Keywords

6.1 Introduction

In the previous chapters, we have made the case for why we need to urgently transition to a sustainable housing future for new and existing housing. This transition is needed both as part of the wider transition to a low carbon future and for the benefits such housing will provide occupants such as improving affordability and health and well-being outcomes. Our current way of providing housing has failed to sufficiently improve the quality and performance of housing in many regions of the world. As such, improving these outcomes has relied on setting and increasing minimum housing performance regulations. However, while there have been improvements in recent decades, the speed at which we need to transition to a sustainable housing future means more must be done to address a range of market failures. Every year we delay making the required changes, we continue to lock an increasing number of households into poor quality and performing housing which will be costly and (potentially) challenging to retrofit at a later stage. In the previous chapter, we explored the concept of sustainability transitions and of how this may offer us a frame to change deep structural elements and embeddedness within our current housing regime. We argued that this framing is required if we are to move beyond incremental sustainability improvements and unlock more significant change.

In this chapter, we explore key socio-technical dimensions that we have identified through the wider literature and our own sustainable housing research which we feel are important to address if a transition to sustainable housing is to be achieved. These dimensions build upon the dimensions identified by Smith [1] but have been updated and added to as informed by more recent research and developments across the housing and sustainable housing space [2]. Table 6.1 outlines and defines the ten socio-technical dimensions we cover in this chapter.

Table 6.1 Outline and definition of socio-technical dimensions important for a sustainable housing transition
Full size table

This chapter explores each dimension in turn by providing a definition, overview of how the current housing regime engages with it and how sustainable housing offers a different approach. We also provide a short example of how this is being provided or considered in practice. In Chap. 7, we explore these dimensions further through in-depth case studies.

6.2 Guiding Principles

For this book, we define guiding principles as the embedded moral values that establish a framework for expected behaviour, practices, and decision making. As discussed in earlier chapters, the existing housing regime in many regions of the world is dominated by entrenched guiding principles located within the frame of neo-classical markets and by stakeholders who use this approach to design, construct, and maintain housing in a certain way—low quality and low cost—with little consideration for the environment and follow the minimum building code and local planning system requirements [3,4,5,6,7]. There is a disconnect between this typical housing provision and what is required for a sustainable and equitable future for everyone.

Typical guiding principles for many (but not all) stakeholders in the housing industry are generally focused on refining the business model. This model was developed over many decades and is geared towards maximizing financial profit, often at the expense of improving housing quality and performance outcomes for households [3, 8,9,10]. This approach sees the provision of new housing and the renovation/retrofit of existing housing as primarily a business transaction, taking advantage of any opportunity to reduce costs, time, or resources to improve the financial bottom line. This approach is not overly concerned with the housing consumer experience or with what happens after the completion of the dwelling or renovation/retrofit project. The broader housing sector would likely challenge this point and argue they are providing housing that consumers want, even if that does not align with what we need in relation to addressing the environmental and social housing issues discussed earlier in the book.

The lack of care and consideration by much of the existing housing regime is evident through the amount of basic, as well as more significant, defects in many new dwellings. For example, recent research in Australia found that up to 85% of new dwellings in some jurisdictions contain defects such as cracks in floors or walls and issues with water proofing [11]. Financial and social defects do not only impact the homeowner [3]; defects also have significant financial impacts on those builders, developers and other key stakeholders responsible. For example, the cost of rework can amount to almost 5% of the overall project contract value [12,13,14], and can reduce company profits in some cases by approximately one third [15]. The impacts of poor quality and performing dwellings can escalate into systematic issues where governments are forced to step in and provide financial or other supports. The flammable cladding crisis (e.g., Australia, UK, Dubai) and the leaky homes/condo sagas (e.g., New Zealand and Canada) demonstrate some of the more extreme outcomes of systematic shortcomings across the housing sector [3].

In addition to issues surrounding quality of work, the wider housing sector typically builds only to minimum performance and sustainability standards. For example, in Australia, research into new housing construction found more than 80% of new dwellings only just met minimum regulatory requirements with less than 1.5% being designed and built to meet optimal cost and sustainability as outlined by researchers [16].

On the other hand, sustainable housing has been identified by both researchers and sustainable housing advocates as having a completely different set of guiding principles, which have continued to evolve over time as the sustainable housing sector grows [1, 2]. The drivers and motivations of sustainable housing stakeholders is not only centred on the housing consumers, but more largely on improved quality and reducing environmental impact—both in construction and during the life of the dwelling and household [17]. In effect, sustainable housing flips the thinking of the dwelling from being a place to sleep and eat to an opportunity to enhance the quality of life; it focuses on liveability and affordability for the household and shifts from short-term thinking to life cycle thinking. The aim is to ensure that the impacts and benefits of materials, technologies, and other elements of a dwelling are considered across the life of a dwelling, including during the dwelling’s end of life [18, 19]. Within this set of guiding principles, the idea of financial profit is not a dominant consideration. Instead, financial considerations are linked to what can be achieved within the set budget and is thought about more from the perspective of the wider financial, social, and environmental value provided.

With a focus on improving the quality of a dwelling, sustainable housing aims to mitigate the number and range of defects [3]. This is done through more thoughtfully considering design and materials. This is also achieved through delivering a quality project the first time, which helps to reduce costs. Reducing costs can help to make housing more affordable from a capital perspective. If issues with quality did arise, a direct chain between the key stakeholders involved (e.g., builder) and homeowner allow for an open discussion on finding a resolution. Sustainable housing also goes significantly beyond what is set within minimum building code requirements by taking a more holistic view of the key sustainability elements. Typical building codes have had a narrow focus or definition of sustainability (e.g., focused on reducing energy for thermal comfort), but sustainable housing expands this to include considerations of water, transport, materials, and life cycle impacts with an increasing number of developments working to achieve outcomes within our current planetary means (e.g., one planet living and self-sufficiency living).

Guiding principles of sustainable housing have evolved in more recent years to consider a range of different elements such as ensuring affordability (across the life of the dwelling), transparency of decision making, community collaboration, occupant health and well-being, and ethical supply chains [2, 20]. This evolution is also about supporting the sharing of intellectual property (including what has worked but also any issues that emerge) across stakeholders to enable a wider collaborative approach to advancing the work and knowledge of others. This has elevated how we define sustainable housing—what it is and what it can deliver—not just for households, but for those in the housing industry engaged with providing, maintaining, and upgrading this type of housing.

6.2.1 Living Within Planetary Means

Living within our planetary means has become an increasing focus and a core starting point in terms of guiding principles for sustainable housing developments and retrofit projects. This focus on reducing the ecological impact from housing, and associated practices that occur within housing, is not only about addressing climate change but also about overconsumption of resources. We have one planet, and that planet has a finite number of resources and a limited capacity to replenish them [21]. Many examples have emerged over recent decades of individual dwellings and larger communities being designed, constructed, and used in ways that reduce the ecological footprint of the household and development down to near, or under, the resources required for living within our planetary means.

One example is the development of the rating framework ‘One Planet Living’,Footnote 1 which was developed by Bioregional in the early 2000s to help developments achieve this outcome. A notable example of a development following this framework is BedZED (UK) which was completed in 2002 and is still widely recognized as an early exemplar sustainable housing development that went beyond just providing a technical solution and reframed the idea of sustainable housing through the guiding principles of living within our planetary means [22]. Another approach has been the (re)emergence of self-sufficiency [23]. The idea of self-sufficiency is about living a lower environmental impact lifestyle and includes considerations for reducing finance and resource waste through frugality, growing your own food, producing and collecting sufficient energy and water onsite, reducing debt, living simply, and even using local materials for construction [24]. For example, Earthship homes not only repurpose large amounts of consumer waste within the construction process but also focus on outcomes to help the household live a simpler life [25]. Both BedZED and Earthship homes prioritize quality and needs over wants and trends, and they aim to enhance quality of life, affordability, and overall sufficiency and resiliency.

