Dwellers in Agile Cities (DAC)

Public description of the goals at the beginning of the project

This project defines the dweller as a key driver of urban development and change. Urban dwellers’ ways to live in and use the city creates pressures for urban planning and the housing markets in cities. DAC-project focuses on this urban mosaic of needs and creates measures for improving social urban development, with particular interest on experiments and innovation, new partnership formations, hybrid housing solutions and flexible ideas about collaboration. From urban design viewpoint, we will create solutions, which respond to several social and cultural needs of citizens and are replicable in other cities.

Public description of the results at the end of the project

Cities are not cities without dwellers. An agile city is a community capable of adjusting to temporary and sudden shifts in external conditions but also to the long-term needs of the dwellers and their diverse ways of living. DAC analyzed experimental and novel urban development cases. The objective was to develop socially, culturally and ecologically sustainable models for housing. The results can be found from web application: housingcookbook.com (in Finnish).

We have published four policy briefs from the fields of sustainable transport, housing for migrant youth, car sharing for housing companies and the use of temporary available empty spaces in cities. The analysis of future megatrends combined with the approach of cities as a platform for citizens was published as a flyer Urban Life 2030 scenarios. We have also published two guides for housing companies, one from urban infill and other from car-sharing practices. Moreover, we have developed a concept: societal godparents to support the inclusion of migrants in our society. The project has thus far published over 72 academic publications.