Co-creating solutions with social housing users: a Living lab case

Abstract

ABSTRACT Social housing (SH) upgrade processes have the potential to reduce social costs, improve living conditions, and increase the satisfaction of dwellers. All stakeholders, especially end-users, should participate in such processes to identify needs and problems and evaluate proposals. The Living Lab (LL) approach is recommended to develop solutions in a real-life context, and collaboration among participants. Our study explores this to involve residents of SH in enhancing their neighbourhood, positively influencing their satisfaction with their living environment, and improving their quality of life. We pursued this objective by exploring participatory tools. We present co-creation activities to develop upgrade proposals for communal areas. From our analysis of these co-creation activities, important lessons are learned on resident engagement in social housing upgrade processes. Our contributions include a set of practical advice for conducting co-creation activities in Living Labs for social housing upgrades and a demonstration of how research organisations can utilise Living Labs to empower users in creating their social innovation projects.