Context
Intelligent Futures, with partners the City of Calgary, Attainable Homes Calgary, Alberta Ecotrust and the University of Calgary, are initiating a CMHC-funded Solutions Lab. The CMHC Solutions Lab program is intended to be a catalyst for driving action and innovation in the affordable housing sector. It enables opportunities to enhance sector viability and sustainability by providing roadmaps from successful solution development to full-scale uptakes.
This Solutions Lab lies at the intersection of environment, economy, housing and community. Environmental performance is often seen as an expensive, non-essential feature to affordable housing solutions. Yet, when considering broader implications of sustainability and livability, integrating environmental performance into affordable housing makes sense. With this in mind, this Solutions Lab will be exploring the challenge question:
‘How can environmental performance be fundamentally integrated into the economic model of housing projects in order to enhance the long-term livability and viability of projects?’
The Complex Challenge
Through a collaborative, innovative process, this Solutions Lab will take a holistic approach to understand the factors that influence the challenge question at hand. These factors include:
Through the Lab process, an interdisciplinary group of individuals will come together to collaboratively explore this complex system, co-create and test solutions for Calgary. The intended result is a roadmap that reflects the learning of the Lab and provides other Canadian communities with ideas, models and solutions that can be applied to help improve housing across the country.