The Politics of Care:
In Conversation with Ludwig Engel
04.08.26

Ludwig Engel is a German futurologist and spatial researcher whose work explores how public action, policy and collective imagination can reshape the built environment. Through his research, teaching and advocacy, he challenges conventional ideas of progress, advocating for approaches that place care, cultural value and environmental responsibility at the centre of urban change. His interdisciplinary practice spans architecture, research, filmmaking and education, bringing together diverse perspectives to imagine more equitable and sustainable futures for our cities.

Ahead of his keynote at Living Cities Forum 2026, Hayley Tillett, Editor at NHO, speaks with Ludwig about demolition culture, the value embedded in existing buildings, and why the future of our cities may depend less on what we build next than how we care for what already exists.

Portrait by Tabea Mathern.

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HT: Hi Ludwig. Thanks for joining us. Through your work as a researcher and advocate, you’ve spent years examining the forces shaping our cities. What do you see as the most significant challenge shaping their future?

LE: Hi Hayley, thanks for having me. What concerns me most is the global rise of speculative real estate development. Through our research at HouseEurope!, a non-profit advocating for the socio-ecological transition of the built environment, we’ve seen how capital increasingly favours demolishing existing buildings—for reasons of investment logic, taxation and technological innovation—rather than finding ways to transform what already exists, which is almost always the more socially just and environmentally responsible alternative.

What we see in European cities is an ongoing trend to demolish residential buildings that are in fine condition, displacing renters that contribute to the social life of their city quarters. We see these buildings replaced with residential developments that, most of the time, house less people with more money in bigger apartments. If we’re lucky. Oftentimes these new buildings stand empty or are only used as furnished holiday apartments, de facto shrinking the amount of available apartments for city dwellers.

The effect is horrid. Students can no longer afford to live in the city in which they are studying, blue collar workers’ commuting times and costs to their precarious jobs surge, and middle-income families pay the better part of their disposable monthly income for their monthly rent or mortgage. This all comes at a great cost. Our cities that have been open, inviting, caring and inclusive turn against their inhabitant. I hope the situation is different in Australia, but I fear global capital flows know no boundaries.

HT: As a futurologist, your work isn’t about predicting the future so much as expanding how we think about it. What shifts do you believe will have the greatest influence on the way we design, build and inhabit cities over the coming decades?

LE: The discipline of futurology is based on the belief that the future should be an open, discursive and democratic sphere that allows for people to discuss on eye level which futures a society should invest in: ethnically, intellectually, financially. Cities are great “futures machines”, where not only technological innovation but also social progress has been thriving, as the new is always arising out of the re-combination of the existing.

If we remember this, the most important influence on creating cities that put people and the planet before profit is helping people understand the complexity of the urban systems they inhabit, while strengthening their capacity and willingness to care for and actively shape their cities. Teaching in Switzerland for the last ten years, I am always in awe of how seriously everyone is involved in urban design questions through regular referendums and how knowledgeable and interested people are in architecture and urban design. That really makes a big difference, as people have agency and municipalities and developers alike have to answer to it.

HT: Through your work with HouseEurope!, you’ve challenged one of architecture’s longest-held assumptions: that progress depends on building new. What needs to change—in our policies, our profession and public attitudes—for renovation and adaptive reuse to become the default rather than the exception?

LE: It’s really strange. Despite the fact that it is scientifically proven that investing in the maintenance and care of the existing building stock brings long-term social and ecological benefits, city politics and policy continue to make it easy to demolish and build new. At the same time, the administrative and legal process of transforming an existing building is incredibly difficult. Across Europe, an average of one building is demolished every minute. Until 2050 we’ll have demolished the combined building stock of Paris, Berlin and Bucharest, while people can’t find an affordable home in European cities anymore.

At HouseEurope! we have this claim: ‘the homes of the future exist today at the prices of yesterday’ – which is in fact true and not just a slogan! Yet every existing building is legally, financially and fiscally treated as a risk, while every new building is seen as an opportunity. If we don’t change that mindset fast, if we don’t change the rules and regulations around adaptive-reuse of the existing quickly, we’ll miss one of the greatest chances to transform our cities for its inhabitants and not for profit.

HT: More recently, you’ve helped launch Right to Housing!, extending your advocacy from the environmental value of existing buildings to the social question of who gets to live in them. What prompted that shift, and what conversations do you hope this initiative will spark?

LE: Through our European Citizens Initiative “Power to Renovation”, we learned that currently the social question has outpaced the environmental question in Europe by far. At the core of the affordable housing crises lies a city development practice that simply does not care about its inhabitants and their livelihoods. It is also much closer to a lot of people because they experience it first-hand.

A super-hot day might remind you of man-made climate change but not finding an affordable home for your family impacts you so intensely and immediately that it creates another urgency to act. That the social question is so deeply entangled with the environmental question and both profit from the same measures in the link between our two campaigns.

That’s another finding of our research at HouseEurope! In public discussions we are often confronted with the statement: social building can’t be ecological, that’s why we have to build, build, build, despite the environmental consequences. But at HouseEurope! we say: “Please reconsider. Using the existing is both socially and ecologically more just.”

HT: Your work increasingly sits at the intersection of architecture, policy and public advocacy. Both HouseEurope! and Right to Housing have brought complex debates into the public realm. What have those campaigns taught you about turning awareness into collective action?

LE: That’s a very good observation and valid question. Honestly, what we’ve learned is that raising awareness is only the foundation. Collective action depends on what comes next. Starting our campaign, we somewhat naively believed that if we changed public opinion, we would also inspire enough people to support the campaign through their votes. Instead, we realised the real work only begins once you’ve carved out a place for your issue in the public conversation.

Complex issues of urban design and urban planning are very hard to connect to as someone who just wants to live a decent life in a city. It takes far more consideration to track your personal problems of finding an affordable apartment for your family to the global speculative financial system and the law and regulations that uphold the status quo. HouseEurope! now focuses much more on public education as a form of advocacy and platform-building to push policy. It’s an uphill marathon, really. But, increasingly, local and national initiatives fighting for the same goals are joining forces in Europe and we’re hopeful that we will see change not only in public opinion but voting behaviour sooner rather than later.

HT: Can you share a project, campaign or place that captures the kind of future you’d like our cities to move towards? What makes it such a compelling example?

LE: I have been really impressed with Anne Hidalgo’s transformation of Paris, using the momentum of the 2024 summer Olympics. From unsealing surfaces in the city for green spaces, the cleaning of the Seine, limiting car traffic, opening cycle lanes and symbolically transforming the plaza in front of the City Hall into a forest, Hidalgo’s immediate actions to transform the city gives me great hope that it’s not too late.

Her party was returned to office in the local elections, which suggests these changes have found broad public support. Once people experience the benefits of a transformed public realm, they often see its value far more clearly than they could when the proposals were still abstract. It reminds us that many of the reservations that initially accompany ambitious urban change can dissolve once its social and environmental benefits become part of everyday life.

HT: If Australian architects, designers and city-makers left Living Cities Forum and changed just one assumption about how we shape our cities, what would you hope it would be?

LE: Never put profit over people and the planet. Never demolish. Always work with the existing.

HT: An important reminder. Thank you, Ludwig.

LE: Thanks, Hayley.