Keywords

1.1 Introduction

As a global society, we find ourselves at a critical juncture: after decades of fragmented and limited action, we are experiencing a climate emergency [1]. In the face of this crisis, our global and individual responses will shape the future, not only for the current generation but also for generations to come. The built environment, which includes the housing sector, is a significant contributor of greenhouse gas emissions and wider environmental impact [2,3,4]. Globally, the housing sector contributes around 17% of total greenhouse gas emissions and consumes around 19% of total energy demand [2, 3]. Additionally, the housing sector consumes 30–50% of raw and recycled materials for building new housing and retrofitting existing housing [4]. The impact from materials occurs through the use of materials and the generation of waste during construction, through-life (maintenance), and at end of life.

Any transition to a low carbon future must include the housing sector and prioritize provision of sustainable housing [1, 5, 6]. The transition should also acknowledge the disparate outcomes at play for housing with some jurisdictionsFootnote 1 over consuming energy, water, and materials and other jurisdictions struggling even to provide enough basic housing. Furthermore, sustainable housing is about more than reducing environmental impacts; it has a range of benefits including improving occupant health and well-being and reducing living costs at the individual dwelling scale and reducing the need for energy infrastructure at an urban scale [5, 7,8,9]. Given there are increasing numbers of sustainable houses and communities around the world, we know that we have the technology and knowledge to make sustainable housing possible.

In this book, we use the term housing to mean any type of building or unit that provides shelter or lodging for one or more people. Housing provides people with a place to sleep, eat, relax, be safe, and conduct their daily lives. Throughout the book, we discuss different types of housing, such as detached, semi-detached, and apartments, as sustainable housing is relevant for all housing types. We define sustainable housing as housing with a zero carbon impact that, where possible, contributes to regeneration initiatives that support wider sustainability. Sustainable housing is housing that significantly reduces its life cycle impacts and engages with concepts of the circular economy (e.g., design for disassembly). Our focus on zero and low carbon performance outcomes aligns with the wider international research that argues for significant greenhouse gas emission reductions of 80% or more from key sectors [1, 3]. We use the term low carbon throughout the book to reflect significant performance improvements of sustainable housing compared to a business-as-usual approach. However, it is more than just physical elements or specific technical outcomes; sustainable housing improves health and well-being, reduces living costs, and connects to other sectors such as transport, food, and energy networks. Sustainable housing draws on a variety of design, material, technology, and construction innovations to build housing that will perform well now and into the future. This is not just performance from a technical perspective but also in terms of resiliency against a changing climate (e.g., resilient to extreme weather events).

This book examines the role sustainable housing must play in the transition to a low carbon future. We begin by identifying where we are currently situated in the sustainable housing transition and then explore the opportunities for moving forward, both as individuals, and as a global housing society. There is a significant amount of research on sustainable housing, but much of it is focused on small parts of the wider picture (i.e., single developments or sector-specific data). In this book, we aim to bring together a more holistic picture of sustainable housing and encourage readers to think beyond traditional considerations of housing. The book focuses largely on developed countries due to the similarity of environmental overconsumption of resources, government intervention, and industry scale in the housing sectors, as well as wider social and financial housing issues prevalent throughout these countries. However, we do acknowledge different challenges that developing countries face with their housing and include examples from a variety of contexts. The opportunities for a transition to sustainable housing are relevant for all. While written by academics, we hope that this book is accessible to a wide audience, from researchers, to policy makers, to those in the housing industry, and to households themselves.

This chapter begins by exploring the changing world we face, largely from a changing climate, and what that means for the built environment (Sect. 1.2). We then discuss why housing is important (Sect. 1.3) and what benefits and opportunities sustainable housing can provide (Sect. 1.4). In Sect. 1.5, we reflect on why, given the benefits of sustainable housing, we find ourselves facing ongoing challenges with changing the housing industry around the world. We conclude the chapter (Sect. 1.6) with an overview of each chapter in the book.

1.2 A Changing World

Human activities are creating a climate crisis which will worsen without significant and urgent changes to the way we live as individuals and as a global society [1]. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),Footnote 2 continues to warn that time is running out as we speed towards irreversible outcomes triggered by changes to our natural environment [1, 10,11,12]. Average global surface temperatures between 2011 and 2020 were found to be 1.09 °C warmer than temperatures between 1850 and 1900, and we are seeing an increase in frequency and severity of natural disasters and weather events (e.g., fires, floods, storms) [1].

