Interpreting ‘the social’: Exploring processes of social sustainability in Danish nonprofit housing

Abstract

The article aims at analyzing and discussing how “the social” is perceived in processes of social sustainability within the context of the nonprofit housing sector in Denmark. The investigation takes as point of departure a specific renovation project, which exemplifies an attempt to bring social sustainability to the core of the process. As such, the study analyses the process by distilling various understandings of “the social” appearing in the project and herein the different types of participation that these understandings relate to. The analysis demonstrates that working with social sustainability and the aims and ideals connected to it is not straight forward, since “social sustainability” is not a tangible target, but rather something which is reinterpreted and subject to changing perceptions along the process. The dynamic and changing character of “sociality” suggests that social sustainability requires a focus on the platforms and on-going processes and interactions which continuously constitute the social life in a neighborhood and the relations between the residents. In this manner the article adds to empirical knowledge about processes organized to strengthen social sustainability in urban environments and contributes theoretically with a nuanced understanding of what “social” denotes in the context of sustainable development.

Keywords

nonprofit housing participation resident democracy social sustainability urban planning

Introduction

Sustainable development is an influential conceptual framework for planning, housing, and urban policy (Dempsey et al., 2009) and the 11th UNs Sustainable Development Goal from 2015 is about Sustainable Cities and Communities, with the aim to make “cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable” (UN.org, 2018). Although the challenges of reaching such a goal may vary substantially depending on where we are in the world, sustainable places and cities are relevant concerns to urban planners across the board. Measures for sustainability in relation to building and renovation are well integrated in policy, architecture, and urban planning practice, but mainly in terms of economic and environmental sustainability. Social sustainability, on the other hand, encompasses a number of different dimensions and concerns, such as “social equity, and community sustainability” (Dempsey, 2008: 257). And, even though the concept receives vast attention in planning and urban development studies, it is still an underdeveloped, ambiguous, and often vague concept (Boström, 2012; Manzi et al., 2010; Parra, 2013; Vallance et al., 2011; Woodcraft, 2012). Thus, there is a need for a more rigorous approach to defining and theorizing social sustainability, but also for research paying closer attention to discourses of social sustainability and how it is deployed in planning practice (Woodcraft, 2012). Several studies attempt to develop indicators of social sustainability (e.g. Magee et al., 2012) or aim to create an overview of contributory factors, both physical and nonphysical. Among the latter are, for example, social capital, social interaction, sense of community and belonging, social interaction and participation, and local democracy (Dempsey et al., 2009; Woodcraft, 2012). This article, rather than looking at indicators, focuses on the processes of working with social sustainability and zooms in on the participatory aspects of these as these processes are underpinned by certain ideas of what constitutes the social dimension of social sustainability. This paper hereby illustrates ways that the concept becomes part of practice in a housing context. Hence, the aim is to contribute to the discussion of social sustainability by clarifying possible understandings of the social dimension in order to elucidate challenges that come up in attempts to manage these social dimensions.

The project studied for this article represents an effort to systematically integrate concerns for social sustainability throughout a planning and building process. The specific case study researches participation and collaboration processes in a renovation project concerned with renovating a nonprofit housing dwelling in the Copenhagen area. From the beginning the aim has been to give priority to the social characteristics of the building and to develop a concept for a deliberate concern for the social dimensions of dwellings and outdoor areas when renovating and building. The dwelling has up until the renovation been inhabited by people with physical disabilities, whereas the renovated building is inhabited by three groups of residents: young people without disabilities, elderly people without disabilities, and a group of people with physical disabilities. The specific aims of the project and the participation processes have taken different forms and been subject to different interpretations over the five years’ course of the project. The case exemplifies practices “around” social sustainability that have the aim of promoting community, inclusion, and joint responsibility through the built and the social environment. The study hereby adds to empirical knowledge about how social sustainability is interpreted and guiding practices in local settings in which there are well-established democratic platforms for decision-making; in particular how these platforms can support processes as well as the challenges that may appear when working with an ambiguous concept, such as social sustainability.

In the following sections, I first present the article’s theoretical background in social sustainability in urban studies and the ideas of participation and the social, which will be employed in the analysis. Then, I present Danish nonprofit housing sector as a context for the case, and subsequently the case and case study method are presented. This is followed by the analysis of the case and a discussion of the implications of the research.

Theoretical framework

Social sustainability and the urban environment

In planning studies and studies of sustainability of the built environment, we often find a distinction between economic, environmental, and social sustainability. That sustainability is not merely considered to be an environmental concern, but also includes a social dimension, is often articulated by the use of the term “social sustainability” (Dillard et al., 2009; Griessler and Littig, 2005; Langergaard, forthcoming; Magis and Shinn, 2009). As a distinct concept, social sustainability is a relatively recent addition to policy discourse as well as academic literature about sustainability. Even as part of the concept of sustainability as a tripartite of environmental, economic, and social sustainability which was introduced with the Brundtland report (WCED, 1987), the social dimension has been receiving considerably less attention than the other two (Murphy, 2012; Woodcraft, 2012). Over the latest decades a field of research has emerged, which focuses explicitly on social sustainability, not merely as a precondition to or as part of economic or environmental development, but also as a category in its own right.

What this social dimension more precisely encompasses is, however, not always clear, and the concept is sometimes characterized as “in chaos” and “undertheorized” (Boström, 2012; Vallance et al., 2011; Woodcraft, 2012: 29). Certain dimensions do, however, appear across the various definitions of social sustainability in urban planning and housing studies. Often, they include social equity, including access to key services and facilities (Chan and Lee, 2008; Dempsey et al., 2009; Murphy, 2012; Parra, 2013), the sustainability of community itself (Dempsey et al., 2009), social inclusion, and social cohesion (Murphy, 2012; Novy et al., 2012), and finally participation and local democracy (Dempsey et al., 2009; McKenzie, 2004; Murphy, 2012; Woodcraft, 2012). This article focuses in particular on participation and on the processes of working with social sustainability. Rather than viewing social sustainability as a static end goal, the aim is to understand how platforms, institutions, and practices contributing to strengthening and maintaining community and continuous inclusion work in the case and how the nonprofit housing sector acts as a specific participatory context. Thus, in the case presented the participatory processes are considered to be crucial for the attempt to promote social sustainability.

Participation and the “social”

To understand the “social” dimension of social sustainability it is useful to include conceptions of the social developed elsewhere, for example in sociology and philosophy. Along the same vein, participation and local democracy has been addressed in a number of other disciplines, such as political philosophy (Young, 2000), sustainability studies (Agger, 2010), and housing studies (Jensen, 1997, 2006; Millward, 2005), which could be useful to include. Despite being a key dimension of social sustainability, participation is rarely unfolded theoretically or empirically in the research literature. Thus, concepts of democracy from, e.g. civil society studies, concepts of social capital or social cohesion, or about local democracy might be helpful for analyzing the case.

In literature on social capital, Somers (2008) addresses the notion of the “social” by pointing out two different understandings: a relational one which she associates with sociology and an aggregative one associated with utilitarianism. The sociological notion she describes as irreducibly social, one in which social relations are external to the individual mind, as a “social fact,” and in which individual mentalities are social and relational. The aggregative utilitarian view, on the other hand, is methodologically individualist, and the social is constituted of individuals who relate to each other as presocial and autonomous entities. The social is represented as an “aggregate of pre-social intentionalities,” a view which has manifested itself in rational-choice theory and social exchange theory (Somers, 2008: 222). Social exchange theory lies between micro-economics, psychology (Emerson, 1976), and sociology. In short, “Social exchange theory assumes self-interested actors who transact with other self- interested actors to accomplish individual goals that they cannot achieve alone. Self-interest and interdependence are central properties of social exchange” (Lawler and Thye, 1999: 3). This can be said to be the economic analysis of noneconomic situations (Emerson, 1976).

A distinction between aggregative and integrative is also found in democracy theory, where integrative is also sometimes referred to as deliberative. The distinction between aggregative and deliberative indicates different understandings on how public opinion or political preferences are formed. Deliberative understandings of democracy see public opinion formed through deliberation as the central democratic activity, whereas aggregative democracy theory relies on political mechanisms, which aggregates individual preferences or interests, similar to an aggregation of preferences in the market. Here the voting act is a central act of democracy, rather than the processes of opinion formation (Habermas, 1996). In this model, democracy is a competitive process where politicians also pursue their own interests, adopt policies that buy them votes, and act strategically in order to stay in office (Young, 2000). Aggregative democracy lets citizens’ private preferences be input to democracy and no particular democratic engagement or civic virtues are required of citizens (Habermas, 1996). Whereas the political, or public will, in the deliberative model is seen to be constituted through the political process, the aggregative model relies and already formed, prepolitical interests.

A last approach to the idea of “social” to be included here is the social model in disability studies. The social model “emphasizes that although individuals may suffer from functional impairments, disability is caused by the way society exposes individuals to unresponsive or hostile environments” (Jönson and Harnett, 2015: 1). The model uses the term disability, not to refer to the impairment of the person, but to the disabling barriers of prejudice, discrimination, and social exclusion, and thus to the disadvantage or restriction of activity caused by society with physical or cultural barriers (Morris, 2001: 2). This understanding is developed with a different starting point than the other notions of the social mentioned above. It is developed by the disabled movement as a way to understand and fight oppression and thus to demonstrate how social and physical environments inhibit and exclude certain people. The understanding of “social” thus also include physical barriers to equal interaction and inclusion and is therefore relevant when we try to understand the relationship between the social and the built environment.

Case study in the Danish nonprofit housing sector

Before presenting the methodology and the case, the nonprofit housing sector in Denmark will briefly be presented to demonstrate the relevance of this sector for studying processes of social sustainability.

Approximately, 20% of the Danish housing mass is constituted by nonprofit housing, but it is unevenly distributed across different municipalities with a tendency to a larger concentration around big cities (Landsbyggefonden, 2015). The term nonprofit housing seems more accurate in a Danish context rather than social housing, because only part of the sector is used as social housing (Hansen and Langergaard, 2017). Still, the sector does have an important societal role as the municipalities have disposal over approximately 20% of the social housing apartments, which can be used as social housing for citizens with social needs, or elderly citizens or people with disabilities.

Danish nonprofit housing has a strongly institutionalized resident democracy, which is unique in an international perspective when it comes to the extent of the residents’ influence on decisions about the housing area as well as financial decisions about the departments (Jensen et al., 1999). Resident democracy is legislatively regulated, and the latest law of 1996 widened the scope of democratic decision-making by opening up for new modes of participation by making it possible to delegate competences and tasks to subgroups of residents (Jensen et al., 1999). The aim was to enhance responsibility and engagement toward physical maintenance, communal estate affairs, and social integration (Jensen, 1998). In this sense, the change in legislation with it widening of the scope of active participation of the residents and renewed emphasis on self-organization and the ideal of participatory democracy and participation both inside and outside of the democratic organs and activities of the sector (Hansen and Langergaard, 2017).

At the department level residents elect the members of the “residents’ board,” which acts as collaborators to the employees of the housing association and as spokesmen on behalf of the entire department, especially concerning the budget. Thus, the housing associations are administrative institutions that provide services to a number of autonomous departments each running their own budget, meaning that each housing unit is an independent economic entity whose funds may only be used in the department. They manage, rent, build, and maintain the dwellings as administrative bodies (Jensen, 1998, 2006; KAB, 2016). Tenants in each department exert collective ownership of the department. Therefore, the constellation of “democracy of residents” is a key brick in understanding the role of residents within the sector, since the budget is ideally composed as a collaborative act among residents and associations. Studies of resident democracy in Denmark indicate that a prime motivation for participating is to take responsibility for the area in which you live and to develop the department (BL: Danmarks Almene Boliger, 2016).

Methods and data collection

The article builds on a qualitative case study of a renovation project in the Danish nonprofit housing sector. The project was initiated in 2013 and has from the beginning had the explicit aim of improving the social life, sense of community belonging, and liveability in the dwelling itself as well as in the local area. The idea has been to create a place and some homes that are more than “just a place to live.” It has had an experimental approach from the beginning and has aimed to develop methods and tools to strengthen social sustainability in renovation and building cases. One aim of the project has been to transform a dwelling and the local neighborhood around it into a platform for social interaction in order to decrease social isolation of the residents. Certain key words have been formulated as orientation points of the project, namely: equality, accessibility, sustainability, health, and physical activity (TI, 2013a). Thus, throughout the process there has been a consistent focus on the relationship between the built environment and social life, but also on the challenges of developing well-functioning social support functions to ensure sustainment of social life over time. The aim has been to develop a place that residents are enthusiastic about and where they wish to contribute to an inclusive social life and community even after the renovation project is finished.

The case study has been based on interviews, documents, and observations collected between 2013 and 2018. In terms of case selection strategies, the housing association and its resident democracy can be seen as illustrative of certain dimensions of the nonprofit housing sector in Denmark, namely the resident democracy as a participatory platform. The specific department has a strong and active board of residents, making it a critical case “having strategic importance in relation to the general problem” (Flyvbjerg, 2006: 229). Moreover, the Danish nonprofit housing sector can in itself be considered a critical case due to the conditions for strong participatory processes (Hansen and Langergaard, 2017). With the strong and active resident board, the case also services to illustrate the potentials and challenges of the nonprofit housing sector as a platform developing socially sustainable cities and neighborhoods, because of the way it is organized.

The project has been followed since its beginning and the author has attended regular meetings in connection to the project as a follow researcher of the project. The data collection covers the following phases of the project:

An initial prephase organized around a “steering group” led by the housing association and a group of consultants, with participation of the municipality and ad hoc participation of “experts,” e.g. in relation to architecture and design for people with disabilities. The aim of this phase was to develop a concept for social innovation in building and renovation projects and to formulate a list of recommendations for the specific building to be renovated. It lasted from 2013 to 2015.

A planning phase with the aim of developing the construction program for the building and outdoor areas. This process involved a “follow group” comprised of employees from the housing association, employees from the municipality, architects, the board of residents of the housing department, the elected chairman of the housing association, a follow researcher (the author of this article), and ad hoc experts and visitors. This phase lasted from 2015 to 2016.

The building process—in this period of time the “follow group” had regular meetings. This process lasted from 2016 to 2018.

A phase of welcoming the new residents. This involved a process of selecting new residents to move in and facilitating events as preparation. This was initiated in spring 2018. In August/September 2018 all residents moved into the building and the housing association had employees dedicated to supporting the social life in the building and interaction between the residents.

The data collection covers the process up until just after the inauguration of the dwelling and what has happened in the time immediately after the residents have moved into the building. A total of nine formal semi-structured interviews (Alvesson, 2011; Justesen and Mik-Meyer, 2011) have been conducted with employees of the housing association, an employee at the municipality, consultants involved in the project, and architects. The analysis is furthermore based on various field notes from meetings and events related to the project over the course of the five years. The longitudinal character of the engagement has made it possible to follow how ideas have developed throughout the course of the project. Besides, documents about the project, such as strategies, plans, publications, and minutes from meetings have been included. These documents give an insight into the development of the project and the way key terms have played a role in the process. This combination of sources provides a solid foundation for understanding various dimensions of the project and the way certain ideas and processes of participation constitute certain notions of the “social.”

