Keywords

5.1 Introduction

Across the previous chapters, we discussed the current provision of housing and the need to transition to a sustainable housing future. We explored the benefits of sustainable housing, not just in terms of playing a critical role in achieving a low carbon future by 2050, but also the wider social and household benefits sustainable housing could provide such as reducing living costs and improving health and wellbeing outcomes. This was followed by a discussion on how we have been improving design, quality, and performance requirements of new and existing housing, largely guided by regulations. Despite some progress, we are now at a critical juncture. The decisions made over the coming years will have significant implications for decades to come. However, we have argued there are a range of policy and market failures and other contemporary challenges that need to be addressed in order to provide a sustainable housing future.

In this chapter, we explore the concept of sustainability transitions and how it offers a framework to change some of the deep structural elements and embeddedness within the current housing regime. Much of the focus in improving the design, quality, and performance of housing has resulted in minor tweaks rather than the more significant changes required to provide sustainable housing at the scale and rate required for a low carbon future. We begin this chapter with an overview of sustainability transitions theory and research, including exploring where sustainability transitions occur. Following this, we note emerging sustainable housing and transitions research and identify several important socio-technical dimensions for change which will be discussed in more detail in Chaps. 6 and 7.

5.2 Sustainability Transitions

Although technological innovation and ecological modernizationFootnote 1 remain important for environmental outcomes, wider approaches to innovation are being argued for as a result of shifts in understanding and urgency to addressing issues such as climate change and the need for a transition to a low carbon future [1,2,3,4]. The field of sustainability transitions focuses on the trajectory of change towards sustainability and seeks to uncover the origins, patterns, and mechanisms that drive these transitions. Sustainability transitions theories build on an ecological modernization framing by requiring innovation while also questioning the need for technology by advocating for social considerations, environmental outcomes, and governance as well as generating deep structural change in order to achieve a transition to a low carbon future [5,6,7]. Sustainability transitions are co-evolutionary and involve a broad range of actors whereby innovations related to sustainability are adopted more broadly [7,8,9,10].

In this context, a sustainability transition is a process of structural, non-linear systems change in dominant practices (routines, behaviour, action), structures (institutions, economy, infrastructure), and cultures (shared values, paradigms, worldviews) from one state, stage, subject, or place to another [8, 10]. Such a transition typically takes place over a period of decades, although more recently there has been a focus on trying to manage and accelerate these transitions given the urgency due to climate change and other social drivers [11,12,13].

The field of sustainability transitions emerged in the 1990s as a response to short-term policy making around the world. Its origins are in science and technology studies, complex systems analysis, and governance, but many more themes have since emerged. The early theory, policy, and practical applications of sustainability transitions emerged from the Netherlands, but other countries have embraced sustainability transitions research and/or policy development including the UK, Austria, Belgium, Finland, USA, Mexico, Spain, and Australia [1, 14, 15].

There are three core beliefs that differentiate the field of sustainability transitions from sustainability science or development:

  1. 1.

    The systemic fight picture

  2. 2.

    Non-linearity and dynamics in phases (s-curve)

  3. 3.

    Transitions as a solution to persistent problems

The systemic fight picture is where one or more alternative systems emerge to replace or transform a dominant system, leading to a better system overall. This concept is presented through the multi-level perspective (MLP), where transitions are conceived as the interference of processes at three levels: ‘innovation (niche experiments), structure (the regime), and long-term, exogenous trends (the landscape)’ [10, p. 4]. The MLP is a framework to understand socio-technical configurations and the processes by which niches displace existing dominant or mainstream technologies [7, 16]. The MLP is divided into three levels that form a nested hierarchy (see Fig. 5.1). This nested hierarchy demonstrates that regimes are embedded within socio-technical landscapes, and niches within regimes. Landscapes influence change both on niches and regimes; in return, niches (may) change the regimes and a new regime (may) change the landscape in the longer term. One of the strengths of the MLP is that transitions are viewed as non-linear processes [17].

Fig. 5.1
A graph plots landscape versus time. Niches predevelop, take off, accelerate in protected and unprotected spaces, and stabilize. Regime develops under the influences including policy, science, and culture where niches breakthrough to create new or adapt to change under the pressure of landscape.

