Lodging | Revive World

REBALANCE – LODGING INEQUALITY

Lodging inequality is directly related to social, income and wealth inequality. At Revive our main focus lies in understanding how social trends like aging, family composition, loneliness and welfare effects housing inequality for everyone – from socially vulnerable people to middle-class households.

By creating a balanced product mix and increasing attainability in our projects, we want to contribute to some key challenges of lodging inequality. By creating living and working places where there is a mix of typologies, with mixed economic feasibility in cost-effective structures and accessible environment, we aim to contribute to the well-being, health and economic stability of individuals and families. These are our PERFORMANCE DRIVERS:

BALANCE PRODUCT MIX

Conceive flexible housing concept

Innovate in conceiving flexible housing concepts, where spaces are easily adaptable and transformable, to meet unforeseen circumstances in life. Build life-resistant, also in the context of business centres with flexibility to grow and shrink depending on the situation.

Develop a diverse product programme

Design to represent different groups of society, respecting: age, family composition, ways of living (alternative housing, like assisted living, cohousing and public facilities), based upon market research and local and supra local investigated neighbourhood scans. Commit to form a well-functioning ecosystem.

Supply the social housing segment

Build for a diverse and inclusive community by offering, living and working spaces to accommodate people with social challenges and limited abilities. Collaborate with community organisations to understand the needs of these groups and offer a fair tenant or owner process.

INCREASE ATTAINABILITY

Reduce utility costs

Aim to reduce utility costs like mobility, energy, electricity, water, etc. Ensure predictability, for example of the energy bill, through a combination of energy efficiency measures. Reduce and monitor mobility costs by facilitating and promoting sharing and leasing initiatives. Promote access over ownership. Ensure walking, cycling and public transport is given priority over private car use and encourage shared mobility, involving both bicycles and cars.

Innovate to reduce ownership costs

An ambition is to lower the threshold for obtaining a home, setting up innovation projects on how financing and development of real estate can be done in an alternative way to make housing and working spaces more attainable for everybody. This can include shared and/or fractional ownership, public-private partnerships, rent-to-buy, crowdfunding and other.

Stimulate shared ownership

Reduce costs associated with unused square meters by pooling resources into common facilities, goods and services that promote access over ownership. Create shared spaces, both inside and outside, reducing the area needed for each house. Stimulate “product-as-a-service” through sharing and leasing initiatives.

Toon Kympers, Chief Commercial and Marketing Officer at Revive

We strive to make it economically feasibl for people to live and work in a setting that provides in their personal needs. Increasing attainability is about lowering the cost of ownership as well as the total cost of living, as such maximising the budget for other (more fun) expenses.

492

Total number of units for social housing.

200%

We provide double use of our parking spaces, for example in our office Watt the Firms, where we combine the residents and neighbourhood parking with the office parking.

26%

Percentage of total units have been built for an alternative use.

50%

On average energy expenses of Revive project residents are 50% lower versus traditional housing, because of low primary energy demand in combination with the application of sustainable energy solutions.

15

We reduce mobility costs by minimising the need for long commutes and extensive travel by using the principle of the 15 minute city throughout our projects. With essential services and amenities within walking or biking distance.

60

Sixty start-ups and scale-ups – active in the fields of smart and resilient cities – have been endorsed through various accelerator programs. Together with its partners Revive is actively supporting these entrepreneurs to create the liveable, lovable and climate friendly cities of tomorrow!

Ambitions

Striving to continuously improve our social impact through cost-effective structures and developing accessible environment, we defined the following ambitions for the future:

Flexibility in space

We are looking to include incremental housing throughout our pipeline projects. This is a housing development strategy where homes are built in stages, allowing residents to gradually expand and improve their dwellings over time as their financial resources and needs evolve. This approach typically starts with providing basic, essential structures, such as a core unit with basic facilities, which can be expanded upon as the homeowner’s circumstances permit.

Flexibility in programma

In our future projects we aim to upgrade flexibility in our programme and buildings, enabling a resident or user to stay on-site for a whole lifespan. It is so important for a person to be able to stay connected in the social framework that he/she is familiar with and is not alienated every time this person changes of life phase. Revive accepts the challenge to investigate, innovate and implement how flexible the used space can be. We do not only see this investigation in a spatial structure but also in a legal structure.

Cases

High social impact – Ekla

Experimenting with ownership - Watt

Intertwinning functions - Saffrou

High social impact – Ekla

EKLA is an audacious remediation, repurposing and upgrading project in the municipality Sint-Jans-Molenbeek, the second poorest in Belgium. The former brewery was abandoned and partly demolished in the eighties. Revive acquired a first part of +6.000 m2 vacant but contaminated land and turned it into a high density (FAR of 4), mixed use site where live, work, play and learn harmoniously blend together. Most importantly, 50% of the residential units are social housing, thanks to a cooperation with Inclusio. The 24.000 m2 project changes the face of the neighbourhood and brings local and new residents together. in Wallonia to the site, accounting for 7.500 km of heavy transport.

Experimenting with ownership – Watt

Sharing is caring. In the Watt site (Ghent, Belgium) we experimented for the first time with what ‘ownership’ can mean. We shifted the idea of having your own parking lot to a shared use parking. The underground parking of Watt combines parking for the residents of the houses and the apartments with the users and visitors of the adjacent office complex and restaurant. After studying the occupancy rate it turned out that the parking was underused more than half of the day. Shifting to a flexible use resulted in up to 30% less parking space required, saving money / energy / materials / space. The parking is also used as a public parking, which provides an income and a return for the owners. A smart system indicates when it might become too full, so the parking is closed for the public and the residents always have a guaranteed parking lot.

Intertwinning functions – Saffrou

The Saffrou project is a former textile factory turned into a mixed-use development. The project integrates various social groups by offering diverse housing options, communal areas, and amenities that cater to different needs and lifestyles. The project includes a residential care centre housing, social housing, life-proof apartments, a co-designed community garden, large and green open areas and corridors, a tiny urban forest and more.