Analysis strategy

The analysis elucidates developments in the project by going through three different phases with a specific focus on the following aspects of participation: who participates and how, what are the main foci, and what does it imply for the notion of “social” in the project? The first phase is the initial prephase organized around the “steering group,” the second is the planning phase in which a follow group held frequent meetings about the details of the building, and the third phase included here is the phase around selecting residents and moving into the building. Over the studied period of time, the course of the project has on the one hand followed a certain set of key orientation points, while on the other hand it has been characterized by learning, experimentation, and a variety of interpretations of how to understand participation and inclusion in particular. In this sense, the division between these phases is in some respects artificial, as there are also several overlaps and continuity between them. The analysis shall attempt to point out a number of themes and underlying understandings that seem to co-exist and take on different shapes throughout the process. Drawing upon certain notions of the social in a rather simplified form the analytical purpose is to distil and unfold certain understandings of the social in order to better discuss their implications.

Analysis

Prephase: Identifying needs and resources to unfold the “social”

The first phase of the project was a prephase to the actual renovation project, which had the aim to develop a model for how to integrate social aims and visions into building and renovation projects more generally. It was based on the premise that too often building and renovation projects did not systematically integrate concerns for the social life of the future building, but instead tended to focus more on the technical and economic aspects. Thus, there was an experienced need for a systematic approach to including such concerns from the beginning. The ambition was that a renovation project with a focus on the social life in the future dwelling could be a way of addressing broader societal and welfare challenges, such as social isolation and unemployment (TI, 2013a). This broader aim has been adjusted throughout the project, and other concerns have come to be more central. It indicates that the project from the beginning was characterized by an explorative approach to understand the social dimension in relation to the project and to building and renovation in general—in order to move beyond a place to live where the technical requirements are met.

This explorative approach was also reflected in ideas about participation, interaction, and the notion of social characterizing this phase. There were several ideas in play at the same time, but one in particular will be scrutinized here. A vision from the project’s beginning was to mix residents and ensure new types of interaction between them. As the building from the beginning was planned to inhabit people with disabilities and young people without disabilities, a focus point was how to make these two groups of residents integrate and interact in their everyday life. This vision has remained throughout the process but seems to have been understood in slightly different ways and attempted to become obtained by different means.

Central to this first phase was the belief that it was essential to uncover the needs and resources of the residents, who were to live together, in order to understand how they would interact. The idea was that interaction between the residents would take place as a kind of exchange of resources in terms of favors and tasks. This was centered on an American model, introduced by the consultants, based on examples of families with small children living door by door with senior residents. The idea was that the two groups have different resources and needs and thus can be helpful to one another and fulfill each other’s needs, for example through help with homework or household tasks. The model was meant to apply generally to managing processes where interactions was the aim, and even though it was stressed that the “model” is a simplification, it has played a key role in the early phases of the project. Taking the model as point of departure the consultants carried out interviews with residents focusing on needs and resources, some of which the residents might not themselves were fully aware of. “It is often difficult to use classic interviews, surveys or workshops to uncover the unmet needs and resources of the residents. Sometimes they will overestimate or underestimate their own capabilities for contributing” (TI, 2013b: 11). Thus, by the application of a model where needs and resources were at the center the residents were approached as informants rather than as participants, since the assumption was that there was a need for experts to interpret and translate the needs and resources into potentials for interaction.

Such an understanding of the social rests on an individualist methodology and an idea of the social as constituted as an exchange situation between individuals, who meet on the basis of expecting certain benefits from the social interaction along the lines of a cost–benefit or utilitarian analysis. This idea of interaction was—even if it did play a role and also was the basis for the first interviews with residents—by some participants of the project considered to be too simplistic. Since the model was based on an individualistic, social exchange thinking, which does not explain social integration very well it clashed with the social housing sector, which already has a strong social component in the resident democracy, and which in that sense already were built on a notion of residents as some kind of community. For the same reason, when moving into the next phases of the project where the board of residents had a more active participating role, this idea faded away. However, certain dimensions of it came up in a different shape in later phases.

Throughout the project a key theme related to interaction is the perception of “resources.” This is probably because the apartments are designed for people with special needs in relation to accessibility and thus for a group which in certain ways experience marginalization based on the assumption that they do not have many resources. Before the renovation, the outdoor areas surrounding the building were inaccessible for the inhabitants in wheelchairs, and in general there were not many common areas in or around the building at which the residents could meet. Accessibility, equality, sustainability, health, and activity were key characteristics for the building, which were formulated at the beginning of the project. The chair of the board stresses that:

It is important we are not looked upon as disabled. It must be for everyone, who wants to live here. The point is to break down the barriers that disadvantage disabled people. And here sports are important. And perhaps a café where people with disabilities work.

