Enabling Community Agency for Net-Zero Housing Futures

This project is an attempt to reimagine how housing gets made in London by 2050, not just driven by top-down ambition, but by a collective vision of bottom up resolution.  It explores how neighbourhood-scale making might transform housing production and distribution, enabling citizens to co-create climate-resilient and inclusive housing futures , asking who should shape housing decisions, and how public participation could make that fairer?

Role: Design Researcher & Futurist | Duration: 2.5 months | Project Type: End-to-End Individual Research Project

Research Question

London's housing crisis is often framed from a top-down perspective, as a supply problem: in land, in labour, in capital. There is simply no solution if we keep falling into the trap of a production systems designed to exclude the people most affected.

The people most affected by housing decisions have almost no role in shaping them. What are the better questions we need to ask to design the right intervention?

What I Proposed

Base on research in the field, I expected to find that community housing needed new infrastructure built from scratch. What I found instead was that the infrastructure already existed: in community gardens, in informal skill-sharing, in people who just showed up and figured it out together. The missing piece wasn't a new institution. It was a way to make that existing activity legible, connectable, and scalable. This led me to propose three interconnected interventions:

  1. Community gardens as skill-building hubs

  2. A Green Builder Pass aligning informal skills with formal standards

  3. A digital mapping platform connecting people, skills, and underused land.

Research Method

Began with desk research and horizon scanning — from the development of production systems to land use — alongside case study analysis of alternative housing models and community-led initiatives. Together these helped me map the dynamic system and stakeholders in a holistic way.

This allowed me to narrow the focus and looked for entry points into primary research with more accessible stakeholder groups. Through London Community Land Trust networks, I found community gardens as an adjacent field — connected by land use, participatory practice, and community skill-building.

With:

What I Found

  • I found my entry points through volunteering in community gardens, joining self-build activities, and attending events where community-led organizations gather, which is how I met interviewees with grounded expertise, including community-led design and capacity-building initiatives, community project facilitators, architects, and city designers.


    The action research(volunteering) showed me things I'd never have found at a desk research: participants in community gardens were already highly active in small-scale building, but those skills stayed informal and disconnected from housing systems, so existing community capacity never translated into influence over housing outcomes.

  • I needed to understand community-led project participants in London, identify what was actually enabling or blocking participation. With very limited time for primary research and no time to wait on cold-outreach replies, I had to proactively find my way into the field.

  • Flexible, expert advice when you need it. Book hourly support across a range of topics—from planning to problem-solving. This focused consultation will help clarify your goals, map out next steps, and identify opportunities for growth.

  • New List Item

  • Not everyone enjoy the smelly and wet willow branch

  • Triangle site community self-build site

  • The day start with play about a girl and questions on why we destroy nature for building

  • The day finish with a food bath in the mud we used to build

What Needs to Happen Next?

Alongside positive feedback there were also critical ones pushed the project further, toward a question I'm still working with: what would make it worth it for communities, councils, architects, and developers to participate in a different system, before that system even exists?

(That's not a design question alone, it's a policy, financial, and organisational challenge. This project identifies where those levers are. Pulling them is the next work.)

What I learn/what I will do differently

Alongside positive feedback there were also critical ones pushed the project further, toward a question I'm still working with: what would make it worth it for communities, councils, architects, and developers to participate in a different system, before that system even exists?

(That's not a design question alone, it's a policy, financial, and organisational challenge. This project identifies where those levers are. Pulling them is the next work.)

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