The impacts of a changing climate are wide ranging and will likely impact every aspect of our lives. Of increasing concern is not just the damage being done to the natural environment, but the social and financial implications this will have on us as individuals and as a global society, particularly because those most vulnerable in our communities face unequal impacts [13]. This includes the impact on our children and future generations who will bear the brunt of any impacts despite not contributing to the decisions that created the climate crisis. A report released by Save the Children InternationalFootnote 3 found that, even under proposed environmental protection and carbon emission plans as set out within the Paris Agreement from 2015 [14], a person born in 2020 compared to a person born in 1960 would experience on average [15]:

  • 2 times as many wildfires,

  • 2.8 times the exposure to crop failure,

  • 2.6 times as many droughts,

  • 2.8 times as many river floods, and

  • 6.8 times more heatwaves across their lifetimes.

Despite the climate emergency being the most significant environmental, social, and financial challenge of our time, governments, companies, and individuals around the world continue to hesitate on taking the urgent action required to transition to a low carbon future. Most climate and environment scientists have stated that we will need to reduce our global carbon emissions by 80% or more by 2050 to avoid catastrophic climate change [1]. While we have the technology and knowledge available to move towards and achieve this outcome, governments and other key stakeholders continue to delay making the necessary decisions to do so. The limited outcomes from the 26th United Nation Climate Change Conference of the Parties in Glasgow in November 2021, and the 27th United Nation Climate Change Conference of the Parties in Sharm El-Sheikh in November 2022, demonstrate the inability to deliver a global consensus on a way forward. The lack of consensus also demonstrates that there are still powerful, vested interests involved in key decision making with many embedded stakeholders from the current regimeFootnote 4 (e.g., fossil fuel industry) having undue influence.

While addressing climate change and greenhouse gas emissions has been a significant focus of many researchers and policy makers, our need for improved sustainability goes beyond just reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We are increasingly consuming goods and materials at faster rates than the world can replenish. Due to both an increasing population and increasing consumption from this larger population, World Overshoot DayFootnote 5 is occurring earlier each year. In 1972 the overshoot day occurred on December 25; 50 years later, in 2022, it occurred July 28 [17]. However, this impact is not equal around the word. In 2022, Qatar (10th February), USA and Canada (13th March), Australia (23rd March), and Denmark (28th March) were among the earliest overshoot dates, whereas Indonesia (3rd December), Jamaica (20th December), and South Sudan (25th December) were among the latest. As a global society, we are currently consuming at the rate of 1.75 planets per year, highlighting the challenge we face not only in reducing greenhouse gas emissions but also in living within the means of our planet [17].

Without a strong global agreement to address climate change and other sustainability challenges, there are increasing numbers of individuals, companies, and jurisdictions pursuing actions to move towards what is required for a low carbon future. However, more must be done across the globe to ensure this is a fair, equitable, and efficient transition, and that it does not leave those who are most vulnerable behind.

It is critical that any plans for a low carbon future incorporate the built environment (including our buildings, infrastructure, transport, and cities) [18, 19]. This is not just about what we add to the built environment (e.g., new buildings, roads), but also about what already exists. Sustainability retrofits of our existing built environment will be critical for a low carbon future [20,21,22,23].

The need to better consider the design, quality, and performance of our built environment is not a new concept [24]. For example, ideas around sustainable development were popularized in the Our Common Future report [25], which defined sustainable development as ‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromizing the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ (also known as the Brundtland definition). This definition considers both limited resources and intra- and inter-generational equity. This definition of sustainable development also tries to balance the potentially competing pillars of the environment, society, and economy. However, this type of development has been difficult in practice within a neo-classical capitalist market that prioritizes financial growth over environmental and social outcomes. Outcomes of sustainable development have not yet matched what is required for a low carbon future.

While the Brundtland definition of sustainable development has been useful for guiding discussion and actions towards sustainability, we argue, as others have over recent decades, that this definition is no longer fit for purpose and will not help us achieve the type of low carbon future we urgently need. When considering that the global population of more than 8 billion (2023) is expected to increase to almost 10 billion by the middle of the century, that natural resources are rapidly decreasing, there is growing disparity of inequity, and that there is the urgency of the climate crisis, it is clear that sustainable development as previously defined and applied is falling short of current and future needs.

