The right to housing and the new emerging challenges will be the themes of debate and reflection at the Barcelona Housing and Rehabilitation Forum to be held on 23 and 24 November in the Sant Pau Modernist Complex.
Just a few days before the opening of the second edition, below we explain who are the main speakers and a breakdown of the themes to be discussed.
On 23 November the sessions will revolve around the formulas for increasing the public rental housing stock. International experts like the Director of LSE Cities, Ricky Burdett; the councillor for the Kreuzberg district of Berlin, Florian Schmidt; the deputy mayor of Paris, Ian Brossat; or the member of the Executive Council of the International Union of Tenants, Barbara Steenbergen, will share the best experiences or initiatives carried out at the European level to confront the impacts and challenges of the pandemic relating to urban planning and housing policies. In addition to listening to the reflections from the viewpoints of Berlin, Paris and Europe in general, we will also study the case of Barcelona through the participations of the city’s Councillor for Housing and Rehabilitation, Lucía Martín.
We will also be able to hear the reflections of the head of Housing, Research and Development Policies of the Dublin City Council and Director of the Dublin Housing Observatory, Daíthí Downey, who will speak about transparency and the use of public data at a moment when Big Data is revolutionising society. This will take place in a round table event with the President of the Barcelona Metropolitan Housing Observatory and Hàbitat 3, Carme Trilla, and the Head of Innovation of the Observatory of Euskadi, Elena Sánchez.
Another theme for debate on the 23rd will be innovation in public promotion of housing. We will learn about the best practical cases of innovative projects in public housing matters and analyse what experiences could be applied in other cities. We will examine the cases of Vienna, the Balearic Islands, Seville and Barcelona by way of the presentations of the former Councillor for Urban Planning and Housing of Vienna, Maria Vassilakou, the General Director of the Balearic Housing Institute, Cristina Ballester, the Director of the Municipal Housing Corporation of Seville, Felipe Castro, and the General Manager of the IMHAB, Gerard Capó.
We will close the discussions of the 23rd with a look at the industrialised promotion of public housing, where we will share the latest projects and studies associated with this new model. This round table will include the participation of the Head of Innovació–Culmia, Anna Guanter.
Commitment to promotion between the public and private sectors
On the 24th, the FHAR will revolve around new models of collaboration to increase affordable housing. On the one hand, the sessions will centre on the European models. We will analyse the actions and successes proposed by the Housing 2030 initiative in the context of the post-pandemic era, presented by its principal author, Julie Lawson, and we will reflect on the collaboration on a European scale with the Communities Manager at London CLT, Hannah Emery-Wright, and the Deputy Mayor of the Bologna City Council, Emily Clancy.
We will then focus on public-private collaboration. We will learn about Housing Metropolis Barcelona, whose mission is to promote and manage affordable rental homes in both the city and its metropolitan area by means of the incorporation of a private partner. We will also see what are the best initiatives for integrating the public and private models and increasing efficiency. All of these themes will be discussed with the Doctor in Anthropology, researcher at La Hidra Cooperativa and member of the Barcelona Tenants’ Union, Jaime Palomera; the CEO of Savills Aguirre Newman, Anna Gener; the Managing Director of Neinor Homes, Borja García-Egotxeaga; and the Manager of Housing and Renovation – Barcelona City Council, Javier Burón.
This second edition of the FHAR will also place special emphasis on public-community collaboration in Barcelona. The Cabinet Head of the Housing and Rehabilitation Department, Vanesa Valiño, will present the alliance which the City Council has set in motion with the most representative entities of the housing cooperative to create a thousand apartments in the coming years. And along with the member of La Hidra Cooperativa, Laia Forné, and the President of the Salas Foundation and representative of Cohabitat, Manuel Rodríguez, they will discuss the management models of social and cooperative housing to guarantee access to decent housing for young people, the elderly and people with disabilities.
The FHAR is organised by the Barcelona Municipal Housing and Rehabilitation Institute and takes place within the series of meetings and conferences promoted since 2016 to reflect on the future challenges of the sector. You will find full information on the website, where you can also register for each of the sessions and follow the conferences on streaming.
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