial structure and ownership

KooWo.

Bikes and Rails.

Cambium-LiG.

Ecology, energy and emissions

KooWo.

Bikes and Rails.

Cambium-LiG.

4 Discussion

Synthesis: Social Innovation Strategies

Context, place and building typology

Project development and participation process

Organizational structure and decision making

Financial structure and ownership

Ecology, energy and emissions

Considerations on scalability of social innovation approaches

5 Conclusions And Outlook

Declarations

Declaration of competing interests

References

Status:

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