- Delivering high environmental quality, affordable housing in Poland   1191 kb by    Rembarz, Gabriela & Kamrowska-Zaluska, Dorota | dzaluska@pg.gda.pl    Short Outline The paper shows possibilities and barriers in delivering high environmental quality and affordable housing in Poland. One of the tools could be URBACT II project Housing Praxis for Urban Sustainability. Abstract In Poland in the mid 90’s the average living area per person was 11 m2 , so the suburbanization was a somewhat natural and necessary process. Nowadays, there is still a deficiency of affordable houses, so the energy efficiency and sustainability is thought to be of lesser importance. The effectiveness of the tools controlling suburban sprawl in Poland is very limited. The national and regional policies are indicative and don’t have the impact on actual residential urban development. The cities have some means and power of controlling it at their disposal, but large investors exert pressure on the smaller communities situated on the edge of big agglomerations. Still the local authorities are not conscious of the cost of uncontrolled, unplanned and unsustainable development, such as costs of extension and maintenance transport and infrastructure systems. The aim of the URBACT II project Housing Praxis for Urban Sustainability (HOPUS), in which Gdansk University of Technology is one of partners, is to study and disseminate the ways through which the development of sustainable housing stock in European cities using modern governance tools such as design codes and other forms of “smart” project guidance can be achieved. It focuses on facilitating the implementation of construction technologies necessary to respond to current energy-saving regulations. Promotion of energy efficiency in urban structure and education, both for public authorities and private stakeholders, is a continuous challenge in Poland. Housing development in the context of climate change has recently become one of the main issues of the European town planning policy. Carbon dioxide emission reduction policy in the EU is forcing revision of local approaches towards the increase in energy efficiency of urban structures. Succeeding directives are an announcement for further regulations. EU members are being obliged to increase technical demands of individual building. How and where should we build residential areas in order to create energy efficient housing resistant to social and technical degradation? Can we provide affordable, high environmental quality housing in Poland? Keywords Sustainable urban structures, Urban coding Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2009: Low Carbon Cities   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper