Metropolitan Research Institute

Metropolitan Research Institute, Budapest

Poverty and Exclusion Projects

The UPLIFT project ended in June

The UPLIFT project, which was led by the Metropolitan Research Institute, has just finished in June 2023. 

We are proud of our international team who did an exciting scientific work in the field of social inequalities among urban young people, and an excellent job in experimenting with a new policy making method, the so called Reflexive Policy Making process.

In the UPLIFT project, we have elaborated interesting research on a European scale, understanding inequalities. If you are interested in data on social inequalities focusing on youth, read the Atlas of inequalities and browse data in our interactive atlas.

In 16 European cities, based on extensive desk research and interviews with local experts and decision makers, we have analyzed the nature of economic processes and policies tackling social inequalities especially among young people in the field of education, employment and housing. The results are thoroughly described in 16 urban reports, which you can download here: https://uplift-youth.eu/local-reports/. A comprehensive study, that compares and concludes the main messages of the Urban Reports can be downloaded here: https://uplift-youth.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/D2.4_Synthesis_Report-of-the-16-urban-reports.pdf 

In 8 European cities out of the 16, we focused our attention on understanding the mechanisms behind the decisions of vulnerable young people who are stuck in some way in a disadvantaged situation regarding their education, employment or housing. For this in each of the 8 locations we conducted 20 interviews with young people between the age of 15 and 29 and 20 interviews with people who were young and vulnerable during the Great Financial Crisis. The results are written in forms of 8 Case Study Reports. In addition to this we have elaborated 8 bilingual (in English and in local language) Policy Briefs, which contain the main recommendations for Reflexive Policy Making based on the research results of the Case Study Reports. 

In 4 European cities: Amsterdam, Barakaldo, Sfantu Gheorghe and Tallinn our partners have experimented with a new policy making technique called Reflexive Policy Making, which in short meant to facilitate a collaborative work between the vulnerable young people in a form of a Youth Board and institutional stakeholders on a specific policy field, to come up with concrete recommendations for changing or creating local initiatives or policies. Their work is concluded with a thorough general guidance in a Guidebook and a Policy Brief

If you are interested in learning briefly about our work, watch this short and free video course and find your way to implement Reflexive Policy Making in your field. 

If you are interested more about UPLIFT’s work please find our main outputs on our website: https://uplift-youth.eu/ and find us on social media channels: facebook, instagram, linkedin and twitter.

ComAct (2020-2022) Community Tailored Actions for Energy Poverty Mitigation

The countries in the Central and Eastern European (CEE) region and in the former Soviet Union republics (CIS region) have the most energy-poor people in Europe.  This is mainly due to high energy prices and poor energy efficiency of the buildings, heating systems and household appliances.

In this region, the housing stock is predominantly privately-owned and characterised by a large percentage of multi-family apartment blocks (MFAB). This is the result of its mass privatization in the 1990s, along with the deconstruction of the social safety net: without subsidies, utility and energy costs of the flats soared, burdening the family budgets. In parallel, the socialist-era collective maintenance mechanisms were abandoned, and the decay of homeowners’ associations has not been addressed effectively.

Against this backdrop, undertaking renovation works in multi-family buildings requires coordinated action among the apartment owners. To address the complex roots of energy poverty, there is a need to develop a new approach to make interventions affordable, substantially influence energy costs and consequently reduce the high energy poverty level in the CEE and CIS region.

For more information visit the website or social media channels of the project:

Website: https://comact-project.eu/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ComActProject

UPLIFT (2020 – 2022) Young People’s voice at the centre of Youth Policy

The past decade has been a period of polarisation and fragmentation in Europe with the financial crisis and rapid technological change widening socio-economic inequalities.  Intergenerational inheritance of (dis)advantage has become increasingly predictive of an individual’s opportunity, and young people in particular have become the demographic age group most at risk of experiencing poverty in Europe. In urban settings these disparities are particularly prevalent.

Policies attempting to mitigate the effects of urban inequality, often disregard affected citizens’ experiences, and thus fail to affect maximum impact. By incorporating these perspectives into the policy design process, UPLIFT aims to find innovative interventions in a bottom-up approach.

