Inaccessibility Calculator: Unveiling Socio-Spatial Inequalities Arising from Barriers to Residential Energy Upgrades in Dortmund

Master’s thesis by E’Lina Liza

Supervised by:
Prof. Dr. Christa Reicher
Prof. Dr. Thomas Weith

Keywords:
Energy Renovation, Barriers, Ownership, Mapping, Inaccessibility.

Thesis Abstract

Climate change has firmly become a central theme of political discourse, yet the translation of ambitious goals into everyday practice remains a pressing challenge. Of the many challenges, residential energy consumption stands out as one of the most intricate and influential challenges.

In Germany, a large share of the building stock is old and energy-inefficient. Current improvement efforts are largely conservative, relying primarily on financial subsidies directed toward property owners. Although effective to a degree, they inevitably overlook groups and properties that lie outside standard conditions—cases where unique constraints render energy-efficient renovation particularly “inaccessible.” Conventional neighborhood studies rarely expose such situations, and evaluating every neighborhood individually is impractical with existing resources.

This thesis proposes an alternative way of understanding neighborhoods—one that uncovers where renovation to modern energy standards is effectively out of reach, and more importantly, why.

It begins by shifting the lens through which a neighborhood is interpreted. A neighborhood is not merely a collection of buildings; it is a living ensemble of properties, owners, and occupants whose interactions shape its character and potential. Rather than evaluating neighborhoods solely by their energy consumption—a metric that obscures individual circumstances—this approach treats the property, the owner, and the occupant as an interconnected unit, each uniquely contributing to the broader challenge.

This perspective encourages cities to embrace a genuinely bottom-up approach, assessing progress not only through improvements to the object (the property) but also through the experiences and capacities of the subjects—the owners and occupants who ultimately determine what change is possible.

In parallel, the thesis examines the specific barriers faced by individual subjects, revealing where uniquely challenging situations are concentrated. Due to logistical constraints, this study focuses on the barriers experienced by property owners. Qualitative surveys conducted in the Nordstadtdistrict of Dortmund provide insight into these challenges, and their spatial distribution and density are mapped accordingly. This framework can later be expanded to include barriers faced by occupants and the properties themselves.

The resulting overlap between subject density and barrier density forms a new spatial data, which when implemented through a web-based platform, enables city administrators to clearly perceive the needs of their neighborhoods. The four resulting neighborhood typologies enable cities to prioritize their efforts more precisely, fostering a more effective bottom-up approach to climate action—and ultimately contributing to a way of living that is more attuned to, and more responsive to, the diverse needs and capacities of urban communities.