Sustainability needs to go beyond the idea of ‘sustaining’ or limiting environmental impact. Given the current context, sustainability must be regenerative, where we actively work to undo much of the damage we have already created. One simple way to think about this is to look at a tree: a tree provides fresh air, nutrition, habitat, and shade, among other attributes, but it also needs soil, water, and other nutrients to survive and grow. A low carbon future is not only a future that produces significantly less carbon, but also a future in balance with the world’s resources so we can achieve a one planet outcome.

In addition to declaring the climate emergency, there have been several other critical global policy developments in recent years. These policies aim to address both environmental and social-equity issues which have been exacerbated in recent decades as the gap between jurisdictions and individuals with and without wealth continues to grow. Chief among these is the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In 2015 the United Nations General Assembly adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development which included 17 SDGs covering a range of issues facing vulnerable populations [26]:

  • GOAL 1: No Poverty

  • GOAL 2: Zero Hunger

  • GOAL 3: Good Health and Well-being

  • GOAL 4: Quality Education

  • GOAL 5: Gender Equality

  • GOAL 6: Clean Water and Sanitation

  • GOAL 7: Affordable and Clean Energy

  • GOAL 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth

  • GOAL 9: Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure

  • GOAL 10: Reduced Inequality

  • GOAL 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities

  • GOAL 12: Responsible Consumption and Production

  • GOAL 13: Climate Action

  • GOAL 14: Life Below Water

  • GOAL 15: Life on Land

  • GOAL 16: Peace and Justice Strong Institutions

  • GOAL 17: Partnerships for the Goals

While many of these have some overlap with the built environment, key SDGs for the housing sector include Goals 7, 11 and 12. Many jurisdictions and companies have adopted these goals and are aiming to achieve outcomes by 2030.

What is clear is that a transition to a low carbon future must be about more than environmental outcomes. We must use this opportunity to re-orient our global society to improve social and financial outcomes and close, or even eliminate, the gap in inequities that have continued to grow as the sustainability transition starts.

1.3 The Importance of Housing

Housing is imperative to meet our basic human needs. It plays an important role in providing households with a safe, secure place to live, and it creates opportunities for enhancing social capital outcomes like health and well-being. The importance of housing and the right to adequate housing is enshrined in the United Nations 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The United Nations states that [27, pp. 3–4]:

Adequate housing must provide more than four walls and a roof. A number of conditions must be met before particular forms of shelter can be considered to constitute “adequate housing.” These elements are just as fundamental as the basic supply and availability of housing. For housing to be adequate, it must, at a minimum, meet the following criteria:

  • Security of tenure: housing is not adequate if its occupants do not have a degree of tenure security which guarantees legal protection against forced evictions, harassment and other threats.

  • Availability of services, materials, facilities and infrastructure: housing is not adequate if its occupants do not have safe drinking water, adequate sanitation, energy for cooking, heating, lighting, food storage or refuse disposal.

  • Affordability: housing is not adequate if its cost threatens or compromises the occupants’ enjoyment of other human rights.

  • Habitability: housing is not adequate if it does not guarantee physical safety or provide adequate space, as well as protection against the cold, damp, heat, rain, wind, other threats to health and structural hazards.

  • Accessibility: housing is not adequate if the specific needs of disadvantaged and marginalized groups are not taken into account.

  • Location: housing is not adequate if it is cut off from employment opportunities, health-care services, schools, childcare centres and other social facilities, or if located in polluted or dangerous areas.

  • Cultural adequacy: housing is not adequate if it does not respect and take into account the expression of cultural identity.

Despite housing being a human right, there remain ongoing global issues with the delivery of ‘adequate’ housing as defined by the United Nations, and housing remains precarious for a large percentage of the global population. For example, the absence of adequate housing has negative consequences for both the overall rates of poverty and the ability to move out of poverty. The United Nations and others report that the number of people living in extreme poverty (living on less than US$1.90 per day) declined from almost 2 billion (or just over 35% of the global population) to 645 million (7.1% of the global population) between 1990 and 2019 [28]. However, this number increased to 738 million (9.5% of the global population) in 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, and was predicted to increase as the impact of the pandemic unfolded [28,29,30]. While the number of people living in extreme poverty has declined over recent decades (notwithstanding the impact of COVID-19), it is estimated that 3.3 billion people around the world still live below the poverty line of US$5.50 per day [30]. It is also reported that climate change is predicted to push more than 100 million additional people into poverty by 2030 [30].