Source: https://www.uplift-youth.eu/

OpenHeritage (2018-2022)

OpenHeritage

Organizing, Promoting and Enabling Heritage Re-use through Inclusion, Technology, Access, Governance and Empowerment

Client: Európai Bizottság (DG Research and Innovation)

Duration: June 2018 – May 2022

Project website: https://openheritage.eu/

Social media: https://www.facebook.com/OpenHeritageEU/

The project, funded under DG Research and Innovation’s H2020 framework programme, creates a sustainable management model of heritage assets. We work with an open definition of heritage, and involve sites that are not listed or incorporated into the official heritage discourse. The OpenHeritage consoritum concentrates 16 partners, among which universities and research institutes, SMEs, and NGOs, and is led by Metropolitan Research Institute. The project coordinator is Hanna Szemző, managing director of Metropolitan Research Institute.

The consortium focuses on buildings, complexes, and spaces which lie outside traditional and centrally located heritage spaces, but have an important symbolic or practical significance for local and trans-local communities. Through community and stakeholder involvement, resource integration, and territorial embeddedness, OpenHeritage selects, surveys and analyses peripheral, often marginalised and neglected heritage sites spread over sixteen Observatory Cases and six Cooperative Heritage Labs in ten European countries.

For the high resolution project poster, please click on the image below:

HomeLab: Integrated Housing and Labour Services in the Social Rental Enterprise Model (2016-2019)

Project duration: 2016 october – 2019 march

Client: Programme for Employment and Social Innovation (EaSI) of the European Commission. 

MRI is the coordinator of HomeLab.

HomeLab aims to implement the Social Rental Entreprise (SRE) model in five pilot projects in four Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries ((CZ, HU, PL, SK). The pilots allow the adaptation of the model to the local circumstances in countries with varying social benefit and service provision systems, taking into account the differences in the institutional environment, housing systems and labour market conditions. Based on the experience the refinement of the SRE model will be developed for each pilot that will contribute to scaling up the results, to the possible adaptation of the model both on national and on EU level in order to ensure institutional and financial sustainability beyond the grant period. Furthermore, based on the synthesis of the national models EU level recommendations will be developed with regard to how the EU could support/promote the wider application of the SRE model in other Member States.

Support to DG REGIO: Guidance on the use of Structural and Investment Funds for educational and spatial segregation (2016-2017)

Duration: September 2016 – June 2017

Client: DG Regio of the European Commission

The expert TA activities included various forms and served various goals, and had more and less intense phases depending on the needs of the stakeholders and the flow of the respective call for proposal development, or policy development. The activities can be grouped under the following core groups:

  •   facilitating communication among key stakeholders
    • between strategic planners and executive stakeholders within the MAs and ministries
    • between MAs and
  •  thematic expert support in housing and education policies
  • thematic expert support in the partnership process, supporting MAs
  • thematic expert support to beneficiaries (among them SZGYF, and interested other beneficiaries like KLIK and various municipalities)

Results:

Assessment of implementation of the EC guidance on desegregation. In Hungary, in the course of September 2016-June 2017, the guidance’s core recommendations have been incorporated in selected call for proposals. The actual social impact of the guidance can be observed in the forthcoming years since no projects have been implemented so far.

Assessment of the implementation of local actions. In Hungary, in-field local actions that have been designed based on call for proposals that have been harmonised with the guidance have not yet been launched.

Recommendations provided to national authorities during the contract period on embedding de-segregation measures in ESIF-funded actions. The core recommendations were to align the design of available funding according to desegregation goals in both housing and education, and thematic and textual recommendations were made to selected call for proposals to make sure that the recommendations are practical and feasible.

Conclusions of synergies and coordination at national level between different ESIFs and relevant national authorities (e.g. MAs). At the technical level, some more coordination seems to be essential, especially in the area of housing desegregation measures, because two line ministries take responsibility for such actions. Also, smoother coordination between strategic planning and executive stakeholders could facilitate the implementation of ESIF.

Summary to EC and recommendation to Hungarian authorities on the mapping exercises. In the Hungarian context, so far only few desegregation measures have taken place in education and housing. Obviously, the current political leadership in the respective line ministry is rather reluctant to undertake real steps to foster desegregation in education. For housing measures, SZGYF has a dedicated task to compile best practices and disseminate them among potential beneficiaries as part of its EU funded TA project.

Coordination and compliance with national strategies. In the Hungarian context, the content and goals of the NSIS II are fully in line with the guidance. However, the actual political discourse and actions do not reflect the strategy. The forthcoming local urban housing related projects will be more advanced (they have been designed based on the previous implementation period’s lessons, actually independent from the guidance), and the rural housing integration projects are still under evaluation. Hence, their compliance with the strategy cannot be judged yet.