The primary goal of the project is to establish a cross-sectoral network of organisations across Europe, South America and North America to generate and shape conceptual and empirical evidence on sustainable and bottom-up approaches to address both the current housing crisis and the resulting inequalities caused by housing markets. House prices have risen dramatically, leading to a housing emergency that has been identified by the European Commission as one of the most pressing societal challenges. Evidence shows that both the share of households with no property ownership and the share of households with multiple properties have increased. This suggests that some actors are using housing as an asset to store and generate wealth, while at the same time exacerbating inequalities between those who own property and those who do not, the former particularly affecting younger generations. These cohorts face a lack of home ownership, stagnating wages and escalating house prices, with important implications for their life trajectories. Against this background, it seems crucial to develop and implement policies aimed at reducing housing inequalities, which is the overall objective of this project. To achieve this, the empirical and conceptual work will focus on three complementary pillars, namely (i) understanding market actors and their strategies to accumulate wealth through housing; (ii) exploring the consequences for wealth inequality using an intersectionality approach; and (iii) developing bottom-up alternatives and policy solutions for positive change. To this end, we approach housing from a variety of disciplines and methodologies, including geography, sociology, economics, public policy and urban planning. The network will draw on the experience of grassroots collectives, particularly housing organisations. They bring invaluable expertise in community and political engagement, making their involvement a vital asset to the project.

European societies are confronted with an interlinked housing and energy crisis that is challenging social cohesion. As access to affordable housing becomes limited, inflation and accelerating energy prices pinpoint that energy poverty and housing inequalities mutually reinforce. Within this context, the deep renovation of the existing housing stock is promoted as key policy action. However, despite policy efforts from the EU to the local state, there are growing concerns that the transformation of housing markets may further aggravate the existing housing inequalities and energy poverty. To offer more equitable pathways to the green transition, PREFIGURE puts the spotlight on existing and emerging individual and collective efforts of policy, market, and social innovation. The project aims at identifying, tracing, analysing and networking emerging and active ‘prototypes of change’ with regard to the housing-energy efficiency/energy poverty nexus. Research objectives are to: (i) offer understanding of how practices of innovation contribute to affordable housing renovation schemes that disrupt existing housing inequalities and energy poverty; (ii) identify how housing policies trigger sustainable housing and energy transitions, how financial incentives for energy-efficient buildings are accessed by different types of owners and tenants, and how different user groups perceive sustainable housing and energy transitions, with a particular focus on income and wealth polarisation consequences on vulnerable groups; and (iii) mobilise knowledge about innovative practices for sustainable housing and energy transitions and co-create evidence-based policy solutions. Method innovation relies on fusing transformative qualitative and quantitative with technological and real-laboratory research to co-create and up-scale knowledge and practices that signal the green transition.

The overall objective of CONTESTED_TERRITORY is to form an international and intersectoral network of organisations from across Europe and Latin America on a joint research programme that pursues conceptual and empirical knowledge generation on innovative and sustainable bottom-up models of territorial development. We consider community-led practice enacting alternative knowledge as basis for a productive framework to grasp transformations of space and society supporting local-to-global knowledge diffusion. In particular, the RISE action will deliver novel understandings on how ordinary people produce innovative models for more sustainable and resilient environments. By this, we will learn how they shape, negotiate, imagine and collaboratively manage territories in contested and uneven power relations and how they progress models of social integration. The participants of the network will exchange and generate new knowledge to surpass mainstream understandings of development and contribute to scientific breakthroughs by integrating bottom-up strategies to adapt to risk, vulnerability and exclusion. Our progress will engage with and contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Agenda from alternative conceptual and practical perspectives. At the same time, we will nurture novel approaches to redefine the relations between humanity and the envi-ronment by including discourses emerging out of Latin American popular culture and indigenous cosmovision. This provides opportunities for academic and non-academic participants to actively shape practice and policies targeting more inclusive territorial development and different models of social cohesion. This will generate significant benefits for societies in Latin America, with transferable out-comes to Europe. Staff members participating in this action will develop new skills; be exposed to inspiring research environments, significantly widening their career perspectives in and beyond academia.