Innovative local dwelling development – the design developer competition as professional laboratory

Research Project, 2020

Introduction and motivation
Planning and design competitions are an important phenomenon in the built environment. They are a way of generating new concepts and procuring designs to address urban problems and needs. As such, competitions play a central role in providing sustainable residential and public environments that give everyone access to adequate, safe and affordable housing and integrate ecosystem values into national and local planning processes.

A particular form of planning and design competition is the design-developer competition, which are used to transfer publicly owned land to developers. Municipalities regulate competitions through three methods to ensure that their local needs and problems are met: politically through land allocation policies; professionally through competition programs describing the task and its conditions; and administratively through contracts with the winning teams. In this context, design-developer competitions are a tool for developing innovative solutions, which is embedded in an institutionalized framework that defines and distributes intentions, roles and responsibilities among networked stakeholders in the efforts of achieving a collective goal.