There is a significant overlap between people in poverty and their housing situation. Globally, there were more than 1.03 billion people living in slums or informal settlements in 2018 [31]. The dwellings in these settlements typically do not meet the United Nations definition of adequate housing. Furthermore, there are more than 100 million people without homes [32]. Such outcomes are not limited to developing countries. For example, in Australia, around 3.24 million people (13.6% of the population) are living below the poverty line of 50% of the median income (AU$457 per week for a single adult), including 774,000 children under the age of 15 [33]. In the USA, there were 37.2 million people in poverty (11.4% of the total population) in 2020, which had increased by more than 3.3 million from 2019 [34].

It is not just the provision of housing that has impacts for households, but also the design, quality and performance of the dwelling. For example, a growing body of evidence demonstrates relationships between housing design, quality, and performance and the impacts on the social and economic well-being of households [7, 35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43]. Good dwelling design, quality, and performance can elevate a range of social benefits, while poor design, quality, and performance can lead to significant negative outcomes for households. This is not just an issue in developing countries but also in developed countries. For example, in New Zealand [44] it was found that:

  • around half of dwellings lacked adequate insulation in the roof space,

  • around half of dwellings do not have mechanical extract ventilation in the bathroom,

  • over half of dwellings have no heating in bedrooms,

  • 1 in 5 people said their homes were always or often colder than they would like in winter,

  • around 1 in 4 people heated their bedroom every or most nights in winter, and

  • around 1 in 3 people reported problems with damp and mould in their homes.

These negative outcomes are not just problematic for the individual household, but also have implications for policy makers and the wider community. For example, the cost of people living in the bottom 15% of United Kingdom (UK) housing costs the National Health Service £1.4 billion per year [45]. In many cases, vulnerable households have housing impacts exacerbated by a legacy of poor quality housing [46]. Furthermore, housing contributes to the accumulation of larger scale issues such as air quality. The United Nation reported that in 2016, 90% of urban residents were breathing polluted air that failed to meet World Health Organisation air quality guidelines [31]. Low- and middle-income countries are more severely impacted.

The design, quality, and performance of housing also impact how affordable a dwelling is to live in. Housing affordability is increasingly becoming a global issue. In many jurisdictions, the cost of both purchasing and renting a home has increased rapidly in recent years, an increase that is faster than the increase in wages. The wider housing research and policy community define housing affordability using the 30% threshold where housing is considered unaffordable when a household is spending more than 30% of their income on a mortgage or rent. Globally, there in an increasing percentage of households struggling with housing affordability and in many cities low to middle-income households can no longer afford to buy dwellings [47,48,49,50]. However, the traditional way of thinking about housing affordability as capital costs is likely masking a range of other housing and financial challenges, such as the cost of maintenance and daily living. The design, quality, and performance of a dwelling influence how much energy and other resources are required. Poor design, quality, and performing housing uses significantly more energy, water, and other resources compared to sustainable housing (see Sect. 1.4).

The cost of energy, for example, has rapidly increased in many locations making housing costs increasingly unaffordable. This has resulted in a growing number of households being in or near fuel (or energy) poverty [43, 51,52,53,54,55,56,57,58]. Fuel poverty is where a household cannot afford to pay for energy to meet basic living requirements (such as maintaining thermal comfort within a health range) or where the household self-rations energy consumption or makes other trade-offs to ensure energy bills can be met [55, 59]. This is not just an issue confined to developing countries or housing slums, but is a growing issue in jurisdictions like Australia, Europe, and the UK. Fuel poverty is not only about the economics of paying for energy consumption, but if a household is not able to consume sufficient energy to meet their basic needs such as heating and cooling, it has implications on their health and well-being. Research has found that renters and low-income households are predisposed to experiencing issues of fuel poverty, but it is an issue increasingly impacting other socio-economic groups [57, 58, 60].

