Bilbao will host next week, on November 16 and 17, a new edition of Euskal Hiria, the congress on territorial planning and urbanism organized by the Department of Housing and Urban Agenda of the Basque Government, with the support of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme, UN-Habitat. This will be the most international edition of the 24 organized so far, bringing together specialists, institutional representatives, and professionals in urbanism, architecture, and housing from countries such as the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and the Netherlands at Bizkaia Aretoa.
Under the theme ‘Re-crecer. The city between the challenges of housing and sustainability’, the event will focus on how to leverage existing buildings, spaces, and neighborhoods to generate new residential opportunities and improve urban quality, without unnecessarily extending cities onto new land. The starting idea is that a significant part of the answers to current housing and sustainability challenges lies in intervening in the already built city: rehabilitating buildings, transforming underutilized spaces, regenerating neighborhoods, and adapting urban environments to new social and climatic needs. Rehabilitation, urban regeneration, circular architecture, and climate adaptation will be some of the central themes of the sessions.
Following the institutional opening, by the mayor of Bilbao, Juan Mari Aburto; the Minister of Housing and Urban Agenda of the Basque Government, Denis Itxaso; and Shubhagato Dasgupta, Head of Planning and Finance at UN-Habitat, two keynote lectures will be held. They will be delivered by Duncan Lewis, co-founder of the prestigious landscape architecture and urban design firm Scape Architecture, and Maurice Lange, senior analyst at the Centre for Cities in the United Kingdom.
On the first day, other renowned international speakers will include Teresa Pochettino (Turin City Council), Ramon Gras (Aretian Urban Analytics and Design and researcher at Harvard University), Carly Colon (Montreal City Council's real estate and housing strategy service), and Francisco de León (General Plan Office of Donostia). The Monday afternoon session will be dedicated to discussing circular architecture with institutional representatives such as Pablo García Astrain (Basque Government), Blanca Noguera (Metropolitan Area of Barcelona), Javier Martínez Callejo (Bilbao City Council), and Beatriz Sendín (N’Undo).
The second day will feature prominent voices such as Nikki Kamps, director of Rotterdam Rooftop Days, who will discuss how rooftops can be used as spaces for vegetation, biodiversity, energy, and collective use. She will be joined in a panel discussion by Ana Telleria (Basque Government, leading the Opengela project), Federica Rotondo (Sciences Po University of Paris, presenting the ReHousin project), Estibaliz Sanz (BC3), and Ángel M. Cea (Maab). To address the challenges of affordable housing and neighborhood permanence, Sonja Trauss, co-founder of the YIMBY movement in San Francisco, will participate, advocating for the need to increase housing supply. Also participating will be Anne-Jo Visser (Federation of Housing Associations of Amsterdam), Juan Manuel Suárez Fernández (Granada City Council), and Mikel Inchaurbe (Vitoria-Gasteiz City Council).