This view of the social reflects that resources are constituted in interaction with the social and physical environment. And moreover, that disability is not so much about the capabilities of the individual in an isolated sense, but rather something which is constituted in relation to the social and physical environment in accordance with the social model of disability. This approach is also about breaking down barriers as a first condition for integration.

Planning phase: Deliberation as basis for participation (in the “follow group”)

In the planning phase, meetings in the so-called follow group constituted the main platform for participation in the project. As one aim of this phase was to develop the building program and make decisions about the design and architecture of the building, the dominant themes in this phase related to both technical, functional and aesthetic dimensions of the dwelling. What is interesting about this part of the project is not so much the actual themes and issues taken up, but rather the forms of participation and dialogue between the parties in the follow group. In the beginning of this phase there was a study trip to other dwellings, both private apartments and public nursing homes, which were built to be accessible for people in wheelchairs. The board of residents, the architects, and the representatives from the housing association participated in this. This gave a starting point for the discussions about the building. It also denoted a beginning of a phase with many meetings and intense debates about the features and requirements for the building in order for it to provide the frame for a good home and neighborhood for the residents. There were regular meetings and sometimes also email exchanges in-between the meetings.

Comparing the course of this project to others, it has been very different due to the focus on social sustainability. The way the users have been involved has been very different from other building projects. This broad involvement of the whole resident board and a follow group is not the norm in projects like this. There hasn’t been the same broad anchorage and ownership [in other projects, red.]. (Employee from the housing association, interviewed in 2016)

As the quote underscores, the residents, especially the board, had a very active role in the second phase. One interesting characteristic of the way that the resident board participated was their interest in finding solutions, which were not only relevant to themselves but also to other residents with potentially other life conditions or requirements for accessibility than themselves. In this sense, this part of the project displayed strong deliberative democratic features in continuous dialogue between residents, architects, and representatives from the municipality and the housing association. At one of the meetings the chair of the resident board explicitly said that they have an obligation to work toward ensuring solutions to meet common requirements, or the common good, in a democratic spirit. In an interview a representative from the housing association expressed that she was especially taken by the openness and respect in the dialogue between residents and architects, which she considered to be unusual compared to other building projects.

One point to be drawn from this, in relation to participation, is the civic virtues and democratic engagement, which were central and important to the process. Furthermore, the residents got the role of experts in their own life when explaining to the architects what was important to make their everyday life work well in the apartments when disability helpers and assistive technologies also had to be incorporated. The board of residents took on ownership of and engagement in the project and thus with their knowledge and expertise on both the building and the democratic platforms and processes got to be a strong anchoring point in the project. One question coming up at the end of this phase was how to meet and include the new residents moving in and what kind of communities and interaction could emerge after inauguration.

Inauguration phase: Events as entrance to “social” integration

The residents moved into the building in August and September 2018. Key participants in this phase, in addition to the new residents, were representatives of the housing association who monitored as strongly facilitated process for the new residents as well as some of the representatives of the resident board, who also took on a role in meeting the new residents and preparing them for moving in.

