Case 1: A multicultural neighborhood, comprising Social Housing clusters in Genk, Belgium.

Suburban Context

Waterschei, Genk, A Garden city neighborhood is already a 15min neighborhood. Home for residential individual houses, both private and social. Heritage is an important element as the houses follow a certain type of architectural style based on the historical model of the Garden City. It is now home to roughly around, 300-350 homes (including different types of houses in the neighborhood based on certain architectural style, for e.g. Mulhouse, Loggia house, which are occupied by residents/home for other community actors), out of which around 90 are social housing properties, constantly in a process of renovation. The social housing company WIL (Wonen in Limburg), does this by following a systematic framework of social housing regulation/renovation plans as an instrument for its maintenance, exercising to the extent that, it also withholds the responsibility to decide which family lives in which house (in relation to how many residing number of family members are there in the house).

Suburban Challenge

Waterschei, Genk, is a mixed neighborhood with residents from Belgium, Turkey, Italy, Ukraine and few others, living in the same vicinity, often separated by only a common wall. This diversity triggers tensions on topics like privacy, noise, parking, mobility, etc. often resulting in bigger issues like, public-private spaces, heritage value, social housing protocols..

15 Min City challenge addressed

Proximity between the renters and the owners is being currently explored in this case, as part of a plan to narrow the gap between the two. The current difference results in limited to no physical contact with the two groups. The research group is addressing the challenge by conducting Listening sessions, between a Social housing company social worker, field workers and the residents.