Dear reader,

Welcome to PREFIGURE.

In a political and economic landscape marked by housing and climate crises, the PREFIGURE project places housing inequalities and energy poverty at the centre of its efforts to facilitate a just energy transition in European cities. Central to the project is a focus on “Prototypes of change” – existing and emerging practices of social, policy and market innovation that actively promote pathways towards socially just and sustainable transitions.

Through an ambitious plan and an innovative, transformative methodological approach, PREFIGURE goes beyond existing knowledge by initiating real-world laboratories that foster knowledge co-creation on the housing-energy vulnerability nexus, prioritising pathways towards both social and environmental justice. The key objective is to scale up and advise on new policy approaches that better integrate marginalised communities into accessible, socially inclusive and energy-efficient housing.

To achieve this goal, several universities, research organisations and policy advisors from across Europe have joined forces to form a consortium. The consortium members include the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Germany), the University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands), the Urban Research Institute of Barcelona (Spain), Malmö University (Sweden), the Center for the Study of Democracy (Bulgaria), the Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development (Germany), Fondazione ICONS (Italy) and Imperial College London (The United Kingdom). PREFIGURE is a project active until 2027, with crucial datasets and research results released as of early 2025.

Enjoy your reading,

KIT Scientific Coordination Team

Michael Janoschka, Aysegül Can, Georgia Alexandri

READ THE FULL NEWSLETTER HERE 

Ph by Brett Jordan on Unsplash