Sustainable Development of Water Housing Using the Example of Poland: An Analysis of Scenarios

Abstract

At the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries, Polish cities began the process of returning to live by water. There is a growing interest in water reservoirs not only as places for recreation, but also as new areas suitable for living, at the very center of the city. Unfortunately, due to the lack of appropriate legal regulations, the dynamic development of floating homes (FHs) is starting to raise increasing concerns in Poland. Regardless of the potential direction of development in water construction in Poland (growth, stabilization, or regression), the question arises of “how to make the potential vision of the future of water construction in Poland consistent with the idea of sustainable development (SD)”. In order to try to answer this question, the authors of this publication indicate the future limitations of formulating a strategy for the development of houses on water in Poland, according to different domains of SD. These domains are the economic, socio-cultural, and environmental spheres. Using the states of surrounding scenarios method (SSSs for short), we developed future scenarios for FHs (an optimistic scenario, a pessimistic scenario, a surprise scenario, and the most probable scenario). Then, using five inferential methods, we defined the constraints that should be taken into account when strategizing for water construction in accordance with the values of SD.

Proposed concept for the development of residential floating facilities

“…In the presented research, individual factors were identified at an earlier stage, when developing scenarios for the future development of FHs in Poland using the SSSs method. The research was presented in publications: [21,[23][24]. The determinants were selected based on a literature review, survey, interview and own observations.…”

“…Development strategies should include solutions to formal and legal [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9], technical [5,[10][11][12][13][14], economic [1-3, 5, 7-8], environmental [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24], demographic and socio-cultural [2,[25][26] issues.…”