The Action Agenda for the housing market sets the goal to build 7.000 houses per year in the province of Utrecht by 2021. This is a joint ambition of municipalities, market players and corporations. For this process, they want to use co-design as a main tool to complete the task and reach their goals. The idea is to build mainly in urban areas, so that the province remains attractive and green. One of the main actions on the agenda is the acceleration of the housing construction. The province of Utrecht has asked Over Morgen to indicate which bottlenecks they might expect in their urban housing development efforts and to offer possible solutions.
Our solution
Good research starts with reading and examining the existing literature and previous studies, especially for a topic like urban housing development, on which a considerable amount of material has already been written. Governments, consultants and knowledge institutes have already shared abundant information on the topic. This issue surely represents one of the greatest challenges for urban planning in the Netherlands at the moment. We used this existing information to prepare a survey and conduct interviews. The results were then returned to the interview partners and a large group of stakeholders involved in the Action Agenda. We summarized the results into an approach that is best suited to achieve the desired acceleration.
This research points at various actions that have the potential to prompt the acceleration of the urban housing development. We differentiate between actions that will deliver short-term results (two to three years) and actions that have to be implemented presently in order to see their effect in the medium term. To translate the recommendations into action, we have delivered an Acceleration Approach. This approach aims at translating recommendations into action in order to reduce or tackle potential bottlenecks in the urban development process.
