Competences and requirements in Egedal Municipality
The planning department in the municipality has developed detailed material with specifications for requirements, background reports, local plan and an environmental assessment. The planning department has continuously communicated with developers, builders and buyers, where they provide guidance on solutions and products, interpret technical building standards etc. It has required a great deal of resources to implement controls of building applications. Without this competence, based on cooperation between the various functions in the administration, the project had perhaps evolved in another way.
Energy and environmental requirements for new housing
According to research on innovation in construction done by the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), represented by Maj-Britt Quitzau, the success of Stenlose is due to the composition of the expertise on planning and construction in the administration, the support from the city manager and a favourable city council who politically wanted sustainable urban development. The project is at the present halfway completed although the general trend in the housing market has meant that sale of building plots in Stenlose South has come close to a complete stop in spring 2008. Developers choose to postpone or finish construction in different phases, and sales of new homes are not at the same level as in earlier stages of the project. Generally seen, some parts of the construction have been postponed 1-2 years compared to previous expectations. The strategy on raising the energy standards in new buildings is continued in the Plan and Agenda 21 strategy 2008 in Egedal municipality. All local plans for settlements will now be required to meet low energy class 1. Egedal municipality has, given its location in the Frederik’s Sound area, abundant room for a continued expansion of residential and industrial areas. It will mean that 5% of households in the municipality will live in a low energy house within the next few years.