The MLP and interactions between the three nested hierarchical levels [adapted from 7]

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Niches are generally thought of as protected spaces that are significantly different alternatives to the existing technological regime, where rules, behaviours, practices, and wider social elements can develop without typical market, competition, and innovation pressures [18, 19]. Strategic niche management [20,21,22] focuses on creating protective spaces for niches. This protection provides learning opportunities, creates more robust innovations, and allows for new networks to develop [20, 23]. This can help to address barriers including technological factors (such as a new technology not fitting into existing systems), a lack of support for development within government policy, and market challenges (such as high costs for consumers). To create protected spaces for niches, transitions researchers have identified the importance of shielding, nurturing, and empowering niches [23, 24].

The multi-phase concept or the s-curve (Fig. 5.2) represents the ideal transition: a transition where the system can adjust itself to changing internal and external dynamics [10]. The s-curve is useful for illustrating historical change, where the speed and acceleration of the transition helps to explain the trajectory of the change. While there are an increasing number of current transitions case studies, most empirical analyses that have informed the development of transitions theory are based upon historical case studies, including sailing ship to steam ship [7], coal to gas energy [25], modernization of Dutch agriculture [26], and industrialized to sustainable agriculture in Switzerland [27]. Conceptually, four different phases of transition have been distinguished [8]:

  • Pre-development—There is limited visible change at the systems level; however, substantial experimentation and development in the niche level occurs to find a challenger/s to the current regime. Pressure for change starts to build on the current regime.

  • Take-off—When enough pressure is exerted on the existing regime, the niche challenger can begin to destabilize it and increase its own diffusion.

  • Acceleration—At a certain point, the existing regime will be destabilized enough for the niche challenger to make significant structural changes (socio-cultural, economic, ecological, and institutional) more rapidly and with less resistance.

  • Stabilization—Once the speed of change decreases and deep structural changes have occurred, a new socio-technical regime is achieved.

Fig. 5.2
A graph plots size versus time. It has an S-shaped trend.

S-curve development across time

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Persistent problems are complex, uncertain, and hard to manage. The field of sustainability transitions is normative, as it believes in finding solutions to create a more sustainable future. These solutions should come from a place of co-design and learning [10], something that is more explicit in transition management and emerging theories that incorporate politics and power. Transitions management is a theoretical framework and a practical, collaborative process to support those that want to affect positive change towards a more sustainable future. The transitions management framework assesses how societal actors deal with complex societal issues at different levels but consequently, it can also be used to develop and implement strategies to influence these ‘natural’ governance processes [28, p. 168]. Transitions management can be applied to larger systems, as well as subsystems and specific projects. By ‘bringing together frontrunners from policy, science, business, and society to develop shared understandings of complex transition challenges; [transitions management] develop[s] collective transitions visions and strategies; and experimentally implementing strategic social innovations’ [29, p. 14]. Scholars have identified four types of governance activities that are relevant for sustainability transitions [30]:

  • Strategic—problem structuring, envisioning, and the establishing a transitions arena

  • Tactical—developing coalitions, images, and transition agendas

  • Operational—mobilizing actors and executing projects and experiments

  • Reflexive—evaluating, monitoring, and learning

Within the field of sustainability transitions, the transformation of a regime is typically the result of ‘a particular power struggle between the current regime, upcoming niches and landscape pressures’ [31, p. 545]. Researchers have been focusing on understanding the role of power in transitions, identifying who has the power (and who does not), and exploring if and how power dynamics can be identified during a transition [32,33,34,35,36,37,38]. Given our previous discussions around the housing construction industry and the attempts to improve outcomes through governance, power has been an ongoing challenge within the push for sustainable housing.

Despite the work on power within transitions, there has been a delayed but growing focus around ethics and justice in transitions [39,40,41]. This has emerged from the need to ensure that sustainability transitions are “just” and do not leave people behind, especially those people who are most vulnerable. Researchers have been exploring how ethics and justice considerations can not only help identify problems but also help shape and guide solutions and wider transitions processes [13, 40, 42,43,44]. This includes exploring the transitions dynamics that create, embed, exacerbate, or reduce issues with ethics implications like poverty, inequality, and access [13]. Ethics and justice in transitions have been applied across different jurisdictions, scales, and industry sectors, including mobility [44], energy [45, 46], and cities [47]. In this book, we will consider ethics and justice within housing transitions which has not yet received much attention.