6.3 Physical Attributes

Housing (noun) is defined as a dwelling or residence constructed for the purpose of shelter. This definition is centred on the physical attributes of housing. Appropriate or adequate housing is housing that meets minimum construction and maintenance standards as determined by local authorities, and includes elements such as structural integrity, heating and cooling, lighting, ventilation, sanitation, and occupation. For this book, we define the physical attributes of housing as the individual and combined physical elements of a dwelling. Examples of these elements include design decisions (e.g., passive orientation), use of materials (e.g., cross laminated timber), construction methods (e.g., prefabrication), and technology (e.g., solar PV).

The design and construction of housing continues to be largely influenced by the existing housing regime. While the design and construction of housing has slowly changed over time, it has done so within the confines of the existing way of providing housing [26]. This includes that standard or “off the shelf”, “tried-and-tested” designs, materials, and construction techniques continue to be replicated with limited innovations beyond a small percentage of houses. In large part, this links back to the guiding principles, with a significant percentage of housing construction industry stakeholders focused on maximizing financial profits. Having standard designs, material supply chains, and construction processes means that the process, costs, and risks are (relatively) stable and well known. Whereas, pursuing higher quality and performance standards or using new or different materials, construction techniques, or technology is perceived as challenging, adds to the cost of housing, or increases risks for delivering the project.

In part, this has also been influenced by wider landscape-level factors, such as energy access and consumption. Decades of low cost centralized energy in many regions around the world has resulted in relatively low costs for operating housing. In fact, it has been cheaper and easier to put mechanical air conditioning systems into housing rather than improve the thermal performance, which results in an over-reliance on technology (and energy) at the expense of good design. With little demand for improved building quality and performance outcomes, and low energy bills, this approach has been allowed to continue. However, in the context of rising energy bills and the climate emergency, it is an approach that is no longer suited for housing.

The physical elements of new housing and renovations of existing housing tend to be similar to previous housing unless otherwise specified (and paid for) by a knowledgeable client, or if regulatory changes require it. Using similar practices for each construction project is perceived to offer financial and logistical advantages, such as buying materials in bulk, building trusted relationships with supply chain stakeholders, and knowledge of working with the technologies or materials leading to controlling some of the variables involved in the construction (or renovation) of a dwelling [1]. While there may be a perception that the dwelling owner has significant opportunity to engage in the design, material, and technological decisions, this is often limited by what the industry (or specific stakeholder) offers. Subtle variations to a dwelling design can often add significant costs (and time) for a dwelling owner and they are often structured this way to dissuade consumers from wanting things outside the normal provision of standard housing.

As Smith [1] and others found, the existing housing industry is not typically focused on how to improve design, quality, and performance (e.g., life cycle considerations). There is often little consideration for materials used in construction in terms of where they come from and what their inclusion means for the building or household. The focus is mostly around cost and ease of access. A just in time structure by many industry stakeholders to the ordering and delivering of materials also means that the construction industry needs certainty on product availability and costs, which has created familiar supply chain relationships that entrench practices. When sustainability elements are included, it is often the “bolt on” options (e.g., adding solar PV to a dwelling), rather than make deeper design and construction changes (e.g., improved insulation) to significantly improve the overall quality and performance of the dwelling.

Stakeholders involved in delivering sustainable housing think more holistically about the dwelling and centre on occupant needs. For the sustainable house (or renovation), designs typically begin from the ground up rather than trying to take standard designs and add sustainability elements to them [17]. In this way, sustainable housing providers can ensure they are maximizing key sustainable building technology and design principles such as orientation, passive solar, insulation, advanced window glazing, rainwater collection and storage, the use of local materials, and more. Incorporating these ideas from the start generally helps to reduce costs, both capital costs and through-life costs. To date, these sustainable housing stakeholders often have specialist sustainability design knowledge and/or have learnt by doing and experimenting with what works (or does not work). As the number of sustainable houses being constructed or retrofitted increases, key ideas around what design, material, and technology elements work means that future projects can build upon those that have come before without having to re-invent the design each time.

The scale of sustainable housing has changed in recent decades. Earlier sustainable housing examples were seen as unique, one-off small-scale designs that were so far removed from the typical housing market that they were not considered feasible for many housing consumers. The use of things like mud bricks, inclusion of off-grid renewable energy systems, or composting toilets were not seen as appropriate for the average housing consumer, nor were these approaches easy to scale up. As knowledge, understanding, and technologies have improved, there are increasing examples of sustainable housing that looks and feels like standard housing. In addition, with more evidence becoming available about the life cycle of various design decisions, materials, and technologies, there is a shift in focus from reducing occupancy impacts (e.g., heating and cooling) to reducing embodied energy impacts and considering what happens at end of life.

6.3.1 Cross Laminated Timber

An increasing area of physical attributes focus within the sustainable housing field has been on material innovations in order to make sustainable housing scalable, reduce costs, and improve quality and performance. Cross laminated timber (CLT) is an example of such innovation [27]. CLT is an engineered timber product composed of multiple layers of two-dimensional lumber glued together perpendicular to each other and compressed tight. As a naturally fire-resistant product, CLT was first used for walls, floors, and roofs in both residential and non-residential construction. The benefits of using CLT include a high degree of prefabrication and off-site assembly, and compared to light-weight timber construction, CLT has less air permeability and more capacity for humidity and thermal energy. CLT is also able to act as a load-carrying element, which makes it applicable as a stand-alone structural element, and it is being used as a substitute for reinforced concrete. This makes it an appropriate substitute for reinforced concrete, helping builders reduce their carbon footprint as CLT is much less carbon intensive than concrete and steel. More recently, CLT has been used to construct tall timber structures of up to 18 storeys. Examples include “Treet”, a 49.9 metre-high apartment tower in Bergen (Norway) design by architectural office ARTEC [28]; “The Toronto Tree Tower”,Footnote 2 a 62 metre-high residential tower in Toronto (Canada) designed by Penda (now Precht); and “Carbon12”,Footnote 3 a 26 metre-high mixed-use building (residential and retail) in Portland, Oregon (USA) designed by Kaiser+Path. At the time of writing, there are proposed residential towers of 90 and 100 metres tall using CLT in Toronto and Switzerland, respectively. If built, these buildings would be the tallest mass timber structures in the world.

6.4 Knowledge

The housing industry approaches knowledge in a long-entrenched way. This involves standard knowledge development and reinforcing existing practices of providing housing. Knowledge across the mainstream housing regime has largely been developed by replicating tried-and-tested housing designs, use of materials and technologies, and construction methods. This has allowed housing construction industry stakeholders to refine their knowledge of what they do within the narrow parameters of standard practices. For this book, we define knowledge as the “doing, thinking, and organizing” of housing. This includes the access, understanding, and use of information to design, build, and sell housing.

Knowledge is informed by guiding principles in that there is a significant focus on business practices and the financial bottom line. Knowledge around building quality and performance generally is about meeting minimum standards, regulations, or planning requirements with the least cost, effort, and change to practices. Without a better understanding of design, materials, construction, and technology, the current housing regime can be locked into inefficient ways of ways of meeting minimum requirements as they attempt to “bolt on” additional requirements rather than redesign from the ground up. In addition to design and technology dimensions, the housing regime is primarily focused on individual dwellings or buildings and rarely extends to the role housing plays within the wider urban context.

The housing construction industry is also generally protective of its knowledge and intellectual property. There is typically little sharing of knowledge, learnings, or lessons across the industry [29,30,31]. This stems from the focus on the financial bottom line and trying to eke out any market advantage possible. This approach also means that stakeholders rarely have the time or opportunity to return to completed projects to find out first-hand what has worked well, what could be improved, and what the key lessons are, or even share this information across the industry [30]. This means that the wider housing industry is repeating issues that could be easily addressed if proper consideration, reflection, and sharing on previous projects were conducted.