Not only do we need to address the critical social issues touched on above, we need to do so within the context of a growing population. How and where to house people is a pressing issue for policy makers, planners, and wider communities. It is not just a matter of providing more housing, but making sure we do so in a way that is equitable, just, and ethical [61, 62]. The promise of sustainable housing not only addresses the climate emergency and resources used for construction, it also addresses wider social and financial issues.

1.4 The Promise of Sustainable Housing

The good news is that the housing sector is considered ‘a low hanging fruit’, which has the potential to improve environmental, social, and financial outcomes significantly for little, if any, additional costs. This is why the housing sector has been identified as a key sector within a range of local, national, and international strategies to move towards a low carbon future [3, 63,64,65,66,67,68]. There is an increasing number of examples from around the world that demonstrate the critical role that sustainable housing will play in an equitable and low carbon future. This will be discussed further in Sect. 1.5 and case studies can be found in Chaps. 6 and 7.

These real-world case studies, and an emerging body of research, demonstrate there are significant benefits for households, the wider community, the construction industry, and policy makers that can be delivered through significantly improving the design, quality, and performance, and sustainability of our new and existing dwellings. Such benefits include reducing environmental impact (during the construction, occupation, and end of life phases), reducing costs of living, improving occupant health and well-being, improving household and community resilience, creating a more stable energy network, and mitigating some of the social issues noted earlier [8, 47, 69,70,71].

For example, researchers have found that poor design, quality, and performance of a dwelling can significantly reduce occupants’ liveability, health, and well-being, and that improved design, quality, and performance can significantly enhance it [5, 8, 42, 43, 45, 60, 69, 70, 72,73,74,75,76,77,78,79,80,81,82,83]. Health benefits from improved design, quality, and performance include a reduction in respiratory disease, improved sleep, and a reduction of the severity of issues like arthritis, colds, coughs, and other milder ailments [7, 8, 37,38,39, 70, 72, 81]. Those who are most vulnerable, such as children, the elderly, or those who are low income, are often disproportionately impacted by negative health outcomes from housing. However, these groups also gain the most from significant design, quality, and performance improvements. Research from Boston (USA) found that a cohort of public housing tenants in sustainable housing experienced a reduction of 57% in self-reported health issues compared to standard public housing [84]. As noted earlier, this links to wider community costs and benefits, such as the cost implications for the health care system [45].

Improvements to the design, quality, and performance of a dwelling also results in reducing the need and usage of mechanical heating and cooling [9, 85]. There are some sustainable houses in certain climate zones that can provide year-round thermal comfort with no mechanical heating and cooling. A reduction in heating and cooling requirements has multiple benefits, including reducing energy consumption and therefore operating costs. This helps improve affordability outcomes for households. In an increasing number of examples, the reduction of energy requirements for heating and cooling, combined with other design and sustainable technology inclusions (e.g., renewable energy), has eliminated day-to-day bills related to energy and water costs. The ‘smart’ homes innovation is promising to elevate these benefits of more energy and water efficient homes. Integrating technologies and appliances places the household at the centre of a dynamic two-way interaction with the wider urban and energy environment and maximizes environmental, financial, and social outcomes [86,87,88].

By reducing living costs, sustainable housing can save households hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars each year. Research in Australia, for example, found that households in a high performing zero energy dwelling could save more than AUD$90,000 in energy bills over the assumed 40-year life of that dwelling [6]. This potential economic saving is likely to be even greater with the price of energy increasing more rapidly than previously predicted. The economic benefits do not just stop there. If owners re-invested energy savings into their mortgage payments, they could offset any additional capital costs associated with sustainable design which would reduce the interest paid on the home loan by more than AUD$50,000 across the loan’s life and result in paying off the house up to four years sooner. Research from the UK found that households in energy efficient housing were less likely to be in mortgage payment arrears than those in energy inefficient housing [89].

These types of benefits are also available when undertaking a largescale sustainability retrofit of existing housing. Even small retrofits such as draught sealing, installing ceiling fans, and other internal changes can reduce the requirement for mechanical heating and cooling and significantly reduce energy costs for households [21, 90, 91].