5.3 Where Do Transitions Occur?

For a long time, considerations of place and scale were often overlooked in transitions theory. While it suited case study analysis to ignore these elements, contemporary transitions have increasingly been occurring beyond traditional geographic boundaries, especially as we face global environmental (and other) challenges where fixed boundaries no longer apply. Transitions researchers have become more interested in the role of place and scale and exploring things such as why a transition may occur in one place and not another, why transitions develop differently depending on the location, and what the importance of and implications are for spatial scales for the transitions process [48]. More explicit acknowledgement of place can support reflection and theoretical advancement as theories from transitions studies are used in different parts of the world [49]. Place and scale are particularly important for sustainable housing given that the construction of housing is increasingly reliant on global supply chains and involves the complexity of not only improving outcomes for new housing but also for existing housing within established environments. This places a sustainable housing transition at both the global and local scales.

In a review of geography and transitions, Hansen and Coenen [48] highlighted the importance of cities and urban regions within transitions research. Cities, and the municipal networks they belong to, play an increasingly vital role in climate change action [50,51,52]. Cities are also viewed as places of experimentation [53], and transitions scholars are now investigating urban experiments and living labs (conceptually and empirically) as processes and pathways to connect place-base experiments to systemic change [54,55,56]. Living labs offer a forum for innovation to develop new products, systems, services, or processes through co-creation to explore and evaluate new ideas in complex and real-world contexts [57], contrasting with the more deliberative “innovation spaces” approach of strategic niche management. In urban living labs, society becomes the laboratory rather than the technology or businesses that produce or adopt it. Urban living labs create the place where actors and organizations test new things to improve and re-shape systems and, most importantly, learn from their successes and failures as they go [58].

Transitions occur within and across many socio-technical systems, domains, and sectors, including energy, water, food and agriculture, finance, buildings, and transportation. Many of these sectors have experienced major shifts or transitions and are likely to do so again in the future [59]. Sector-focused transitions research tends to study past or ongoing transitions and the potential for (or barriers to) future transitions, or actively tries to facilitate transitions. Studying a specific sector provides researchers with boundaries to investigate complex problems, much like geographic scale or location. Sectors are comprised of networks of actors, which include be individuals, firms, and other organizations, institutions, which represent norms, regulations, standards of good practice, and material artefacts and knowledge [34].

One of the initial sectors that received significant attention within the sustainability transitions field was energy. This focus was largely on how previous and ongoing energy transitions occurred, as well opportunities for transitions from fossil fuel energy systems to renewable energy systems [15, 60,61,62,63,64,65,66,67]. Energy transitions research has explored issues around politics, policies, markets, actors, power, and lock-in of existing fossil fuel systems. In more recent years, the focus has started to shift from energy as one large isolated domain to acknowledge the smaller scales and decentralized nature of energy systems and that energy overlaps across domains such as the built environment and housing. As discussed in earlier chapters, for the past few decades, the focus of improving housing performance from an environmental perspective has really been on improving energy efficiency, reducing energy consumption, and (more recently) finding opportunities to shift away from fossil fuel to renewables.

Within the realm of energy transitions, there has been an increasing focus on the role of households and renewables as part of the broader sustainability transition. Bergman and Eyre [68] explored the role that small-scale renewable energy generation (microgeneration) could play in a transition to a low carbon future in the UK. What they found was that this shift in energy generation technologies had the potential to facilitate deep structural changes relating to energy consumption. For example, people who generate their own energy would go from being energy consumers to “energy citizens” that consume and produce energy, giving them new responsibilities, levels of awareness, and agency. This would be a significant departure from the existing energy regime and has a role to play in a transition to sustainable housing. This is already playing out around the world. For example, more than one third of dwellings in Australia now have solar PV on their roofs and this is fundamentally shifting the discussions around energy generation and what it means for sustainable housing [69].

There has also been a focus on the energy consumed to power the built environment. This includes the need to shift from fossil fuel energy to more sustainable energy alternatives (such as electric vehicles and bicycles charged by renewable energy technology) and the provision of more opportunities to move away from individual cars to improved active and public transport. Where a dwelling is built and how well it is connected to local amenities and services is important, but much of the focus on sustainability transitions for transportation has focused more on how transport can be made more sustainable. Discussions on transportation transitions have generally overlooked considerations of why people need to travel and how the provision of ideas like the 15- or 20-minute neighbourhood should be part of any solutions.