These knowledge sharing constraints not only exist within the industry but are also evident in how housing is marketed to consumers. Typically, marketing information relates to the price, location, number of bedrooms/bathrooms, and other perceived key amenities (e.g., garage, views), rather than providing information (or knowledge) about the implications of the design, materials, construction, and technology, which can significantly impact the quality and performance of a dwelling [32]. As noted earlier, this is reinforced by social norms about what a house should be, and the focus on wants over needs. There is also the lack of knowledge that housing consumers have about housing and their understanding around quality, performance, and sustainability. This is critical as wider housing industry stakeholders who push back against regulatory change often state that consumers have the knowledge of what they want and will use their purchasing power to drive sustainability change. However, research shows that housing consumers often lack knowledge about the impacts their decisions have on housing quality, performance, and design [33,34,35,36].

Sustainable housing stakeholders, on the other hand, are interested in information and knowledge as evidence to enhance their understanding and improve the design, construction, and retrofit of housing. By weaving this evidence in with housing consumer needs, a more considered and holistic sustainability approach is applied. While such knowledge was site specific in the early years of the sustainable housing movement, recent decades have seen the development of communal sustainable housing knowledge that is flexible enough to be adapted to different cultural norms, jurisdiction requirements, climate zones, and other local contexts (e.g., use of local materials). This knowledge is now integrated into many higher education courses related to the housing industry (e.g., architecture and construction management) to ensure those going into the wider industry have a higher level of knowledge and understanding to deliver sustainable housing. There has also been a focus on training for sustainable housing elements and delivering demonstration projects to reduce barriers of the unknown and to give actors experience with real-world outcomes [29,30,31].

Knowledge and evidence have expanded beyond just technical, material and design knowledge to include the role of the dwelling within the wider environment. For example, the focus on affordability through reduced utility bills, health and well-being through improved thermal comfort, and better productivity through improving natural light, and so on, are now as much a part of the sustainable housing language as the need to reduce the environmental footprint. Furthermore, improving housing performance based on what occurs around the dwelling is increasingly playing a role in the design, construction, and occupation of sustainable housing. This includes the strategic planting of vegetation to help regulate local micro-climates and reduce requirements for mechanical heating and cooling within a nearby dwelling.

The sustainable housing community is typically a community that is open to sharing and has engaged with ideas around open sourcing key information. This is evidenced by the range of publications on the topic (e.g., books, articles, videos, podcasts, blogs) where people are happy to share what they have done [1]. Importantly, the community is also happy to share lessons of what has not worked, and to revisit these reflections periodically to see if anything changes as the dwelling ages and households gain more understanding of how to maximize their performance. Increasingly, these niche sustainable housing stakeholders are engaging more and more with existing regime actors [1].

6.4.1 Vancouver House/Vienna House

In 2018, the City of Vienna and City of Vancouver signed a Memorandum of Cooperation to share knowledge and advance innovation in low carbon affordable housing across the two cities. Specifically, the agreement commits the cities to ‘share insights on innovative new building approaches, effective market transformation programs, and research associated with different building approaches and standards’ [37]. Vancouver House,Footnote 4 in Vienna, will consist of 107 rental units, a kindergarten, 12 units for assisted living, and 11 units for single parents in a hybrid wooden structure built to Passive House performance standards. Vienna House,Footnote 5 in Vancouver, will consist of 123 units of dedicated affordable rental housing in a high performance, low emissions building showcasing innovative materials and design processes. The knowledge exchange between the City of Vancouver and the City of Vienna has the potential to inform future sustainable and affordable housing projects. For this reason, knowledge transfer and dissemination will be a key part of the project’s research and communications efforts.

Research on the buildings is publicly available through the project and government websites. In Vancouver, the University of British Columbia (UBC) is leading research through the UBC Sustainability Initiative, the Department of Civil Engineering, and the UBC Collaborative Research Group. Researchers, students, and consultants will study the design, manufacturing, construction, and commissioning processes of the Vancouver project and document the challenges, solutions, and lessons learned. Potential areas of interest include energy performance, virtual design and construction (VDC), building information modelling (BIM), mass timber product performance, life cycle assessments, and prefabrication and construction productivity. The aim is for the project to be a showcase or demonstration project for the housing construction industry, as well as for policymakers facing similar challenges.

6.5 Geography

The current housing regime has paid limited attention to geography. Geography refers to places and the relationships between people and their environments. Geography of transitions is concerned with where something takes place, asking ‘why do transitions occur in one place and not in another? How do transitions unfold across different geographical context? [And,] What is the importance and role of relations at different spatial scales for transitions process?’ [38, p. 93]. For housing, scale includes the dwelling, neighbourhood, city, regional, national, and international scales. For this book, we define geography as the location (specific place) and scale of housing.

As already noted, the typical focus of the current housing regime is one of maximizing housing outcomes for the lowest cost. This means that dwelling quality and performance can be impacted by both where a house is built and how it is built. Often impacts on quality and performance are locked in during the initial master planning of new sites, either by developers or by local planning authorities, rather than design development that is based on maximizing the performance outcomes of dwellings and the social and financial benefits for occupants [39]. The initial planning stages lock in things like position of dwellings, road layout, and opportunities for active and public transport. With a focus on profit and only building to minimum planning and building code requirements, the current way housing is provided has had limited consideration of local context or larger urban or regional environments, such as the impact the dwelling might have on energy and transport networks.

Around the world, cities are experiencing increasing densification as populations grow and rural to urban migration increases. In response, there have been two main housing provision strategies. The first is increasing densification in areas close to amenities (e.g., public transport, shops, schools); the second is adding housing in urban growth zones and peri-urban regions. Both approaches have typically been delivered without significant consideration of place or the relationship between people and the environment. For example, there are numerous examples around the world of cities like Melbourne, Calgary, and Houston that have an ever-expanding growth boundary that is driven by the perception of providing “affordable” housing in areas where there are no existing constraints in the built environment (e.g., no existing roads or buildings which influence how new construction needs to be located). There is also the case that standard floor area of housing has increased in many regions over recent decades [40]. Combined with decreasing lot sizes, this constrains the ability to use the area around the dwelling to help improve performance (e.g., through tree planting to reduce the urban heat island impact).

Urban growth is often done at the expense of previous land use which, in some cases, has resulted in the loss of productive agricultural land and created wider societal issues around the provision of food. There are also examples of areas which have cleared significant native vegetation (e.g., forests, mangroves) to provide space for housing, which negatively impacts the local flora, fauna, and climate. Additionally, there are some locations which have been building on “reclaimed” land—land that might have been a swampland or waterway that has been filled in to build on. This can create many short- and long-term issues ranging from loss of nature to creating building performance and structural issues in dwellings. The case of the Miami apartment collapse in 2021 is, in part, thought to have been caused by shifting reclaimed land on which the apartment stood [3].

Place and scale have also been important for shaping, and constraining, building regulations. While building regulations have been widely recognized as being critical in lifting performance and sustainability in both new and existing housing, it has been challenging to overcome issues which emerge through place and scale. For example, in some countries, regulations are developed at the national level and then passed on for individual states or regions to implement. This approach hopes to create a more consistent and level playing field with regulations. However, as is the case in Australia and the USA (amongst others), this can also constrain outcomes when there is a need for agreement between regions on what is set at the national level. At times, this has resulted in a watering down of minimum performance requirements. Further, jurisdictions who want to push further ahead are either unable to or create their own requirements which can foster tensions across other regions or even with national regulators and the wider industry.

Sustainable housing has significant connection to place and community. Early examples of sustainable housing often used local materials (either onsite or from the nearby region) and demonstrated connection with, and to, the land where the building occurred. Ideas around having a “light touch” on the land or blending into the natural environment were often key objectives for sustainable housing. An increasing focus of more contemporary sustainable houses is on actively contributing to the local area wherever possible. The provision of sustainable housing often starts by considering the site, materials, and designs that are best matched to the local climatic conditions. This helps to deliver improved performance outcomes in the initial planning stages, such as through ensuring that optimal orientation and passive solar opportunities are leveraged. It also helps to limit the loss of productive land (e.g., nature, farming) and ensure that the location of housing is appropriate (e.g., not in flood zones or areas likely to be significantly impacted by future climate change).