Sustainable housing also adds financial value at the point of sale or lease. Research from around the world finds that improving design quality and performance can result in an added sale value of 15% (or more) [7, 9, 92,93,94,95,96,97]. Some research has found that the added resale value from sustainable design and technology elements is greater than the cost of investment, such as with the case of heat pumps in the United States of America (USA), which were found to have an installation cost of around US$8000 but result in an added resale value of US$10,000–$17,000 [97]. In addition, research has found that houses with improved design, quality, and performance were on the market for less time [98]. There are also financial benefits when a sustainable dwelling is part of a wider sustainability focus. For example, access to local amenities such as parks or having a view can add a further 15% (or more) to resale value [99,100,101,102,103]. Recent research from Sydney, Australia, even found that an increase of tree canopy on the street could increase sale values of property by AUD$33,000–$61,000 [104].

The importance of what is around the outside of a dwelling is key for any discussion, not only for how to deliver sustainable housing, but also as part of a wider urban push towards improved sustainability. For example, increasing tree coverage and other natural features around dwellings can significantly reduce heat island impact (where excess heat is trapped within the built environment). An urban area with high coverage of trees or nature can reduce ambient air temperatures during extreme weather days by 15 °C or more [105,106,107,108]. A reduction in wider air temperature will keep dwellings cooler which reduces the need to use air conditioning and the associated costs for energy consumption. This can then have wider financial, social, and environmental benefits for the energy network by reducing the need to provide energy in peak weather events (which can be costly) and reducing issues such as energy blackouts due to high demand. It also impacts on peoples well-being. Research from Canada’s heat dome event in 2021 found there was an increase of community deaths by 440% due to the extreme conditions and that those who died had lower greenness within 100 m of their dwellings [109].

The good news is that an increasing amount of research and real-world examples of sustainable housing have demonstrated that it is possible to significantly improve the design, quality, and performance outcomes of new and existing housing within our current building practices and existing design, materials, technologies, and construction techniques (see Chaps. 6 and 7 for case studies). Notable case studies which have emerged over recent decades include the Vales Autonomous house and BedZED in the UK, Circle House in Denmark, Nightingale Housing, Lochiel Park and Cape Paterson ecovillage in Australia, and zHome in the USA [110,111,112,113,114,115,116].

Many of these examples, and those presented in later chapters, show that sustainable housing has a range of benefits beyond just improving environmental outcomes and it has the capacity to address a number of the wider social equity and justice concerns touched on earlier in the chapter [8, 47, 57, 70, 117]. However, delivering these sustainable and ethical outcomes is currently easier said than done. Barrett et al. [61, p. 3] state that ‘ethically oriented cities will ultimately be the ones that succeed in enhancing resilience, improving quality of life, creating productive economics and reducing the environmental burden for all residents’.

1.5 The Current System

While the benefits of sustainable housing are clear within a research context, there is only a small percentage of the housing market that currently achieves design, quality, and performance outcomes in line with what is required for a low carbon future. The low uptake, despite the benefits such housing provides, points to market failures [118]. With a ‘perfect’ neo-classical market, the belief is that if housing consumers or the housing construction industry sees value in improving the design, quality, and performance of the housing stock, consumers or building stakeholders will drive such improvements [6]. However, this is not occurring. For example, more than 80% of new dwellings in Australia are built to only meet minimum standards and only 1.3% of all new housing in the UK was built to the Energy Performance Certificate rating ‘A’ between 2020 and 2021 [19, 119]. This wider market structure has been challenged within the environmental economics and broader social and sustainability literature [1, 3, 6, 9, 19, 62].

Due to these market failures, governments have introduced, and then periodically revised, minimum design, quality, and performance requirements for new and existing dwellings. The housing construction industry is often resistant to the introduction or improvement of these regulations, claiming that such requirements create ‘red tape’ that adds time and costs to construction or renovations which is then passed onto consumers and further adds to affordability issues [6, 120]. They also often state that they are delivering the type of design, quality, and performance of housing that consumers want.

The introduction of minimum building design, quality, and performance requirements by many jurisdictions over recent decades has been shown to be effective at lifting the bottom of the market and improving sustainability outcomes [65]. A range of studies has found that building energy codes have improved energy performance in housing by up to 20% (or more) [121, 122]. Despite the argued lack of progress towards the type of sustainable housing we will need to ensure a low carbon future, there has been a surprisingly long policy history in some jurisdictions with minimum performance requirements introduced into building codes as early as the 1940s [123, 124]. In many cases, these minimum requirements do not yet require outcomes that align with a low carbon future or with our earlier definitions of sustainable housing [125, 126]. There are a small, but increasing, number of jurisdictions who have made more significant progress in this space (e.g., California, the European Union), as will be discussed in more detail in Chap. 2.

