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housing

What Is Retrofitting? – Unlocking A Building’s Potential

Ever-greener attitudes and regulations ensure new builds, that accommodate growing populations, are efficient and climate-ready. But what about the plethora of existing ones? We can’t just bulldoze them all and start again. So, how...

The Challenges of Psychology in Retrofitting

At CityChangers, we value the learning we can gain from bottlenecks, problems, and conundrums. Knowing the challenges and discovering the blockages provides a ground on which we can search for solutions. We’ve noticed a...

Five Truths About Housing We Don’t Discuss

In the heated discussion about housing and the housing affordability crisis, it is easy to lose track. What points should we consider when talking about housing? What do we need to raise awareness of?...

Unusual Homes from Around the Globe

If you think prefab houses are revolutionary, check this out! Homes produced by an advanced soft serve ice cream machine and houses floating thanks to an ancient Greek principle – these and other unusual...

The Social Benefits of Retrofitting

While marketing it as a decent money saver, we rarely focus on the social benefits of retrofitting. Does that mean that they’re so minute as to be obsolete or do we just need a...

Sustainable Buildings Glossary: Key Terms & Technologies

In case the world of sustainable buildings, planning, retrofitting, and construction is new to you, the CityChangers team has put together a quick-reference glossary to help you navigate some of the most common and...

The Challenges of Retrofitting

Telling the average person on the street to upgrade their draughty, crumbling home to save energy and, ergo, the planet might be too abstract to inspire action, met with responses like: “What difference can...

Be Happy With What You’ve Got: The Case for Retrofitting

What would your dream home look like? Some people will be lucky enough to build fanciful follies from scratch. The rest of us get to pick the choice cuts from pre-existing stock; but older...

The Challenge of Making Housing Healthy

Making housing healthy is not a piece of cake. To give you an idea of the challenges you might come across, we have dug through a myriad of guides and condensed the top five...

Urban Insight Podcast – The World’s Healthiest Building

Sweco's Urban Insight's mission is to share solutions for future city planning and initiate a dialogue about sustainable urban development. Between 2018 and 2021, Urban Insight reached 22.3 million people through news, press and...

Colonial Urbanism: Polycrisis Guaranteed by Design

Cities across the Global South remain firmly in the grips of their colonisers’ “innovations”, hosting entrenched centuries-old systems and practices of abuse and exploitation that disrupt health and life across the planet.  Approaches to...

Making Sense of Systemic Change

Systemic change is like a birthday present: everyone wants it, but no one is quite sure what’s inside. Or so the saying goes. The concept feels just beyond comprehension. What does it look like to change everything,...

How to Solve the Housing Affordability Crisis

The housing market is in crisis. Demand is increasing, rents are soaring, and even middle-income earners are struggling to afford to live in cities. What is the root of this housing affordability crisis, and...

CityChanger Jennifer Keesmaat: An Unconventional Urban Planner

What do a liberal arts degree, a congested street, and the City of Toronto have in common? They all link back to our CityChanger Jennifer Keesmaat, an unconventional urban planner. We sat down with...

Bloomberg Quicktake – Vienna’s Radical Idea? Affordable Housing For All

In many countries around the world, housing presents the single-highest household expense. Cities, in particular, are struggling to keep housing affordable. Amidst this crisis, there is one place that seems to handle the situation...

Coliving – Saving, Sharing, Caring

Living in one apartment with 10 others – for some a nightmare but for many the perfect alternative living model in times of a housing affordability crisis, mass urbanisation, and increasing loneliness. This article...

“Listen Before You Speak” – The Secret to Impactful Policymaking: Miquel Vidal-Bover

What makes someone choose policymaking as a career path? In the case of polyglot Miquel Vidal-Bover, it comes from seeing a city’s pressing issues first-hand and knowing where his skills can be best applied. Young...