At this event, the programme associated with the Call to action on sustainable urbanisation in the Commonwealth was launched, under the leadership of the Association of Commonwealth Universities, the Commonwealth Association of Architects, the Commonwealth Association of Planners, and the Commonwealth Local Government Forum, with support from The Prince’s Foundation and the Rwandan Ministry of Infrastructure.
The COVID-19 crisis served as an urgent wake up call to drive innovative new approaches and jumpstart more climate-smart resilient economies. The silver lining is to pioneer green solutions by using low carbon materials and tech and apply construction standards that are environmentally sustainable.
There are multiple facets to the challenges of ensuring access to safe and affordable homes for all. This session focused primarily on the opportunity affordable housing provides to respond to acute housing needs, while simultaneously stimulating economic recovery.
Investing in affordable housing has the potential to deliver on many fronts – for healthcare and pandemic protection, prosperity and sustainable urbanisation. This session will naturally look at the challenges, but importantly also highlight some of the opportunities, innovations and financing mechanisms that are helping to unlock affordable housing across the cities and towns of the Commonwealth, as part of realising a climate-smart urban future.
This event was co-hosted with the Commonwealth Foundation. It highlighted the critical need in towns and cities across the Commonwealth for housing that is affordable – and specifically focused on the opportunity that affordable housing provides to improve public health and pandemic resilience, as well as helping to kickstart economies in a post COVID-19 world by stimulating economic growth.
Moderator: Dr Anne Gallagher, Director-General, Commonwealth Foundation.
Panellists:
- Edward Kyazze, Ministry of Infrastructure, Rwanda
- Danny Chibinda, Director of Housing and Social Services, Lusaka, Zambia
- Lucy Livesley, REALL, UK
- Sumedha Naik, Syntellect, India
- Jawad Aslam, AMC, Pakistan
The event attracted over 203 attendees from 40 countries, with approximately 15 attending via the Vimeo livestream.
Questions to the panel, together with expressions of support, came from a variety of sources, including Winnie Gitau, Co-founder of Kwangu Kwako, Rohit Lahoti, ACU Commonwealth Scholar, and Rene Fu Swee Yun, CAP Young Planners Network.
Key messages
- Affordable housing offers an opportunity to build back better after COVID-19 and embed future resilience – the need for which has been further emphasised by the pandemic
- Affordable housing requires an ecosystem approach – central to sustainable planning and development
- Access to finance for affordable housing is critical, both capital and end-user financing
- Government commitment is a key component of successful affordable housing
- The importance of involving the private sector in affordable housing, and that reducing timescales may incentivise this relationship
- The importance of collaboration between government, civil society and the private sector
- The importance of pilot projects and learning before upscaling
- The importance of turning affordable housing beneficiaries into partners
- The importance of people in PPP (public, private, people)
- The importance of looking at housing holistically, with direct connections to multiple Sustainable Development Goals
- Recognition of the importance, urgency and scale of the issues
- The power of collaboration to deal with rapid urbanisation and climate change