There is also a range of other policy mechanisms which have been implemented in different jurisdictions in recent years. Of note is the mandatory disclosure policies that require dwelling owners to provide the energy or sustainability information of their property to be provided at point of sale or lease [127]. The intent of such a policy is to provide potential purchasers or renters with more information about their housing choice, and an incentive for the current owner to consider and undertake retrofit activities that would improve the rating and (ideally) realize increased financial value.

Additionally, planning schemes in many jurisdictions have also been important for driving sustainable housing outcomes, either when minimum building code requirements fall short or as complementary measures to help deliver enhanced outcomes [128,129,130,131]. For example, design guidelines at the dwelling or neighbourhood level and other mechanisms such as creating ‘zones’ have been used to some success in various jurisdictions.

Despite these approaches, there is an urgent need to do more to transition to a low carbon future. This book unpacks many of the ideas touched on in this chapter and explores them in more detail with a key focus on how we can equitably scale up the delivery of sustainable housing as part of that low carbon transition.

1.6 Overview of the Book

Clearly, as a society, we find ourselves at a critical juncture in relation to many critical environmental, social, and financial issues. How we address these issues over the coming decades will determine what type of future we create and what type of world we leave for future generations. This book starts from the position that we must urgently transform our housing to become more sustainable, not only from an environmental perspective but also to enhance social and financial outcomes for households. If we delay in making the changes necessary, we will be locking in substandard housing and impacts on households for decades to come.

A transition to low carbon housing is going to require more than just incremental change to housing design, quality, and performance. This book aims to challenge policy makers, planners, housing construction industry stakeholders and housing and urban researchers to rethink what housing is, how we design and construct our housing, and how we can better integrate impacts on households to wider social policy development.

In Chap. 2 we explore how we are broadly providing housing currently around the world and look at how multiple market failures have resulted in housing design, quality, and sustainability being undervalued by policy makers, the housing construction industry and housing consumers. We discuss how building codes, planning systems, and a range of alternative mechanisms have attempted to address these market failures.

Chapter 3 further explores a number of the key points raised in Chap. 1 and focuses on why we are at a critical juncture where we need to make urgent changes if we are to provide sustainable housing to help achieve that low carbon future. We explore how this is not just about addressing environmental issues but also an opportunity to address a range of other social justice and equity issues which have been exacerbated by rapidly spiralling housing unaffordability and design, quality, and performance issues around the world.

Following this, Chap. 4 presents the sustainable housing challenge and presents a number current and future challenges preventing a sustainable housing transition. We look at these changes across a number of different scales include the dwelling scale, neighbourhood and city scale and the state, national and international scale and discuss what these mean in the context of a sustainable housing transition.

In Chap. 5 we present an overview of sustainability transitions theory as a framework which could help us facilitate a transition to a sustainable housing future. We explore the theory including recent sustainable housing transitions research. In doing this, we identify a number of socio-technical dimensions which we argue are important for addressing if we are to create deep structural changes to enable a wider sustainable housing transition.

These socio-technical dimensions are then discussed in detail in Chap. 6 where we define the dimensions and explore the contrast of how they are addressed by the current housing regime and sustainable housing niche. We provide short examples to demonstrate how these dimensions are being addressed in practice.

Building upon this, Chap. 7 presents six key sustainable housing themes: high performing housing, small housing, shared housing, neighbourhood-scale housing, circular housing, and innovative financing for housing. We highlight how these themes are challenging the existing regime and discuss how the theme and specific case studies are demonstrating the socio-technical dimensions.

We then reflect in Chap. 8 upon these case studies, and the key discussions and evidence from the earlier chapters of this book, to discuss the sustainable housing transition including where we are placed in that transition, potential pathways forward and challenges that still need to be addressed. We then reflect on the types of innovation across policy, practice, and research required to help facilitate the sustainable housing transition.

In Chap. 9, the final chapter of the book, we go back and revisit the core ideas woven throughout and summarize the current situation we find ourselves in relation to the provision of housing which is not going to meet our environmental or societal needs moving forward. We discuss the prospects for change and explore where that change needs to occur. We finish the chapter with some concluding reflections.