Cooperative planning process

Cooperative planning process

Innovation Type: Procedures

What is this innovation about?

A cooperative planning process is helpful for the design and implementation of innovative building projects (like plus energy buildings and neighbourhoods). For Plus Energy Neighbourhoods, different expertise has to be taken into account: energy planner, building physics, architecture, mobility planner, landscape planner, housing technology and electricity. Additional to the planning and technical expertise, it is important to think about the social aspects and to consider the actual building user and the neighbours. A cooperative planning process is a new way of design, starting from a very early point with a wide participation of stakeholders, experts, and neighbours.

In the Salzburg project, a cooperative planning process was implemented in a very early planning phase. In this pre-planning phase, the building developer and city of Salzburg tried to include all interested stakeholders in the development process by a cooperative planning process. The following figure shows the carried-out procedure and dates: joint inspection, workshop 1, workshop 2, workshop 3, and public presentation. The interest for the workshops was high. The social planner is responsible for the social planning consultation, to ensure public relation and participation in the project.

In a typical workshop day, the following can be planned. In the morning, the planning phase with planning team and city representatives, in the afternoon an extended forum with involved parties and neighbourhood representatives. In the evening presentation in public. Therefore, everybody has the same information about the actual planning status and is able to give input to this.

What kind of challenges it will solve if deployed widely

SPEN project can only be realized if different experts work together from the very beginning. Therefore, in these projects you have to create new procedures of design. There are many stakeholders and experts to involve, so open planning processes with the possibility to keep all involved parties on the same information status and give experts the possibility to bring in their expertise in an early planning status is necessary to be successful. Additionally, neighbourhood projects have a lot of involved or affected parties and persons. It is very useful to inform them and to involve them. Therefore, it is possible to build up trust and a positive image for the new project. For example: neighbours have the possibility to bring in objections to a project at the legal proceeding of the building permission. Such objections have to be checked by the authority, decided and answered. This can cause a long-time delay for the building project. In larger building projects, it is not unusual, that up to 100 objections reach the building authority. In the case of the project “Gnice” there was not even one, because all neighbours were informed and agreed with the project that is now realized.

The following users will find this innovation useful:

The cooperative planning process is useful in two ways:

1. For the neighbourhood aspect: people living in the neighbourhood are early involved and informed, they can bring in their points of view. This can help to increase the project in the effect of an added value to the city part. It can help to make the legal procedure easier (less objections) and help to the social integration for the new inhabitants.
2. To implement the different expertise that is necessary for a sustainable and plus energy area. In this process, different experts are involved from the very beginning and all aspects can run into the design.

How has syn.ikia project impacted the development of this solution/ process/ tool?

The syn.ikia project was an additional driver to set up this cooperative planning process. For this, it was necessary to make a decision in the city council and to receive funding for the moderation of the process, for the housing association it was a new way too and meant to invest more time and money for the first planning steps. The possibility to become an EU-model project helped for this decision.

How can this innovation be used beyond syn.ikia project?
The experience of this cooperative planning process is very positive: the design process was running very good with the early involvement of different experts. The image in the neighbourhood and city politics is good. Therefore, from the side of the policy and the housing association the longer and intensive planning process was very valuable.

This experience can be used for every larger or innovative building project in the future.

Contact person:
Ingeborg Strassl, SIR
For more information, please see the technical report D2.9: IDPN guidelines for plus energy neighbourhoods (page 70 to 81). https://www.synikia.eu/resource-types/technical-reports/