Understanding the concept of place in transitions has become increasingly important. Explicitly acknowledging place provides important context to specific transitions processes, including historical, socio-political, economic, ecological, and other contextual considerations (considerations that are limited within the current provision of housing). In addition to the location of transitions, the scale is equally important. Transitions can occur at a national level, state or provincial level, regional level, urban or municipal level, or at a neighbourhood or site level. In some instances, transitions can also occur across scales or they may be situated within a multi-governance context. This is relevant for exploration the sustainable housing transition as the provision of housing involves regulation, influence, materials, technologies, and skills from across an increasingly globalized sector.

As sustainable houses move from one-off individual dwellings to the development of multiunit buildings and precinct scale developments, the benefits of the planning stage and understanding place and context is more significant for ensuring increased performance outcomes both within and across the development. At these early stages, local amenities are also considered and, in an increasing number of sustainable developments, are delivered either before or during the early stages of residential construction to ensure that the amenities are there when households start moving in and not years down the track. Sustainable housing stakeholders are also beginning to consider the role sustainable housing plays within the wider community and environment, and the implications it has for other sectors such as energy and transport where sustainability considerations can help make a positive impact beyond the individual dwelling or development site.

6.5.1 Zoning Reform

Single-family zoning, often referred to as R1 in planning documents, is a zoning policy that restricts development in an area to one dwelling per lot. This type of zoning is ubiquitous in the suburbs and other car-dominated landscapes. There are calls and movements to eliminate single-family zoning, normally through “upzoning” which refers to increasing density on a lot. The aim of up zoning is to increase housing in existing neighbourhoods. Jurisdictions across Canada and the USA are passing new zoning ordinances to allow more units on traditional single-family lots or to eliminate single-family zoning altogether. These jurisdictions are doing this to use land more efficiently and environmentally, and to respond to housing affordability challenges. One of the most well-known examples of “upzoning” is the State of Oregon’s House Bill 2001Footnote 6 which was passed in 2019. The bill essentially eliminated single-family zoning across the state. For cities with populations greater than 25,000, the bill allows duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, and “cottage clusters” to be built on parcels that are currently reserved for single-family houses. In cities with populations of at least 10,000, duplexes are allowed in single-family zones. This topic is receiving a lot of attention from planners, particularly in places like the USA. In 2020, the Journal of the American Planning Association published an entire special issue on the idea of ending single-family zoning [41]. Manville et al. [41, p. 106] argue that ‘R1 is inequitable, inefficient, and environmentally unsustainable’. Meanwhile, Kendig [42] thinks eliminating existing single-family zoning is a mistake, and Chakraborty [43] believes this topic deserves more scrutiny.

6.6 Industrial Structures and Organizations

Industry actors such as firms and organizations play critical roles in sustainability transitions; they can be innovators and develop new ways of doing things, or they can restrict change and prevent the formation of new products, technologies, business models, and even new industries. These actors also engage in institutional work, where they participate in shaping cultural norms, regulations, and legitimize or shape new discourses. For this book, we define industrial structures and organizations as the multiple actors and stakeholders across the traditional housing industry, including developers, builders, and manufactures. We are particularly interested in how the sector operates and how they organize themselves.

Actors in the existing housing regime have operated as a larger whole, with similar industrial structures, organizations, and industries dominating and protecting the sector against challenges (i.e., sustainable housing) and locking in entrenched practices of operation and organization. The housing industry has been described as ‘an institution [where] understanding the housing system requires recognizing its “rules of the game”’ [44, p. 9]. These “rules” and the entrenched operating practices have shaped the way housing is provided. For example, to achieve cost efficiencies, developers and volume builders are prevalent in many markets (e.g., Australia) and represent most of the new residential construction. The preference of developers and volume builders is to develop larger detached housing estates rather than one-off dwellings. This provides opportunities for standardizing designs, materials, and construction processes and allows for controlling costs and maximizing profits, with the focus largely around financial outcomes. This also leads to developers and volume builders having established relationships with other industry stakeholders, which often carry over from one project to the next. The operation, practices, norms, and discourse across similar actors in the industry are also established and enacted through peak industry and professional associations [44]. Again, there are financial and other efficiencies for maintaining these relationships, but it leads to doing things the way they have been done previously.

In many regions of the world, the wider construction industry is one which is heavily based on subcontracting labour. This has a range of implications including that it creates, to some degree, a transient workforce that follows the money or work with little connection to the employer (other than to ensure they get future work), the end product (with accountability passed back up the management chain), or the community (no knowledge of the local environment). This has created mixed outcomes with research showing that the length of time to build a house in places like Australia is increasing, and that part of this additional time is due to different trades and subcontractors having challenges sequencing their components of work [45]. This structure of employment also means that there is limited incentive for subcontracted workers to report issues or learnings to those in decision making roles. As such, the cycle of continuing to produce the same type of housing continues.

While some smaller builders or developers may just work on a single project at a time, many medium-to-larger building companies or developers often have multiple projects underway at any one time. Part of this relates to market structures and helping to diversify risk and costs by spreading the risks and resources across multiple projects. It can also help with organizing the workforce. For example, if different trades can be sequenced across multiple projects, it can be more productive and financially beneficial for both the builder or developer, and the labourer. It also means that trades can be moved to different sites should the need arise to do certain work or meet deadlines. However, this also means that the current housing sector is highly reliant on a small number of organizations and, as increasing research finds, this is challenging to do and results in delays and other outcomes.

The current provision of housing is also heavily reliant on a select number of key industries and supply chains. Increasingly, the housing sector is becoming more globalized and a key result of this is a reliance on international supply chains for materials and technologies in many jurisdictions. This has largely been driven by the pursuit of finding cost efficiencies, but is in part driven by a decline in manufacturing in many regions which has forced housing industry stakeholders to look elsewhere for the materials and technologies required for housing construction. While this has helped to improve the bottom line of some stakeholders, global supply chain issues during 2020–2022 have highlighted the over-reliance on this structure with material and technology shortages and skyrocketing costs. This has contributed to developers and builders going bankrupt when they have been unable to deliver on fixed cost contracts for construction [46].

For a long time, sustainable housing has been seen as bespoke one-offs or small groups of housing delivered by specialist designers and builders [1]. It has historically been a process where early adopters (both industry and households) have learnt by doing and attempted to fix any issues that arise along the way. As the previous dimension explored, this process has also involved sharing knowledge and learnings with the wider sustainable housing community [1]. While sustainable housing has typically been attempted with the constraints of budget in mind, there have been cost premiums for some sustainability elements and inclusions for early adopters, such as with the higher cost of solar PV and battery storage. This cost premium has been used by the existing regime as a key reason why sustainable housing should not be more widely pursued.

However, sustainable housing has shifted over the past decade or so, from high levels of experimentation in one-off projects to replication of prior learning and upscaling [29]. This has not only had an impact on the scale of sustainable housing, but has also helped pushed the performance benchmark of housing forward. In part, this is driven by increasing knowledge and cost reductions for materials, construction methods, and technologies. Sustainability is no longer seen as a premium feature; when sustainability is designed in from the start, it can be achieved with significant design and cost efficiencies. The cost of key sustainability technology has continued to fall, making it even more affordable to include elements such as solar PV on homes. This decrease in costs along with a change in housing culture has encouraged some sustainable housing actors to cap profits to ensure that decisions are ethically driven and they benefit the homeowner and the environment. This change in approach has also pushed actors to work with the financial industry to find innovations to fund sustainable housing construction.

