This country report describes the housing market and service supply in the Basque Country at the beginning of the new millennium. The analysis is valid for the major parts of Spain, as the basic features of the housing situation derive from national policies, which have had similar impacts in the historic development of the housing market in all parts of the country.

First of all a sustainable service is a service with positive effects in at least 2 of the 3 sustainability criteria (environmental, social and economic).

Providing home services directly at home brings about, in most cases, the greatest benefits in terms of ecoefficiency. Yet, the criteria of ecoefficiency alone is not sufficient when analysing services from a more holistic sustainability point of view. In other words, in the sustainable service literature, the social aspect of sustainability tends to be neglected at the cost of environmental and economic argumentation.

The goal of this report, which analyses the housing conditions and the service provision in two Basque cities, is to put forward the idea of sustainable home services, i.e. services that enhance sustainability
of living at home, taking into account three dimensions of sustainability.

The sustainable home services project is co-financed by the European Union. (The project is funded by the European commission, research doctorate-general (H) within the framework of the program “the City of tomorrow and cultural heritage).

All sustainability conditions –environmental, social and economic – are difficult to fulfil simultaneously and therefore it may be
useful for pragmatic reasons to accept that a sustainable service is one that satisfies two of the three conditions. For the time being there are no absolute criteria for measuring sustainability of specific services directed to households.

Consequently, the indicators for social and economic sustainability are at a preliminary level.

Altogether, the researchers proposed seven options of supplying these services. Five of them require greater or lesser involvement from the housing organization, whereas two options of supply are independent of it. In the independent option the service is created via socially organized self-help or by offered directly to residents by an external service provider.

Sustainable home services

19/12/2003

Raquel Serrano and Daniela Velte

research

Urban Policy > Transport and infrastructure

Services & amenities