Some of the former residents moved back in, but the majority was new residents. Among the new ones were young people, who should live in the “student” apartments, and some elderly people who had been referred by the municipality. In the inauguration phase there was a strong focus on the young residents as they were meant to play a key role in the social integration of residents. The process of selecting the young people to move in was carefully planned and facilitated by the housing association. The plan was to choose some so-called first movers among the newcomers in this group and give to them a certain role and responsibility for creating a social environment. When applying to get an apartment in the dwelling the young people had to write a motivated letter stating why they would be interested in living in there. It was made clear that this was not just any place to live, but that it was a place with ambitions and visions for a good social life and interaction. A number were selected to take part in a draw for the apartments, and the ones who got an apartment then participated in facilitated workshops with the aim of preparing them for life in the building and to start developing ideas for the social life and interaction between residents. The aim was to facilitate that they came up with community creating activities. In an interview one of the facilitators explained that he had especially two things in mind: “My first and foremost task was to get them to talk together,” and second to “prepare them for what they could expect out there” when they were to meet their new neighbors who could be elderly people or people with disabilities and who might be in wheelchairs. These aims focused the events at the workshop, facilitated by employees of the housing association. The young people were grouped together and asked to come up with ideas for activities and events which could include all types of residents in the dwelling. One of the residents, who were in wheelchair and who were an active participant on the board of residents was also present. The hope was to open their minds and break down possible prejudice and hence prepare them for living side by side with people with disabilities.

In an interview with an employee of the housing association some of the challenges of this process became apparent. The hopes and expectations to what the new young residents could achieve through organized events had been high, and thus, it came as a surprise that the new residents found it difficult to organize these events, not least to find the best ways to invite their new neighbors. They found it intimidating to go and knock on doors, and just putting up a note in the stairwell or lift did not seem to get anyone to come to the events. Also, the practicalities of organizing events turned out to be more challenging than anticipated. As it was stated in an interview: “This idea about being first movers in respect to ‘the social’, maybe I underestimated that.” The notion of resources came up again in this phase as it turns out that the young newcomers did not behave quite as expected and did not have the same experience with organizing and communicating with other residents in the context of the department as the residents of the board. The board of residents are perceived by the employees of the housing association to be very resourceful in relation to the project and its aims. The idea of the social and of participation in this phase is thus that social interaction and coherence might emerge out of a facilitated process focusing on events for the residents, with a number of designated first movers who have a certain role and responsibility, and that this hopefully will pay off. There are, however, also concerns about “facilitating something to death,” as one of the facilitators states.

Discussion

The analysis points to rather different ideas about the social, which each have been contained in the project, sometimes even simultaneously, and that have worked as drivers for creating learning for the residents and housing association about the challenges of creating or facilitating a social life around the building. It demonstrates that certain ideas have continuously been part of the project, while others have changed over the phases of the project.

In relation to the concept of social sustainability, the notions of the social span from sense of community and belonging, thought to be constituted through social interaction among the different groups of residents to social equity and inclusiveness. In the processes which had the aim of facilitating and creating the sociality among residents—mainly the prephase and the phase around inauguration—there have been a strong focus on the residents and their resources. In the first phase this focus came through within an individualistic framework and seemed to be associated with an instrumental approach to designing social spaces, and with the residents as informants rather than as participants. In the third phase of the analysis, the individualist focus has been given up, and the focus is rather on one particular group of residents, who are meant to play a role because they are believed to have certain resources important to the process. In the third phase the residents are seen as participants, but the different groups are seen to have different roles in constituting a sense of community. In these two phases the focus is on the residents and their characteristics, however, in different ways. The challenges to get the process going and to have the young residents successfully plan community creating events are an indication that resources are contextual rather than absolute. What resources an individual or a group have in a specific situation depends on the context—and in this project the board of residents with their vast experience with democratic and organizational processes represented a resourceful group. The newcomers had something to learn before they could participate in the ways that were somehow expected of them. It indicates that resources might not be a very helpful focus point in a general sense as they are dependent on the social, organizational, and spatial platforms and conditions.

Equity and inclusiveness are also central terms related to social sustainability, and they are also part of the idea of the social in the project. In particular, in relation to the built environment and design of the building, accessibility has been a key concern throughout the project, in particular in the planning phase where decisions about the dwelling were made. Equity and inclusiveness here mean that all residents can use the spaces in and around the building on equal terms. The focus is here on creating spaces for being together, and not necessarily on determining on beforehand what types of interaction could take place. The board of residents and the chair see inclusive and accessible spaces as important for breaking down barriers and as constituting possibilities and resources of the individual. In line with the idea of the social connected to the social model of disability, the focus is on what is around the individual in terms of social and physical conditions for this individual to participate. Similarly, the organizational, historical, and spatial surroundings constitute conditions for how the social life unfolds, which are not included directly in the attempts to facilitate the “social.” In the facilitated processes interaction is thought to take place either as exchange of favors or in relation to organized events.