Across transitions studies, firms, businesses, and other industry actors are increasingly being recognized as playing important roles in sustainability transitions [13]. These institutions and actors are often part of the regime,Footnote 2 those who shape and influence societal elements such as policies, regulations, technologies, user practices, and cultural meanings. Transitions scholars have typically been interested in how these industries and businesses contribute to or slow down transitions [13]. New directions in this area of research include destabilization and decline of industries, change across industries such as the impact of information and communications technology, the role of finance capital and regulation, institutional dynamics, and business model innovation [13, 70, 71]. Businesses and industries also offer interesting perspectives for transitions research because they intersect with other areas of study, including politics, social movements, and geography [13, 70].

Another avenue of research commanding increasing attention is the need to better conceptualize different actors and their changing roles and interactions within sustainability transitions [38, 72,73,74,75]. Transitions scholars have emphasized that actors in supporting roles are important to the success of innovations and transitions processes [58, 76]. Identified as intermediaries and champions, these are individuals that create spaces for innovations to occur, facilitate innovation processes, and act as knowledge brokers and networkers [76]. Users are another set of actors that play an important role in transitions processes. Users are active players in these processes, championing change [76] and contributing to new innovations in technologies, products, and practices [77]. In addition to being consumers, users can also be voters within democratic institutions and participants in political and social movements [78]. Lastly, niche actors, those who develop or work on innovations, ‘create a starting point for systemic change’ by working within or against dominant systems [74, p. 6]; niche actors try to ‘convince the wider social world that the rules of the game need to be changed’ [23, p. 1033].

5.4 Sustainable Housing Transitions

Recent years have seen an increasing focus on housing within sustainability transitions [6, 11, 12, 76, 77, 79,80,81,82,83,84,85,86,87,88,89,90,91,92,93,94]. Core to this research has been the recognition that incremental improvements or changes to housing quality and performance requirements are not sufficient for providing the type of housing required for a low carbon future. In response to market failures, researchers exploring housing through a transitions lens have argued that, in order to provide the housing we need both now and in the future, we need more than just a technical solution and will require deep structural changes to the way housing is provided and used [95].

An increasing number of researchers have attempted to explore these deep structural changes and impacts for sustainable housing. For example, research by Bergman et al. [6, 96] explored sustainable housing pathways in the UK with a focus on identifying deep structural changes that are critical to provide a sustainable housing transition. The researchers found that, if deep structural changes are to be achieved, significant pressure must be placed on the existing regime not only by niche actors but also by landscape elements (e.g., climate change). Further, they identified that significant support must be given to niche actors to allow them to develop and challenge the existing regime (protected space); the emergence of urban living labs (as discussed above) has been an attempt to try and facilitate this. Bergman et al. [6, 96] concluded that it is possible to achieve deep structural change on a pathway to sustainable low carbon housing, but that it will require radical changes to current housing and energy performance regulations.

In recent years, scholarship has further explored the role of policy and regulations within the housing space through a transitions lens including our own previous work [62, 79, 85, 91, 97]. Tambach et al. [62] concluded that several critical elements are missing from the current range of policies in the Netherlands hindering a transition to a sustainable housing future. These included a lack of a long-term policy agenda (and, in turn, short and medium-term goals and visions), a lack of up-skilling industry in preparation for changes, and a requirement for financial reconfiguration (e.g., niche protection through rebates and low interest home loans). Edmondson et al. [91] adds that sustainable housing policies must include mechanisms to produce positive feedback early, that there must be adequate support and resources provided, and that clarity of information is critical. Without these elements, the authors argue that policies, even if they are well intentioned, can lead to uncertainty and inertia. In our own research, we have looked at the role of mandatory and voluntary policy approaches for driving a sustainable housing transition and found that voluntary approaches (e.g., non-mandatory sustainability rating tools) are critical for driving the top end of the market while mandatory requirements are important for lifting the bottom of the market [85]. However, Kivimaa and Martiskainen [97] analysis of sustainable housing in the UK demonstrates that the development of policies or support does not guarantee outcomes. In their analysis, they explored how, after a long period of pre-development followed by an initial take-off of sustainable housing policy, the policy commitments underwent a period of backtracking driven by the government watering down broader climate ambitions and rescinding a range of policy and support packages.

Beyond the policy focus, work by Smith [5, 82] has been important for understanding the context and practices of sustainable housing as a niche in comparison to the wider housing regime. Table 5.1 compares the clear socio-technical differences across the two housing types. As reflected by Smith, sustainable housing in the early part of the century was characterized through small scale, bespoke housing with a strong and connected community committed to an active sustainability lifestyle.

