Sustainable Housing: Building a Greener Future

Abstract

The bricks and mortar we live and work in are no longer keeping us safe as houses. Almost half the UK’s carbon dioxide emissions come from heating and running commercial and residential buildings, and three million new homes are expected to be built by 2020. There is an urgent need to ensure new and existing homes are more sustainable in terms of both mitigating climate change (reducing carbon emissions), and adapting to the changing climate. There is no shortage of ideas — and practical demonstrations — about how this might be done, from high-tech smart houses which use the latest ‘modern’ construction methods and carefully monitor and adjust energy use in the home, to more ‘down and dirty’ low-tech solutions such as simple off-grid dwellings made of recycled consumer waste, and new social arrangements with shared neighbourhood facilities to promote social capital and cut resource use.

People seem to change fundamentally when they gain the added security that comes from knowing they are capable of providing their own shelter. When a community of people posses that confidence and come together to help create one another’s homes, it necessarily makes the world a better place to live (Steen et al., 1994: xvi)