However, the institutionalized resident democracy and the elected board have been an important anchoring point in the project, and have represented an integrative, deliberative form of participation, which in itself have constituted a community. In the building phase, the resident board played a central role, and in this sense the democratic platform already present in the nonprofit housing sector has been important and has been utilized especially in the planning phase. From the beginning of the project this platform has been considered a potential central anchoring point also for the social life in the renovated building. An idea about how interaction in the renovated building could take place was exposed at a workshop in the beginning of the project; representatives of the housing association mention the idea that the board of residents could play a core role as anchoring point of the social life in the building and that this could be an opportunity to revitalize the resident democracy. Furthermore, there are plans about using the department meetings to also constitute sub-groups to work with different events and activities in the building. This suggestion takes the setting of the nonprofit housing sector into consideration and includes the platforms that are already available for potential interaction and socializing among the residents. In this sense, several ideas of the social and participation and platforms have been in play at the same time. This points to the question about the importance of platforms. The processes of interaction and participation seem to work more smoothly when there are already organizational or institutional platforms for interaction and when regular meetings are planned. This cannot be transferred to social life in the dwelling in a broader sense as everyday life and the potential interactions taking place in a more informal sense to a greater extent is on the border between the sphere of private life in the apartments and some social community about which there is a lot of uncertainty. The analysis indicates that social sustainability is not an end state which can be reached, but something which is negotiated and transformed in interaction not only with individuals and groups of people, but also with organizational and spatial conditions. The social community is a dynamic and changeable entity, which is not easily pinned down and sustained. This indicates a more general paradox inherent in the concept of social sustainability. It requires an on-going interacting and open discussion about what residents want with the place they live and with each other, especially as new residents will come and others will move away. Thus, making the social interaction or social community too dependent on certain person might prove difficult for the sustainability, both in terms of stability and development, of it. This indicates that the platforms for deliberative, or integrative, interaction and debate are important.

We by zooming in on the process itself, on forms of participation, as well as on the underlying ideas of the “social,” we learn something about practices organized around social sustainability. However, we also learn something about the importance of the setting for such processes, for example how the democratic platforms of the Danish nonprofit housing sector might play a role. One question for future research is what role the housing association can play in the particular case and how nonprofit housing associations can support social sustainability and community feeling constituted outside of the democratic platforms and in-between the private life of the residents. With the institutionalized democratic setup, the nonprofit housing sector in Denmark has some unique features, which makes it particularly interesting in relation to social sustainability in housing and urban planning.

Conclusion

The article has analyzed a case study of a renovation project in the Danish nonprofit housing sector, which had social sustainability as an explicit aim. In the specific case, the social dimension of sustainability was interpreted as inclusiveness, accessibility, and interaction between the residents in the dwelling as a well as the local neighborhood surrounding the building. The case demonstrates that working with social sustainability is not a linear and straight forward rational process, and that key dimensions of social sustainability such as the idea of participation and the idea of sociality implied in and shaping practices can be conflicting and ambiguous even within the frames of the same project. This is so even in this case with its otherwise good conditions in terms of experts in the field, a very experienced housing association, and a strong and dedicated resident board and furthermore with a structured process to which a lot of resources have been dedicated. This indicates that it is likely to be equally ambiguous and iterative in other cases with less favorable conditions. A main conclusion to be drawn from the study is that social sustainability requires a focus on the platforms and on-going processes and interactions which continuously constitute the social life in a neighborhood and the relations between the residents. However, organizational setups like an instituted resident democracy with regular meetings and a specific purpose can be a helpful platform and support good conditions for residents’ interaction and experience of ownership to a place. Social sustainability, based on this analysis, is not end state which can be created to then be present once and for all, but rather an indicator of the living sociality of a certain time and place.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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