Within transitions research, there is an increasing focus around the industrial structures and organizations involved in transitions. This is relevant for our focus on the sustainable housing transition and has been explored from a range of perspectives, including understanding business practices (e.g., how to develop, protect, and/or elevate key or new structures), organizations, and industries to help challenge incumbent regimes [47,48,49,50]. Given our discussion across earlier chapters, the provision of sustainable housing will likely require housing industry actors and stakeholders to adapt or evolve. However, Sovacool [51] and others are increasingly concerned with the slow pace of transitions. For example, if the pace of transition is too slow, the incumbent regime is more able to resist change or make minor changes to continue provision of houses without including wider sustainability considerations. Speed is a pertinent issue for sustainable housing given that housing is a long-life infrastructure likely to last 40 or more years once built.

An important element already emerging in the sustainable housing transition has been around challenging traditional notions of finance and affordability. Within the wider transitions literature, there is an increasing focus on the role that finance capital plays to enable or constrain transitions [52, 53]. Given that existing housing regime practices have largely been enabled by the wider market, it stands to reason that the market, and specifically the financial structure and organization of the market, must change. This has been noted by the UNEP [54] in relation to sustainable development. Wider research has also stated that the financial recovery from COVID-19 will be greater with a shift towards delivering improved sustainability across a range of sectors [55, 56]. Within the housing sector, there is a need to shift the way housing is viewed in terms of cost, value, and affordability. Furthermore, transitions researchers have highlighted the importance of new ways of doing, thinking, and organizing and the role that innovation (such as digitalization) will have in restructuring various industries and sectors [57,58,59]. The emergence of several innovations in recent decades, such as prefabrication, has highlighted how this might play out within the sustainable housing transition and associated sectors such as considerations of energy as a service.

6.6.1 Prefabrication

Prefabrication, or prefab as it is commonly referred to (or in some locations, off-site manufacturing), is construction undertaken away from the final building site in a factory-like setting. Once constructed in the factory, various prefab elements are taken to the building site where they are assembled. There are different types of prefab including modular (large modules of rooms or sections of a home including the structure and finishes of roofs, walls, and floors and any built in elements such as kitchens, bathrooms, storage, and all electrical and plumbing) and panelized (where smaller sections of the home are built before being assembled into the larger structure onsite). Benefits of prefab include that it can deliver improved quality, reduce material and labour waste during construction, improve construction safety, shorten construction times onsite, reduce construction costs, create less disruption to neighbours, and reduce project risks [60,61,62]. Prefab offers innovation and new ways of providing housing which challenges the established cultural practices, norms, regulations, and discourse around housing design and construction. It also presents a different way for how the sector can operate and how they organize themselves. For example, constructing in a factory means that work is not impacted by weather, and improving sequencing of trades can improve overall efficiency by reducing construction time and costs [62]. In this way, prefab changes business practices and challenges incumbent regime actors.

Some countries have embraced the use of prefab over recent decades, while others have only more recently engaged with this different construction approach. For example, Sweden is considered a leader in the prefab construction of housing, having been constructing housing in factory-like settings since the 1940s with prefab now representing over 80% of the housing market [61].

6.7 Markets, Users, and Power

In many regions of the world, the politics around the provision and maintenance of housing has been focusing on three key deliverables: the provision of more housing, affordability (capital costs), and getting a higher percentage of people into home ownership. This means that decision makers must often consider trade-offs from any new regulatory changes against the impacts on these three deliverables. Requirements for improving the performance, sustainability, and quality of housing have typically been portrayed by the incumbent housing regime as negatively impact these key deliverables. This narrative has been playing out across different housing markets and with different users tied to different housing situations. This creates a complex landscape for decision makers to navigate. For this book, we define markets, users, and power as where and how housing is sold or exchanged (markets), the consumers or occupiers of housing (users), and the politics and regimes, including government and industry players, that dominate the housing sector (power). Markets, users, and power are also about the complexity of relationships and the interactions across these entities as well.

The current housing regime has power and agency over the first policy levers pulled when the economy starts to decline. However, the housing construction industry can often leverage the politics around construction to suit its position. Governments regularly collaborate with the housing construction industry on new policy initiatives, often through a process of negotiation where there is significant power on the side of the construction industry. An example of this is when the Victorian Government (Australia) announced plans to put a small financial levy on residential developments over a certain size (3+ dwellings) to help create a social housing fund to build more affordable housing for those most in need. Days after the Victorian premier announced this plan, he was forced to withdraw the proposed policy changes after he claimed the construction industry withdrew its support for the plan despite it having significant benefit for them [63].

The housing construction industry also has significant power and agency over housing consumers and is notorious for saying it strongly engages with the housing market and users and aims to deliver what users demand. Time and time again, studies find this is not the case and that housing consumers have limited agency. The notion of the “free market” is often put forward with the housing sector arguing that, if consumers wanted higher quality or more sustainable housing, they would ask for it and be happy to pay for it. However, research has found that consumers do not have a clear understanding of what sustainable housing is, what benefits it can provide, what opportunities are available to them, and how to go about asking for something that is portrayed as “different”.

Because misinformation proliferates sustainable housing discourse (e.g., added cost), consumers do not have clear and unbiased information about sustainable housing. Social norms around housing are also reinforced by key actors beyond the housing sector, such as building or renovation shows where the focus is on the flashy, nice to have elements, with little consideration for quality and performance. This helps reinforce ideas around what housing should or could be. Therefore, the idea of the “free market” is not really working in this context. In regions where volume builders dominate, the housing consumer often has limited opportunity to be engaged in the process beyond selecting a template design from a limited range and some “custom” additions that are available.

Sustainable housing differs from the current regime as it has a long-standing practice of collaborating with housing consumers and key stakeholders of the design and housing construction industry. A collaborative approach like this means consumers are aware of all key decisions and their implications. This practice ensures that the needs of the household are met and environmental impacts are reduced. In the earlier days of sustainable housing, there was a high level of user involvement as many sustainable houses were self-built or custom projects. This has evolved to some degree (from one-off projects to larger scale, industry-built developments), but there is still a strong tradition in self-built sustainable housing in the growing community of tiny houses and off-grid projects. For industry-built sustainable housing developments, there often remains some user involvement throughout the design and construction process, as well as in the management and maintenance phase, to maximize performance outcomes. In some cases, collaborative engagement also helps to educate future residents about differences between sustainable housing and traditional industry-built dwellings.

The sustainable housing construction industry has had limited power over policy makers. At the moment, sustainable housing is still fighting to have their voice heard. This is despite providing an increasing number of successful examples of developments that provide a range of benefits. While sustainable housing may not have political power, we have recently seen a upscaling of sustainable housing development within the existing constraints of regulation, financing, and the wider housing regime (see Chap. 7). The sustainable housing industry’s ability to influence and deliver change will grow alongside the sustainable housing movement grows. As more housing consumers start to understand the impacts of housing decisions on longer term liveability and affordability, users are helping to shift power dynamics for sustainable housing. This shift is also starting to occur with other housing provision stakeholders, such as financial institutions working with niche developers or funding sustainability retrofits.

Sustainable housing actors and the current housing regime have often been likened to David and Goliath, with the current regime holding the power. This dynamic plays out within sustainability transitions theory, where the regime is the dominant social order and niches are small-scale interventions, radical innovations, or experiments that push for bottom-up change. Regime actors often use their power to actively resist transitions in various ways [64], whereas niche actors try to change the regime [65,66,67]. As part of housing transitions research, scholars have examined different elements relating to specific sustainable housing niches [68], as well as the relationship between sustainable housing as a niche and the existing regime. However, as sustainable housing continues to evolve and become more embedded within housing practices, the power dynamics between sustainable housing and the current regime will have to be refined and possibly redefined.

