A TALE OF more than TWO CITIES  The social housing secret: how Vienna became the world’s most livable city. In the Austrian capital, renters payof what their counterparts do in London, Paris or Dublin. How is it possible ? Welcome to Vienna, the city that may have cracked the code of how to keep inner-city housing affordable. As other cities battle spiralling rental prices, partly fuelled by inner-city apartments being used as short-term holiday rentals or being kept strategically vacant by property speculators, the Austrian capital bucks the trend. In the place that last year retained its crown as the world’s most livable city in the Economist’s annual index, Vienna’s renters on average pay roughly a third of their counterparts in London, Paris or Dublin, according to a recent study by the accounting firm Deloitte. Part of the reason Schranz’s apartment is so affordable is simple: it’s owned by the city. In Vienna, that is (almost) the norm. The landlord of approximately 220,000 socially rented apartments, it is the largest home-owning city in Europe (in London, which has more than 800,000 socially rented apartments, they are owned by the local councils). A quarter of the people who live in Vienna are social tenants – if you also include the approximately 200,000 co-operative dwellings built with municipal subsidies, it’s more than half the population. Welcome to Vienna, the city that may have cracked the code of how to keep inner-city housing affordable. As other cities battle spiralling rental prices, partly fuelled by inner-city apartments being used as short-term holiday rentals or being kept strategically vacant by property speculators, the Austrian capital bucks the trend. In the place that last year retained its crown as the world’s most livable city in the Economist’s annual index, Vienna’s renters on average pay roughly a third of their counterparts in London, Paris or Dublin, according to a recent study by the accounting firm Deloitte. Part of the reason Schranz’s apartment is so affordable is simple: it’s owned by the city. In Vienna, that is (almost) the norm. The landlord of approximately 220,000 socially rented apartments, it is the largest home-owning city in Europe (in London, which has more than 800,000 socially rented apartments, they are owned by the local councils). A quarter of the people who live in Vienna are social tenants – if you also include the approximately 200,000 co-operative dwellings built with municipal subsidies, it’s more than half the population.Many of these apartments came into being a century ago, as part of an enormously ambitious building programme after the end of the first world war, when Vienna was awash with people uprooted by the collapse of the Habsburg empire. Funded primarily through a hypothecated tax on luxuries such as champagne or horse-riding, the inaugural phase of socialist-governed “Red Vienna” saw 65,000 socially rented apartments shoot up within the city by the time of the Nazi coup attempt in 1934. The majority of Vienna’s council estates were built after the second world and look more familiar, but even they don’t tend to have the stigma of poverty and crime associated with similar developments in the US or Europe. The Viennese term for estates like these is Gemeindebauten, “communal buildings”, which hints at their underlying philosophy. “One of the key concepts to understanding Vienna’s approach to housing is social sustainability,” says Maik Novotny, an architecture critic for the Austrian newspaper Der Standard. “In order to avoid the creation of ghettoes and the costly social conflicts that come with them, the city actively strives for a mixing of people from different backgrounds and on different incomes in the same estates. Social housing isn’t just for the poor.” As a student without a disability or any dependants, Schranz would have no hope of applying for social housing in countries such as the UK, but in Vienna the city courted him via a programme for first-time tenants under 30. But the reality doesn’t always live up to the ideal, and Barnerth is even more animated when complaining about the time it takes the city to carry out repairs in his estate. The light by the stairs leading to the basement hasn’t been working for three weeks, and when a door lock breaks, the residents usually don’t bother waiting for central management to fix it. “If you don’t sort a handyman to repair the lock overnight, the junkies try to break in,” he says. One of the downsides of having a single large company, Wiener Wohnen, in charge of managing and maintaining so much housing stock in the city is that logging and commissioning caretakers’ tasks can lead to bottlenecks.......read on- there's more              https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/jan/10/the-social-housing-secret-how-vienna-became-the-worlds-most-livable-city                                                      BUT......HOW DID WE GET HERE?........It’s believed that more people are sleeping rough in Canada than at any point since the Great Depression. How did tent encampments suddenly become a fixture of so many of our towns and cities? Many things happened at once, among them a pandemic. COVID-19 forced homeless shelters to impose capacity limits to reduce the spread of the infectious disease, which forced many people on the margins into tents and sheds. Shelters were already under pressure, in part because of a substantial increase in the number of refugees using their services. The number of people seeking asylum in Canada has spiked in recent years. During the first 11 months of 2023, more than 128,000 people filed asylum claims in this country — a record number. It’s more than double the number from all of 2019, the year before the pandemic’s outbreak. The steady loss of affordable housing has also contributed to the nation’s homelessness crisis. As real estate prices soared in recent years, rooming houses and other rental accommodations were renovated and sold as single-family homes or converted into Airbnb rental units. These “renovictions” forced many thousands from the bottom rungs of the housing ladder.According to research by Carleton University professor Steve Pomeroy, 15 affordable, private rental units (monthly rents below $750) were lost for every affordable, publicly-funded unit that came onstream between 2011 and 2016. Pomeroy calls this “naturally occurring” loss the most serious threat to Canada’s supply of affordable housing. In a recent update of his study, Pomeroy found the country’s naturally occurring loss of affordable housing continued between 2016 and 2021, when a further 230,000 affordable units disappeared — an average of 46,000 per year.                                      