A housing crisis has spread around Europe, and while its effects are mostly felt at the personal and local level, many of the main economic and political actors participating in, influencing and regulating housing markets in Europe are transnational by nature, and in most of Europe they operate within the single market.
However, journalism and other reporting on housing often fail to account for such transnational reality, and those closest to the ground struggle to get their voices heard at the European level.
A bridge across European borders
The Arena Housing Project’s goal is to empower journalists and other researchers working on housing across Europe and assist them in doing cross-border collaborations, so that their work gets more visibility and achieves a greater impact. The Housing Project also has the ambition to bridge the knowledge and communication gap across European borders and between the local, national and EU levels.
Taking advantage of the increasing interest in collaborative research, Arena has developed a network of journalists – along with other researchers and professionals– spread all over Europe, from small cities to capitals and to Brussels.
The Arena Housing Project coordinates and produces journalism by providing the network with the online infrastructure and editorial coordination needed to facilitate data and information exchange, and to launch and manage cross-border collaborative investigations.
A template for new networks
By building the Housing Project, Arena also intends to develop a template for other topic-based open collaborative network, so that more cross-border collaborations and investigations can help reveal the transnational dimension of politics and the economy in Europe.