6.7.1 Rating Tools

In many locations, minimum performance requirements (including rating tools) have been used to lift the bottom of the market. However, typical rating tools often focus on reducing energy or carbon metrics through purely “technical” elements, rather than design, material, and social considerations. In response to these limitations, an increasing number of voluntary rating tools have emerged in recent years, working to reframe ratings and measurements to be about improving outcomes for occupants and the wider environment as a whole [69]. For example, the WELL Building Standard,Footnote 7 which was launched in 2014 and has now been applied to more than 21,000 buildings in over 120 countries, has developed a rating tool which uses medical research as a starting point to improve occupant health and well-being outcomes. Certified spaces are designed to address Seven Concepts of the WELL Building Standards: Air, water, nourishment, light, fitness, comfort, and mind. In doing so, outcomes improve the nutrition, fitness, mood, sleep patterns, productivity, and performance of the people working, living, shopping, or playing inside these spaces. Building the tool from medical evidence has resulted in a more user focused outcome and, to some degree, takes away the input from the “free market” as it is based upon the best available evidence rather than influenced by consumer trends.

Another more innovative rating system challenging markets is the Living Building Challenge,Footnote 8 launched in 2006. This tool attempts to radically change the way we consider, design, build, and use buildings and has been described as the world’s most rigorous building performance standard.

Where other tools try to reduce environmental harm, this tool aims to make a positive contribution to the environment by being regenerative (i.e., fixing the damage). For example, it sets targets beyond what is needed to support just the building, such as 105% renewable energy generation. Like the WELL tool, the areas of focus are different to those of traditional tools and include place, water, energy, health and happiness, materials, equity, and beauty.

6.8 Policy, Regulations, and Governance

Within the sustainable housing space, housing and built environment researchers have been paying a growing amount of attention to the role of policy, regulation, and governance in maintaining status quo within existing housing (or built environment) regimes [70,71,72,73]. These researchers have also begun to explore how different policy, regulation, or governance approaches have, or could, help facilitate sustainability transitions. This has included evaluating different policy, regulation, and governances approaches and identifying key mechanism to help with upscaling the provision of sustainable housing. For this book, we define policy, regulations, and governing as the rules of engagement for the housing industry that are set by the government. Whereby, the government governs the housing industry using mandatory and voluntary interventions or directives.

The existing housing regime is characterized as an industry that broadly wants less policy and regulatory interference from governments. The perspective is that any development or increase in policy or regulation would negatively impact the industry being able to deliver what the market wants. While regulations for minimum housing quality and performance are not new (see Chap. 2), the past 20 years have seen an increasing focus on policy to lift minimum requirements for new housing and retrofits. This challenges the status quo of the current regime which is forced to reorganize the way it provides housing. For the most part, policy changes have been made in incremental steps (in comparison to what is required for a low carbon future), and the wider housing industry has largely been able to adapt to changes by adding on sustainability elements rather than requiring deeper, structural changes. However, as housing quality and performance requirements head closer towards a zero carbon requirement, it is harder and harder for the housing industry to meet higher standards without having to make those deeper changes.

While most in the housing industry largely adhere to minimum land use and building regulations, there is often a lot of push back against increased sustainability requirements. This rejection of additional requirements is often under the guise of not wanting to inhibit innovation or drive up the cost of housing [74]. Critiques to proposed policy changes are important and should occur, but much of industry push back is based on dubious evidence and misinformation. This has resulted in slow progress towards lifting minimum performance requirements (or, in the case of the UK’s Code for Sustainable Homes, removing it all together) and other policy changes. What is left is a largely self-regulated industry with few checks and balances. In countries like Australia, there has been a long history of self-regulation which has arguably contributed to significant building quality and performance issues such as the flammable cladding crisis and dwellings not even meeting minimum sustainability requirements [3].

Sustainable housing has both benefited and been constrained by the development of planning regulations and building code requirements. While both planning and building codes have evolved over time, early examples of sustainable housing often had to demonstrate how they met and exceeded minimum building requirements. This created additional challenges for early sustainable housing projects as many sustainable housing elements fell outside the typical ways of doing housing. Current performance standards have increased, and many jurisdictions use energy rating tools, but sustainable housing providers are still facing challenges as they keep innovating and pushing the boundary of sustainable housing. This is primarily due to problems of demonstrating improved performance when the regulatory systems have not kept up with new developments in terms design, materials, construction, and technologies. Unlike the current housing regime, sustainable housing advocates typically want to see more changes in policies and regulations.

However, there is increasing research, policy, and industry recognition that the provision of more sustainable housing cannot be solely driven by a top-down governance approach and that a range of actors and other approaches (including policy and regulation) will be required as part of the transition. Part of this rationale is from the uncertainty around how to upscale sustainable housing, with the possibility that other actors, designs, materials, technologies, and construction approaches may be needed to deliver this transition at scale. In response, there have been various experiments and urban living labs developed in recent years [31, 75,76,77]. Essentially, these are places and spaces where additional protection is provided (often by government) to allow sustainable housing innovations to attempt to establish themselves [76, 78]. This is important for creating and establishing new rules around “doing” housing and urban development and exploring what works, or does not work, without typical pressures or restrictions. Urban living labs are not just about testing feasibility; these experiments show the wider industry what can be done and help to establish the supply chains and other changes required to deliver such an outcome. The role of demonstration through exemplar projects has been critical in recent years to help shape and reshape policy and regulations.

Transitions seek to change governing arrangements, markets, culture, meanings, language, infrastructure, technologies, practices, and networks. The challenge is how do these changes occur? In the housing sector, this is often done by developing policies and establishing new regulations [79], by creating “protected spaces” for innovations to occur [80], or through demonstration or pilot projects [30]. These actions and initiatives are established by governments with the aim to either enhance the top end of the market or bring the bottom of the market up. Sustainable housing primarily sits within the top end of the market, while many in the existing housing industry are at the bottom end. A major challenge is finding a balance that pushes the existing regime to deliver better outcomes without constraining sustainable housing [1]. A second major challenge is related to governance; while most of the policies and regulations are introduced by governments, the private sector has a lot of influence, particularly in some jurisdictions.

Over recent years, the sustainable housing movement has evolved beyond just advocating for improved policy and regulations. Sustainable housing advocates are now challenging the existing governance and industry regimes on multiple fronts. This includes locating the need for sustainable housing within the climate emergency, energy resiliency challenge, and addressing wider social outcomes like fuel poverty and health and well-being outcomes [81,82,83,84]. In this way, sustainable housing has shifted within the policy, regulation, and governance discourse from a technical challenge to a more holistic focus on social and environmental outcomes. Part of this shift has been calling for greater compliance checks across the industry to ensure that quality and sustainability issues are not only met, but that there is increased well-being and a level of protection for housing consumers [3].

6.8.1 Banning Fossil Fuel-Based Heating

With the goal to cut greenhouse gas and methane emissions by transitioning to electric heating, jurisdictions around the world are banning certain kinds of fossil fuel-based heating systems in new home construction. These bans are a response to the Paris Agreement’s 2050 targets and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals which include the move away from polluting fuels. Bans are taking place at the national level across the European Union,Footnote 9 at the provincial level in Quebec,Footnote 10 and at the local level in places like Dublin,Footnote 11 New York City,Footnote 12 and Vancouver.Footnote 13 Denmark was an early leader in introducing such bans, with the installation of oil-fired boilers and natural gas heating banned in new buildings in 2013 and all buildings in 2016.Footnote 14 In Quebec, oil-powered heating for new construction projects was banned at the end of 2021 and, in 2024, it will be illegal to replace existing furnaces with fossil fuel powered heating systems. The province is trying to reduce emissions related to heating building by 50% by 2030, and with 60% of household emissions coming from heating, transitioning to electric heating options makes sense. In Vancouver, starting in 2022, equipment for space and water heating in new low-rise residential buildings must be zero emissions, and by 2025, all new and replacement heating and hot water systems must be net zero. Currently, burning fossil fuels in buildings represents 57% of Vancouver’s carbon pollution, so drastic policy changes are needed to help the City reduce its emissions.