That annual loss represents more than double the number of new units being added to Canada’s affordable housing stock each year through the federal government’s 10-year, $82-billion National Housing Strategy, which launched in 2017. The goal of the strategy is to create 160,000 new affordable housing units; which equates to fewer than 20,000 being added to the housing stock each year. “Canada is losing affordable housing faster than we can create it,” concluded Pomeroy, a senior research fellow for the Centre for Urban Research and Education. The National Housing Strategy represents the federal government’s return to social housing investment after 30 years of sitting on the sidelines. Housing Minister Sean Fraser recently conceded that withdrawal has contributed to the current crisis. To further complicate matters, cash-starved universities and colleges have in recent years turned to foreign students as a means to bolster their revenue. More than 800,000 international students studied in Canada in 2022 — a 31 per cent increase from the previous year — and their numbers imposed more demand and inflationary pressure on the country’s rental housing market. Those at the lower end of the market found it harder to find affordable places to stay, especially as their budgets were further strained by rising food prices. Welfare and disability payments from government have not kept pace. While all of that was going on, cheap and powerful synthetic opioids — fentanyl and its many analogs — continued to flood Canadian communities. Many of those on the margins or living rough turned to drugs to ease their pain and past traumas.The chaos of addiction has only deepened the current crisis. It has made conditions at overcrowded shelters that much worse, and led some people to abandon shelters in favour of tent encampments. In other cases, it has made tent cities themselves more immutable and hard to manage......keep on reading the blow by blow account.....      https://nationalpost.com/feature/tent-city-nation/wcm/820779d7-88ff-498e-9d19-955f52c24c77?_gl=1*45v648*_ga*MTgwNTUxMTY5My4xNzA4ODk1OTMz*_ga_72QH41ZTMR*MTcwODg5NTkzMi4xLjEuMTcwODg5NjA2OS42MC4wLjA.*_ga_9H6VPHFHKG*MTcwODg5NTkzMy4xLjEuMTcwODg5NjA2OS42MC4wLjA.&_ga=2.140668023.498149286.1708895934-1805511693.1708895933BGJKpxsMGlGRZwkkBdjMwGrBs      

THE GUARDIAN-Story of cities #42: Medellín escapes grip of drug lord to embrace radical urbanism. 13 May 2016 Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 Twenty-five years ago, Medellín was the most dangerous city on earth. Yet its most infamous criminal, Pablo Escobar, also helped create the conditions that sparked an extraordinary revival – by taking the city to the brink of collapse. The architect Luis Miguel Velez Wiesner recalledthe first time he set foot in Santo Domingo, one of Colombia’s most notorious comunas (slums), when the Medellín cable car opened in 2004. “The first time, I felt like I was going to be kidnapped. Now it’s quite different – there are lots of places to eat and shop. It feels safe now.”For intrepid residents such as Wiesner, stepping off the cable car to enter the once out of bounds “other side” of Medellín, was a seminal moment in the history of their city. Their photos in front of Giancarlo Mazzanti’s dramatic new España library in Santo Domingo sent an altogether different image of Medellín to the world. The long-entrenched division between the gridded city in the valley and the informal settlements on the hills was finally disappearing. The world’s most dangerous city had become accessible, and safe. Escobar and his cartels helped set the conditions for urban change to happen. They led Medellín to the brink of disaster, then demanded it change. In 1982, Escobar launched his “Medellín Without Slums” programme – a politically motivated but nonetheless heartfelt campaign to rid the city of its slums and provide a “life of noble dignity” for the urban poor who, in Escobar’s words, had been living in an “inferno of garbage”. Besides increasing his popularity, power and even election-winning potential – Escobar was elected to Colombia’s house of representativesfor a brief period in 1982, before his associations with drug trafficking had him expelled – Medellín Without Slums was the first effort to make change for the poor from within. Through it, Escobar – who was eventually shot and killed by security forces in December 1993 – gave the city’s comunas a political voice and a vehicle through which to demand change. He radicalised, politicised and militarised the poor, turning them against the citizens of the formal city in an all-out civil war. Escobar’s legacy, in planning terms, was this transformation of the spatial divide between formal and informal territories, between rich and poor, into a violent opposition of territories. At one point, Medellín was the most dangerous city on earth. From 1990 to 1993, more than 6,000 people were murdered annually, and not just in the slums. Drive-by shooting was regular and indiscriminate. The accounts of suffering and violence are truly obscene. “For me, 1991 was a key turning point for the whole country. It was the worst and the best moment – a time of complete crisis and a moment of hope,” Ortiz says. “It was truly a moment where everyone felt it could not get any worse – we had to do something.” The need for change was urgent – and perhaps only such extreme conditions could have led to such radical urban experimentation.                                              Medellín’s authorities started a series of radical programmes to reorganise the social fabric of the comunas and mobilise the poor. The city’s planners began addressing its endemic violence and inequity through the design of public spaces, transit infrastructure and urban interventions into the slums. Key to their approach was a commitment to the public realm as a truly shared space, and a faith that they could transform Medellín’s public spaces from sites of segregation and warfare into spaces where communities would come together. But Medellín’s social urbanism stretches way beyond the more modest experiments with participatory planning and community consultation that are now vogue in cities across the globe. The sheer enormity and complexity of the issues here demanded something unique – an urbanism of inclusion, where the dispossessed became partners in driving urban change.