Table 5.1 Contrasting socio-technical practices in sustainable housing niche and mainstream housing regime [adapted from 82, 86]
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As discussed in earlier chapters, ideas and practical outcomes of sustainable housing have shifted in recent years compared to the characterization put forward by Smith. For example, no longer is sustainable housing only being provided as bespoke single dwellings but is starting to be provided at scale. The sustainable housing transition has also shifted from being more focused on new housing [5, 82, 98] to how to retrofit existing housing [12, 92, 99]. It is also broadening to consider connection and engagement with other sectors such as energy, transport, and justice. This means questions are being asked by researchers as to whether sustainable housing is (still) a niche or if it is something else.

More recent research has also challenged the previous passive consideration of the household within transitions research and has called for greater focus on the role households will play in the transition [83, 100]. For example, Greene [101] writes about how household consumption practices are both shaped by, and shape, housing performance and outcomes. There has been a lack of consideration of this within the conceptualization and provision of sustainable housing to date. Further, Martiskainen et al. [90] explored the development of residential heat pumps from a niche to challenging the regime in Finland and the UK. The research drew upon the different users identified by Schot et al. [77]: user-producers, user-legitimators, user-intermediaries, and user-citizens. Martiskainen et al. [90] found that the role of users was important for shaping the heat pump transition in Finland and achieving an outcome where heat pumps were normalized. Conversely, in the UK, users had not been as actively involved and uptake of heat pumps in the UK was still considered a developing niche. The UK case also highlighted the challenge of the powerful regime with reports that government support for heat pumps was tempered due to concerns around push back from the powerful “gas mafia”. This case also highlighted that the wider socio-financial contexts were important (e.g., the cost of gas heating in the UK was still quite cheap at the time and it had a strong regime).

What is clear within the emerging sustainable housing transitions research is that there is an increased focus on housing and how it can transition to a sustainable future. Further, as progress is made around the world to lift housing quality and performance outcomes, this continues to raise the bar for what a sustainable housing transition looks like and what could, or should, be looked at within this space in terms of mechanisms or approaches to provide a sustainable housing outcome. In our early work [86], we argued that the rapid uptake and normalizing of residential solar PV around the world has shifted the discussion around energy consumption and generation in housing, and reflected on what that means for what the benchmark was for sustainable housing. While the rapid uptake of solar PV in Australia was likely more influenced by rising energy prices than sustainable housing or wider sustainability considerations, it has led to significant outcomes for more than a third of the population. This means that the benchmark for sustainable housing is different to what it was a decade ago and will likely be different in another decade as battery storage and other technologies/materials enter the market and become cost efficient.

5.5 Conclusion

We feel that the sustainable housing research, both broadly and within the transitions space, has not taken the opportunity to question what housing is and where it is going. The housing market in many developed countries continues to provide very typical housing typologies without questioning if that really is meeting consumer needs not only now but also into a changing future. For example, in countries like Australia and the USA there has been a preference for increasing house sizes which has implications for sustainability and the cost of living. Small houses have had a stigma attached to them, but (as discussed in Chap. 7) the tiny housing and small space movement is showing what can be done with small spaces when careful design and construction is applied. We believe that researchers, policy makers, the building industry, and housing consumers must take the opportunity to critically question not only the quality and performance of housing, but also if it is meeting our needs. This questioning needs to occur at the same time as challenging the deep structural changes of the existing regime.

Sustainability transitions offer researchers, policy makers, and practitioners a framework or lens which may be able to address the limitations of current policy and market thinking. Of particular interest to transitions researchers over recent years has been how to enable and manage such transitions. While there are critiques over if a sustainability transition can be ‘managed’ there is increasing evidence that the more we can understand about current or potential transitions, the better placed we will be to help guide transitions as they emerge.

Sustainable housing has received increasing focus within the sustainability transitions literature and by policy makers looking at deeper structural changes. The work by Smith [5, 82] and others helped map out the existing housing regime as well as the emergence of the sustainable housing niche. However, developments in the sustainable housing space in recent years means sustainable housing has moved beyond a niche and finds itself at the core intersection of a range of sector, scale, and industry development. Drawing upon the recent sustainable housing transitions research we have identified a number of important socio-technical dimensions which we feel will play an important role in providing that sustainable housing future. We discuss these in more detail in Chap. 6.