Henley hosts workshops on land and housing policy in Argentina

Henley Business School was one of a series of hosts for a week of workshops on the topic, “Determining research needs required to underpin land and housing policy in Argentina”.

The week of workshops between Argentina and the UK took place at locations across the UK, including Reading, London, and Glasgow. The events were co-organised by Henley Business School, the Reading Real Estate Foundation, the Mackintosh School of Architecture, the Academy of Urbanism and the Argentine Embassy. Other participating bodies included the Scottish Government, the University of Glasgow, New Gorbals Housing Association, CBRE Investors, PHimpact Investments Fund, Igloo, Cullinan Studio and Bioregional.

The purpose of the workshops was to allow multilateral engagement with a range of stakeholders to determine research and policy needs in housing and urban sustainability in all participating countries. The objective is to develop a research agenda in order to co-design and submit robust research funding proposals to appropriate UK and international funding bodies.

The strategic goal of this collaboration is to facilitate a step change in sustainable urbanism and social housing within, and beyond, the UK and Argentina. These are issues requiring new and innovative solutions in order to respond to the New Urban Agenda, UK Aid Strategy and the Sustainable Development Goals.

Presenters from Argentina included the current Director of National Urban Development from the Ministry of Housing and Development, Mr Pablo Guiraldes; Mr Martin Renom, from the Board of Directors of the Matanza-Riachuelo River Basin Authority (Acumar) and Prof. Cynthia Goytia from the Universidad Di Tella of Buenos Aires. Presentations from the UK included industry, the third sector, and senior policy officials (including the FCO Chief Scientific Advisor, Professor Robin Grimes). Workshops and discussions were held with UK academics from a number of Departments at the University of Reading (including Real Estate and Planning, Architecture, Economics and the Institute for Environmental Analytics), the Mackintosh School of Architecture and the University of Glasgow.

The workshops kicked off on Monday 8th May at the University of Reading, where the discussions centered on housing policies including a comparative overview of current programs and delivery mechanisms. On Tuesday, the Argentine Ambassador hosted an event on attracting private investment into Argentina’s housing program, PRODEVI, which has been designed to promote Public Private Partnership (PPP) systems in social housing development.

On Wednesday and Thursday the delegation was at the Mackintosh School of Architecture in Glasgow, where they discussed the work of housing associations in comparison with NGO’s in Argentina. A guided tour around the Gorbals was facilitated by Simon Metcalfe, Head of Development at New Gorbals Housing Association.

The workshops concluded with visits to Cullinan Studio and Bioregional in London, where the team discussed sustainable communities and architecture.

The workshops enabled the identification of research needs, and these are now being addressed with an action plan to co-design research funding proposals.

For more information on this workshop and other research collaboration in Latin America please contact Dr Claudia Murray.