Influenced by European regeneration models, notably in Barcelona, Medellín’s 1995 and 1999 strategic plans set a new agenda for the city. “They redefined the realm of what ‘public work’ is. Participatory planning became a key question of social equity,” Ortiz explains......and much more!   https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/may/13/story-cities-pablo-escobar-inclusive-urbanism-medellin-colombia

The Radical Changes Coming to the City of London. A quiet revolution in the financial district will rip out roadways and install wider sidewalks, new bike lanes and more public squares and open spaces friendly to pedestrians. Conrad Quilty-HarperJanuary 21, 2024 One of the busiest London intersections received a subtle but significant change late last year: the addition of three benches. Made of solid white granite mined from UK quarries, their smooth surfaces and column-like feet are inspired by the grand neoclassical architecture of the nearby buildings. They’re positioned on a recently widened walkway at Bank junction, a chaotic meeting of nine streets in the shadows of the Bank of England, the former London Stock Exchange and Mansion House, the home and office of the Lord Mayor. Here, tens of thousands exit the Tube and walk past them every morning on their way to work in the city’s traditional financial district. And the area’s governing body, the City of London Corporation, hopes that some workers might actually take a seat, with cars banned from the intersection for 12 hours of each weekday. By improving the public spaces, it hopes visiting the City will be a more pleasant experience, which will encourage workers to come back to the office. “It’s actually giving people a reason to come and be there as a destination, as opposed to as transiting through,” says Joshi, who imagines a City of London where “students, schoolchildren, tourists, visitors, workers and residents are all intermingling.”      It’s a long way from the City of 30 years ago, when “your chairman and your board members would drive in,” says Joshi. Now, those bankers “will come in on Network Rail, they’re not getting their chauffeur-driven cars anymore.” Today, 97% of the journeys that the City’s 615,000 workers take to, from and around the City are made via public transport, by bicycle or on foot. Bicycles overtook cars and taxis as the most popular form of local transport for the first time last year. The City’s transport strategy wants to go even further, cutting motor vehicle traffic to 50% of 2017’s levels by 2044. That’s the context for the major pedestrian-friendly schemes now in the works.