6.9 Everyday Life and Practices

The dimension of everyday life and practice draws on social practice theories that focus on practices as a unit of analysis where change is understood in terms of transitions in practice [85]. Much practice theory research tends to focus on the performance of practices—the “doing” of everyday life, the elements of which it is comprised, and the ways practices are socially constructed [86]. Practices are performed by people; here, we focus on housing users. Users are active players in transitions processes; contribute to new innovations in technologies, products, and practices [87]; and champion change [88]. In addition to consumers, users can also be voters within democratic institutions and participants in political and social movements [89]. For this book, we define everyday life and practices as the activities that are typically and habitually performed in everyday life by individuals, including cooking, showering, and going to work. For housing, we are interested in how dwellings are used and how we might change those practices.

The current housing regime has had limited consideration for current or future households or users, including how these users use and manage their dwellings both in the short term and across the life of the dwelling. As noted in Sect. 6.6, users have often been seen as passive or silent actors in the provision of housing. When users are considered, it is often around elements of the dwelling, such as materials and technology, that are perceived to attract more housing consumers. These include the size and finishes of kitchens, and number of bathrooms. These elements are marketed as elevated elements and work to change social norms about what to expect from dwellings. It was not long ago that many houses would have had a single bathroom, but now an absence of multiple bathrooms is seen as a negative [26].

While there have been a variety of changes to housing design and technology, the current housing regime has primarily focused on the role of technology in delivering improved outcomes: for example, the focus on delivering improved thermal comfort by using more technologies (e.g., a mechanical heating and cooling systems) rather than through materials, passive design elements, building orientation, or landscaping. For many regions, this has created unsustainable practices for occupants. These unsustainable practices are often supported with policies and design, and performance-rating tools where assumptions are made around an “average” user. However, averages range geographically and demographically. These assumptions range from the hours people are at home, the temperature set for heating and cooling systems, and the location of housing. Assumptions like these remove agency from users and impact current and future outcomes.

Sustainable housing starts with the (initial) users at the centre of its thinking. Sustainable housing users have been critical for the development of a wider sustainable housing community and helped shape, or reshape, policy and social norms. Questions around how the dwelling can improve a range of household outcomes (e.g., liveability, affordability, and health and well-being) are often just as important as the environmental impact. Increasingly, these questions are not just about the individual household, but also about how a dwelling can influence and facilitate changes in everyday life and practices. For some sustainable housing providers, this has meant moving away from a technology-focused approach to providing more agency to users through the day-to-day management of their dwelling (e.g., needing to open and close windows or lowering and raising blinds to help regulate thermal comfort and performance) [90]. In addition to increased agency, this also makes the dwelling more resilient to technology failures. However, this is not an argument against technologies; they still have a role to play in improving performance outcomes. For example, the electrification of housing and mobility, through smart home technologies, solar PV, electric vehicles, and two-way battery charging, have created benefits related to improving efficiencies within dwellings and lowering environmental impacts. These improvements have also enabled easier (or more comfortable) off-grid living.

Despite attention paid on the ground, wider transitions research has had limited interest in user practices, consumption, and the everyday life. Where it has been included has largely been in the more technology focused studies [59, 91,92,93,94], including within the housing and built environment and wider energy space where a number of papers have emerged in recent years. Early adopters of different design approaches, material selection, and technologies were guinea pigs testing out how things worked, and they often paid higher capital costs for the privilege [95,96,97]. The experiences of sustainable housing advocates and users, demonstrates the role they can play in helping to guide and accelerate transitions through different (re)configurations of structures, networks, and rules of the game to challenge the existing regime.

6.9.1 Electrification of Homes

The move towards the all-electric home has become an increasing focus amongst some stakeholders in the sustainable housing space [98]. While the use of natural gas (and other resources such as wood) was initially seen as a more sustainable energy option as compared to fossil fuel electricity, this view has been revised in recent years due to the increase in renewable energy generation and the emerging evidence for the wide negative impacts of gas and other fuel types (e.g., on health and well-being). Electrification of homes has been identified as an important step towards not only delivering a more environmentally sustainable home, but also delivering a home that is more affordable to operate (due to paying for only one energy type, which avoids connection fees) and is healthier for users. The move towards electrification has been identified by researchers and policy makers in different regions as being feasible and important for achieving wider decarbonization goals. Research has also identified how an existing dwelling can transition to an all-electric home by replacing various gas (or other) appliances as they are due for replacement.

While evidence for the benefits of the all-electric home has emerged, it has been housing users, rather than policy makers, who have been actively driving the translation from research to practice. Sustainable housing users have been repositioning themselves from passive or silent actors to actors that actively shape and reshape housing, social norms, and even policies. This was not simply a matter of changing appliances or the energy type but has also required associated changes to practices (e.g., using appliances when sufficient solar energy is being generated, or adapting to different ways of heating and the different feelings of warmth those approaches delivered). In places like Australia, the ground up support for the all-electric home has grown significantly in recent years (as exemplified by the My Electric Home Facebook groupFootnote 15 which now has over 70,000 members) and this ground up support has pushed back on government requirements to have gas connected to new housing, resulting in households removing gas connection from existing housing at record numbers. In 2022, this resulted in the Victorian government announcing that it would change requirements to allow for new housing developments to proceed without connection to gas infrastructure.Footnote 16 However, despite increasing support for all-electric homes, sustainability benefits may fall short if electrical grids rely on fossil fuel energy. A wider energy transition away from fossil fuel infrastructure is also needed.

6.10 Culture, Civil Society, and Social Movements

The shift towards more sustainable housing represents a change in culture. For the existing housing industry, the culture around housing is represented by markets and regulations. In contrast, early iterations of sustainable housing were about delivering more sustainable homes, where sustainability was both the outcome and the culture. More recently, we are seeing sustainable housing advocates and providers delivering models that are challenging traditional cultural norms around different elements of housing, including financial, social, and community elements. For this book, we define culture, civil society, and social movements as individuals and organizations challenging and changing the status quo. Change can come from anywhere, inside or outside the regime. We are particularly interested in changes that go beyond individual dwellings and work towards a reconceptualization of housing.

In many regions of the world, housing has been delivered via the use of a “less is more” regulation approach and a reliance on the wider consumer market to demand improvements or changes. This has resulted in the replication of tried-and-tested housing typologies, design, materials, and technologies with a business model focused on improving the financial bottom line rather than quality and performance outcomes for housing consumers. Key housing regime actors, such as peak industry bodies, continue to push back against calls for increasing minimum regulatory requirements for quality and performance of new and existing housing. Regime actors are not seriously engaging with the wider structural housing issues created and propagated over recent decades, rather they are protecting the status quo. This creates a range of challenges to shifting the housing industry, and housing consumers, towards a low carbon future.

Sustainable housing has emerged as a new culture within the larger housing industry. This culture is tied to ideas and actions around how housing can be more sustainable. Sustainable housing has been exploring different ways to deliver housing and, in doing so, has established new customs, values, and norms across industry stakeholders and consumers. In the earlier years of the sustainable housing movement, sustainable housing was not primarily about replacing unsustainable materials and technologies with sustainable ones; it emerged more as a bottom-up rethinking of housing across all elements of design, construction, and use. For example, it acknowledged that bigger was not better and that improved design functionality could improve small-space living, and argued that materials should be considered for their durability and ability to improve thermal comfort (not solely aesthetics) as well as for considering the end of life for materials and whole dwellings [7, 99]. These examples represent a shift towards sustainability in the culture of building and designing housing.

Social movements around sustainable housing, at local and international scales, have been instrumental for challenging the housing status quo. Such social movements were developed off the back of wider movements engaging with ideas of sustainability, as well as from the desire to share and learn across sustainable housing projects [100]. Earlier on, these movements were grassroots, both in terms of scale (one-off projects) and actors (non-regime or traditional housing industry). Sustainable housing communities were created through initiatives such as eco-villages and co-housing developments, which allowed like-minded people to come together and elevate the benefits of sustainable housing. These communities also served as a place of learning where ideas could be replicated in neighbouring building, or where communities could serve as inspiration for new developments. Finally, sustainable housing communities are encouraged thinking across buildings to consider benefits at a larger scale [101]. This helped to shift the sustainable housing culture from focusing on individual dwellings to considering the role of these dwellings within the larger urban environment and wider community.

