Social values and communities

Focusing on social innovation, inclusion and the ‘power of we’. The ‘power of we’ comes from valuing a strong civic society and cooperative ownership. It represents how we both, as a Union and smaller communities, are stronger when we work together. We want to define the social values of the European communities with the communities. Thus, ensuring a democratic and inclusive process while seeking to find the correct social values that make a circular society irresistible for the citizens of Europe - and beyond.

Everyone has value and worth, and we must enforce a broad representation across all ages, races, ethnicities, and gender practices while also taking nature and non-humans into account. We embrace our differences in needs, wants and capabilities as our stronghold while acknowledging that civic engagement takes many different forms.

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Social housing

Social housing or affordable housing is a European phenomenon in transformation. In cities across Europe, buildings from the 60s and 70s need renovation. They represent an opportunity for transforming affordable housing into new places to live with respect for social values, sustainability, inclusion and aesthetics and with a real impact on climate-neutrality through volume and scaling.

City(nature), resilience and biodiversity

Focusing on thriving urban and natural habitats.  When designing an irresistible society, we must ensure that biodiversity and nature is an integrated part of the future. This is important not only for the sake of ‘nature’ as its own entity but also for the health and wellbeing of all humans and species in the future. Nature can help make cities more sustainable, in the ecological sense, and resilient, especially if integrated into the infrastructural systems such as climate adaptation and mitigations, creating synergies combatting cloudburst, pollution, biodiversity crisis.

Today, nature has no rights. We need to fight for nature’s rights, work through a bottom-up approach, and ensure citizen participation and education on the importance of nature. As societies, we need to evaluate what dynamics we expect and accept regarding a city, a rural area or a landscape. E.g. what it should smell and look like both indoors and outdoors and its development over time. Nature is a bad business case, and therefore we need to bring the discussion into the political arena.

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Reconciling cities with nature

Nature is diverse, rich and complex. When treated in its full complexity and with respect for the variety of species, nature can enrich and regenerate cities and restore the balance between what we take from and bring back to nature. At the same time, we must urgently stop the loss of biodiversity and instead regenerate and expand natural habitats to accommodate and stimulate biodiversity. Reconciling cities with nature is about designing liveable habitats and functional ecosystems from a multispecies perspective while rebalancing 'land use' to accommodate both resource generation and biodiversity from a local to a global scale.

Establish a renovation and transformation culture that uses nature's principles to mitigate and adapt to climate change, which reuses and upcycles both technical and biological resources to create delightful, liveable habitats in cities and nature. Developing and practising impact assessment when building and landscaping to deliver net biodiversity gain. Apply a systemic perspective on land use when we build, and practice regenerative principles in architecture, design and planning that rewilds and rebuilds natural systems to reverse the loss of habitats due to resource extraction and urbanisation.
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Resource loops and zero waste

Focusing on recycling and renovating buildings and dwellings. All across Europe, buildings need to be renovated to be able to withstand another 100 years. The most sustainable choice in construction is, in most cases, to use what is already built. The challenge is, how do we make sure that what was made 50 years ago is being reused today in a safe and sound way?

In the future circular society, it has to be a competitive advantage to be circular. Today, the lowest price controls the construction market and combined with a lack of demand for circularity; innovation stays absent. There is a pressing need for regulations and standardisation to make the circular choice attractive. Imagine having regulations that disfavour materials that damage our planet and focuses on CO2 fees and compensations instead.

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Symbiotic transformation of city areas and neighbourhoods

To prevent overshooting, we, as a society, need to make the best use of the material flows created. Large industrial ecosystems with a systemic and symbiotic approach to resource loops and waste management can inspire urban development relating to constructing new buildings and rethinking the urban landscape in cities. Co-creation with a multidisciplinary and multilevel approach involving local citizens, for instance, the youth, when it concerns urban development with an educational perspective, can open up towards new, more sustainable, inclusive, and aesthetic solutions.