To the west of Bank (Underground Station) is an ambitious plan to rethink Fleet Street, for decades the home of the British newspaper industry, which has long since moved elsewhere to make room for investment banks and other professional services. Fleet Street’s wide carriageway was designed to allow truck deliveries of ink and paper to newspaper printers there, says Ian Mulcahey, a principal of Cities and Urban Design at architecture firm Gensler.    Last month, Gensler and a Fleet Street business group announced a multimillion-pound plan to remove a lane from the roadway to make space for pedestrian walkways. A busy junction will get a synchronized crossing that mirrors Oxford Circus. Trees and parklets will be installed on the widened pavements and railings will be removed......and lots more urban design upgrades             https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-01-22/in-the-city-of-london-radical-changes-encourage-more-cyclists-pedestrians   

The cooler parts of the northern hemisphere are getting hotter. Europe is the world’sfastest-warming continent, and Canada is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world— a trend driven by both regions’ northernmost extremes. That means millions of people live in homes built for weather that no longer exists. The implications could be deadly. In 2003, a heat wave in Europe killed at least 70,000 people, and last year record-breaking temperatures caused an estimated 61,672 heat-related deathsacross 35 countries in the region. The risks are particularly acute for people who spend a lot of time indoors — EuropeansandNorth Americans spend about 90% of their time inside — and for people unaccustomed to keeping their homes cool. Across Europe, less than 10% of people have air conditioners at home; while upping that percentage will help with the heat, AC also adds carbon emissions and strains power grids. That leaves organic solutions, like those common in places with experience building for extreme heat. “We can definitely learn lessons from countries that have been facing hot summers for several years,” says Giorgos Petrou, a research fellow in building physics and urban modeling at University College London. Of course, it’s not feasible to simply import Morocco’s iconic courtyards or Seville’s narrow streets to northern climes. But it is possible to incorporate elements of those concepts. As summer heat waves bake cities from Boston to Berlin, here are four ideas for adaptive design.                                                                                          The Moroccan riad.....The heat caused by direct sunlight on walls and windows is known as “solar gain,” a label that can feel misleadingly upbeat during periods of high temperatures. To minimize solar gain and keep a space cool, southern European towns and cities have small, windy streets that maximize breeze and shade. In places such as China, India and north Africa, courtyards are also used to create enclosed, cool areas.Adding water accentuates this effect. In Morocco, riads incorporate a fountain or pool in a central courtyard, which cools the surrounding building. It’s not just for ambiance: In a climate where temperatures routinely reach 40C (104F) in the summer, courtyards are also crucial for safety. Studies have shown that the riad design creates a more comfortable microclimate due to the circulation of air over water — hot air passing over water loses its heat to the liquid, creating a cooling effect — and the use of shade and greenery. Mopping floors and wetting outdoor patio areas likewise promotes cooling inside and out, says British TV presenter and designer Kevin McCloud. At his own home, McCloud is planning to add an outdoor pond with vents beside it that capture cool air and send it into the house. “What I’m hoping will happen is that by opening the vent at the top of the building in summer, it will suck in air through vents at the bottom, over the pond. It will be cooler, hopefully, than the internal temperature,” McCloud says. A small clay pot filled with water and left on a windowsill can have a similar effect.                                                                                                         The shuttered Spanish villa.... The best method for keeping a building cool is to stop heat from reaching it in the first place, says Anna Mavrogianni, a professor of sustainable, healthy and equitable built environment at the Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering at UCL. “External shading, such as shutters or overhangs, are generally found to be more effective than internal shading,” she says. Petrou says external shutters are “a common feature in hot countries [on] pretty much every home.” One of his studies found that London could reduce heat mortality during future summers by 38% to 73% with external shutters, depending on how widely they were installed and how much warmer it gets. Hotter countries also use overhangs like awnings and balconies to block sunlight, and walls and roofs painted in light colors to reduce heat absorption. Using blinds properly is also key, says Zoe de Grussa, a consultant at the British Blinds and Shutters Association. “In the morning I have all my blinds and shutters closed on the east facade, and once the sun goes round onto the west, I swap it round, so I’m still getting daylight in from one side of the house.”                                                               The Iranian windcatcher.....There are a number of traditional methods for essentially using natural air movement to send cool air into warm spaces. In the Middle East, wind catchers — towers that incorporate a gap or “wind scoop” to suck cool air into the building — are often combined with water to create a more powerful cooling effect.In European homes, problems often arise when all the windows point in one direction and roofs and walls are tightly sealed and insulated. Without constructing a wind tower, homeowners and designers can create similar airflow in a low-impact way by being judicious with their window and doors.“Closing the windows during peak external temperatures and opening them later in the day when it’s cooler, and enabling cross ventilation if possible” can help reduce indoor temperatures, says Mavrogianni.       To be sure, security concerns can make it difficult for people to feel comfortable leaving doors and windows wide open. That’s another benefit of shutters, which can be used to maintain a breeze at night without leaving a home exposed to the outside world.                                                                                                                The Ivy-covered Italian house..... It only takes one barefoot step on a driveway in summer to know just how hot tarmac can get. By contrast, keeping an area green limits the most extreme heat through both shade and evapotranspiration — the process by which water drawn from a plant’s roots evaporates into the air and cools the surrounding area. This also reduces the “urban heat island” effect, in which buildings and other infrastructure cause cities to warm more than rural areas. One 2004 study of a Toronto neighborhood found that trees could reduce annual energy use by 30%. Air conditioners, on the other hand, contribute to the urban heat island effect, dumping hot air outside buildings as they cool down the inside.In the Mediterranean, shade trees and climbing plants like wisteria are frequently used to cool down buildings. Research carried out by the UK’s nonprofit Royal Horticultural Society suggests that ivy is the best plant for cooling, though all types of climbing plants will do the trick. Such plants can help keep a building warm in winter, too, says Tijana Blanusa, principal horticultural scientist at the RHS, who led the research. “When you have this layer of natural insulation around the building, in summers you have cooling of the building, and in winters you have insulation.”     https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-07-15/four-home-designs-to-stay-cool-in-hot-weather