Within the wider transitions literature, there has been an increasing interest in the importance of culture, civil society, and social movements and how these play critical roles within sustainability transitions [102,103,104]. These elements challenge the current ways and rationale of doing things and can create wider culture change through changing social norms, values, and everyday practices [102]. In doing this, they help create protective spaces for innovation and shape the support and effectiveness of transitions policies. There has been some focus on these points within a framing of sustainable housing transitions. Our own work, for example, highlights that wider culture, civil society, and social movements are evolving not just within the sphere of direct stakeholders designing, building, and occupying sustainable houses, but within a much wider reach of stakeholders who intersect with the transitions process such as financial institutions who fund housing development [2, 65].

6.10.1 Renew—Organization and Sustainability Magazines

RenewFootnote 17 (formally the Alternative Technology Association) is an Australian not-for-profit organization that was established in 1980 to provide inspiration, information, independent advice, and advocacy to help people live more sustainably in their homes and communities. The organization is involved in a wide range of activities including undertaking sustainability consultations, providing free advice to members, organizing and hosting webinars and events (including a Speed Date a Sustainability Expert and annual Sustainable House Day event), and publishing two quarterly sustainability magazines: Renew—technology for a sustainable future (with over 160 issues) and Sanctuary—Modern green homes (with over 60 issues). The organization and publications engage with more than 250,000 people each year and have an active membership of 11,000 people (2020–21). Renew has played a key advocacy role in driving recent regulatory changes in Australia through disseminating research and continued supporting dialogue with key stakeholders (including households). Beyond just a focus on the physical home or technologies, Renew is increasingly evolving to include spaces around houses and communities (such as gardening and urban greening), new considerations of housing such as the role of electric vehicles, and addressing future climatic and resiliency challenges as a community. For example, issue 60 of Sanctuary magazine was a flood resilience special. Through these various activities, Renew has helped reconceptualize housing and sustainable housing for Australian households through a largely bottom-up community approach and, in the process, has managed to help establish new customs, values, and norms.

6.11 Ethical Aspects

For decades, ethical considerations for the design, construction, and maintenance of new and existing housing have been at the centre of research and advocacy work. However, these issues have received less attention within sustainability transitions scholarship. This dimension draws upon many of the previous dimensions in relation to the way the current housing regime operates, focusing on how these operations impact ethical aspects of transitions. For this book, we define ethical aspects as good governance practices and considerations of poverty, justice, and inclusivity. In addition, we emphasize equity, rather than equality, to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to participate in a way that is appropriate for them.

The housing sector is largely driven by guiding principles and business practices that prioritize maximizing financial profit over quality, performance, and occupant outcomes. However, this financial lens on housing has meant dwellings are too often distilled into financial outcomes, rather than considering the wider social, environmental, and through-life benefits of improved quality and performance. As we explored in the earlier chapters of this book, this framing around the capitalization of housing has impacted wider social outcomes including poverty, justice, and inclusivity [81, 84, 105,106,107].

This financial framing, along with consistent push back against increasing regulations or compliance requirements, has led to a housing industry that does not prioritize ethical considerations or consider the wider climate emergency context. While individual stakeholders are not likely setting out to be unethical, the industry’s engrained practices and the short cuts or lack of checks and balances can add up to negative outcomes. This is evident in the rise of minor and major building defects in new dwellings, and the significant challenges that housing consumers face trying to get these issues addressed. Notable examples include the use of asbestos, leaky homes, and the flammable cladding crisis [3]. The shift of the construction industry from being a more local industry to one that is part of the globalized network is another example of unethical practices. As supply chains have become more globalized, there has been limited oversight which has led to major environmental impacts from some materials and technologies, and has supported modern slavery practices.

Sustainable housing attempts to address a number of these ethical issues that have emerged through the current housing regime. This includes addressing things like the ethical considerations in supply chains and modern slavery (e.g., doing checks on where materials come from and how they are manufactured and ensuring everyone is paid a fair wage) [108, 109]. It is not just about ensuring ethical practices at the global level, but also shifting back towards using local material and labour where possible to help local economies. There is also an increasing focus of sustainable housing stakeholders on how quality housing can be provided not just for those who have wealth and resources, but also for vulnerable and marginalized households who are often left behind in the move towards a more sustainable future. This includes being able to provide such housing for low income households, renters, the unhoused, and so on. This is partially in recognition that the benefits of sustainable housing are likely to have even greater benefits for health, well-being, finance, and social outcomes for these vulnerable housing cohorts. In this regard, sustainable housing has been discussed as being able to help wider ethical and justice considerations such as addressing the increasing rates of fuel poverty around the world.

It will not be possible to knock down and rebuild all existing housing to a higher quality and performance level, so the attention in recent years has shifted to the necessary role of deep retrofits on existing housing. There are ethical considerations wrapped up within this focus, with the idea that we leave as many raw resources “in the ground” as we can for future generations. This symbolizes a growing movement within sustainable housing consumers that housing must be seen as long-life infrastructure. It is no longer just about the first or current user, but about what happens across the life of the dwelling. Increasingly, this is being considered within the context of a changing climate, and responding to the climate emergency requires us to consider ethical aspects of how we will scale up sustainable housing.

Ethical aspects of transitions within the housing domain have not received much attention, but there are opportunities for sustainable housing research to incorporate good governance practices and considerations of poverty, justice, and inclusivity. This includes exploring the ongoing question within transitions research around ‘who wins, who loses, how and why’ [110, 111]. In the race towards a more sustainable future, we need to ensure that social aspects of socio-technical dimensions are not forgotten. This means that a more sustainable future must also be just [112]. For our definition of ethical aspects, we drew on the work by Barrett et al. [113] work on ethical cities which argues we need to integrate climate action, good governance, and action on inequality to achieve ethical outcomes. From this perspective, ethics shape both process and outcomes related to sustainable housing.

6.11.1 Half a House

In 2016, Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena won the Pritzker prize for his affordable housing concept of providing people with half a house.Footnote 18 Aravena’s practice, Elemental, was commissioned to design 100 houses with a budget of US$7500 per house (including land, materials, and construction). This amount would normally finance houses that are ~30 square metres, whereas the average middle class family in Chile lives with 80 square metres. Rather than build small single-storey houses, Aravena proposed building ‘half a house’ of two to three storeys. The idea was to build good structures with basics such as plumbing for a kitchen and bathroom and core shelter, while leaving the other half of the house incomplete for the households to finish as their individual resources and circumstances allowed. These half houses are also robust and built to withstand earthquakes and other disasters. Rather than just being a house, the half a house is a tool to escape poverty for the households. Once families moved into their houses the unfinished concrete cubes quickly transformed into different spaces that reflected the needs and skills of the household. As we have stated earlier in the book, shelter is a basic need, and good quality housing provides many benefits including increased health and well-being for the inhabitants. Aravena’s approach to affordable housing centres ethics and equity, as well as the environment, with the overall aim of increasing the capacity of the households.

6.12 Conclusion

In this chapter, we explored ten important socio-technical dimensions that we feel will play an important role in delivering the required sustainable housing future. These dimensions build upon earlier sustainable housing transitions research undertaken by scholars around the world over the past two decades. However, we have expanded on these to account for current context and recent/future changes across the housing and sustainability markets. We have defined each dimension and discussed how it was viewed within the wider transitions literature; we have explored how the current regime is operating related to that dimension and highlighted the opportunities that sustainable housing offers in engaging with the dimension. For each dimension, we have provided a short example to demonstrate how these dimensions are playing out in innovative ways. We explore these socio-technical dimensions in more detail across in-depth case studies in Chap. 7.