The First Dynamic Atlas on Access to Housing: The New Web Tool Developed by 300.000 Km/s

In the framework of the UIA 2022 International Forum “Affordable Housing Activation: Removing Barriers”, the Consejo Superior de los Colegios de Arquitectos de España (CSCAE) has developed a useful tool: the first dynamic atlas on access to housing. This atlas brings together on a single platform more than 4,000 financial, urban context and development indicators from the main international organisations, from official and non-structured sources, making it easy to understand, read and interpret. These organisations include, for example, the World Bank, the Ibero-American Development Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Health Organisation, among others.

“Housing is a basic universal right that has become a global problem. Despite cultural differences and the fact that the difficulties and obstacles to making it a reality are diverse, there are shared characteristics in many cases. For the first time, these dynamic atlases offer the possibility of analysing the different variables from a single web platform”. – Marta Vall-llossera, President of CSCAE

This tool was developed by the consultancy firm 300,000 Km/s and allows a city-by-city analysis of how urbanisation has expanded over the last 50 years, using a map showing all the metropolises on the planet at a resolution of 250 metres. The format in which the data is displayed allows to consult and explore relationships between different indicators since 1976, classified into the 6 barriers that impede access to housing identified by the UIA 2022 International Forum: mismatches between housing production and demand, policies and regulations, financing, design, development and production, ownership and tenure. To achieve this result, they integrated data from the Global Humanitarian Settlement Layer, which details more than 16,000 metropolitan regions around the world.

Its level of sophistication and easy usability make it an essential tool for the analysis and study of accessible housing on the planet by governments, institutions and universities: it makes large volumes of data available to its users on a single technological platform, in a simple and intuitive way, facilitating access to the information that should guide the solution to the challenge of housing accessibility.

The tool has been developed on the occasion of the UIA 2022 International Forum and is available to all attendees (in person or online). The idea of this forum is to propose solutions and comprehensive views capable of “sewing” barriers between architecture and urban planning, involving all the agents with the capacity to set lines of action in the long term, around a future international agreement with the maximum support of organisations, governments, entities and institutions; capable of concentrating and reaching a consensus on the minimum keys to habitability hand in hand with sustainability.

The UIA 2022 International Forum, promoted by the CSCAE and the UIA, has been active since March through the organisation of dozens of parallel activities on the five continents and culminates in Madrid on the 18th, 19th and 20th of May with the presence of more than 70 international experts and representatives of the world’s leading institutions and organisations. The event is supported by the Government of Spain, through the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda (MITMA), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Community of Madrid, the Madrid City Council and the collaboration of UN-Habitat.