Housing Sustainability in Low Carbon Cities

Ralph Horne

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138698345
• eBook ISBN: 9781315519357
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Sustainable Development
• Index: Economics

Housing affordability, urban development and climate change responses are great challenges that are intertwined, yet the conceptual and policy links between them remain under-developed.

Housing Sustainability in Low Carbon Cities addresses this gap by developing an interdisciplinary approach to urban decarbonisation, drawing upon more established, yet quite distinctive, fields of built environment policy and design, housing, and studies of social and economic change. Through this approach, policy and practices of housing affordability, equity, energy efficiency, resilience and renewables are critiqued and alternatives are presented. Drawing upon international case studies, this book provides a unique contribution to interdisciplinary urban and housing studies, discourses and practices in an era of climate change.

This book is recommended reading on higher level undergraduate and taught postgraduate courses in architecture, urban studies, planning, built environment, geography and urban studies. It will also be directly valuable to housing and urban policy makers and sustainability practitioners.

1

INTRODUCTION

Housing sustainability in low carbon cities

Climate change presents a significant challenge to scholars and practitioners of housing and urban studies. More than ever, this amounts to a pressing need for both interdisciplinary understanding and major changes in policy and practice. This book is about attending to both needs. In terms of scope, the focus is on homeowner-dominated cities in the Global North but I engage with key issues of urban housing and climate change that affect all city-regions.

There is a burgeoning literature addressing the technological and design challenges of climate change, and the major implications for land use, economies, cities and policy – see, for instance, the ‘Environment and Climate Change Studies’ section of the LSE Review of Books. With increasingly dire reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), international agreements focus on who should do what to mitigate and adapt to climate change, and critics point to the widening gap between what should be done and what is being done. The many millions of widely diffuse ‘non-point sources’ of greenhouse gases (GHGs) contribute to the ‘risk society’ of late-modern times (Beck 1992) and policy makers have responded to calls for action with long-term visions and strategies, but to limited effect.

It is increasingly obvious that immediate and radical cuts in emissions are necessary, given that CO₂ atmospheric concentrations surpassed 400 parts per million (ppm) in 2015 while the IPCC warned that it needs to remain less than 450 ppm to limit global warming to below two degrees. As Fred Pearce (2016) concludes:

That means emitting in total no more than about 800 billion tons of CO₂ from all sources—or less than 20 years’ worth at current rates. In practice, emissions have to be brought down to zero by mid-century.

Less well articulated is where and how such cuts will be made. Will energy use continue to rise with existing fossil energy sources being successively replaced by renewable, ‘clean’ energy sources? Will energy use need to fall, necessitating greater efficiencies in its use and de-coupling energy use from economic growth and development? In general, the deep cuts in emissions that are required imply that both these strategies will need to be pursued.

Given that around 30 per cent of global annual GHG emissions is attributable to the building sector, which uses around 40 per cent of the total energy consumed, and particularly given that expected expansions imply a doubling of GHG emissions before 2030 (UNEP 2009, 3), it is critical to make significant shifts in urban housing and household systems towards decarbonisation.

The urgency to decarbonise domestic life is all the more pressing given that there is rapid growth in urban populations. This raises the problem of housing supply and land availability, and the fact that affordable housing is increasingly elusive. Meanwhile, popular debates and policy discourses alike have thrown spotlights on decarbonisation, ranging from calls for householders to curb consumption through to eco-dwellings generating renewable energy.

But these spotlights cast long shadows. They emanate from particular viewpoints. They emphasise particular ways of seeing and de-emphasise others. The dominant discourse is that of ‘ecological modernisation’ with tools of reflexive governance, market logics, rational assessment and provision of technology offered as key means to shift the complex systems of the modern world in a more sustainable direction. Every principle or tool applied has knock-on implications for policy makers and the sector, as emphasised here:

The goals of affordability, resiliency and sustainability are truly complementary but difficult to achieve without key elements such as trained building professionals, accurate tools to measure energy use and improved appraisals and financing.

(EESI 2014)

Houses are obdurate structures, yet they are constantly being remade and reformed. Form and fabric are significant investments that, once made, tend to ‘lock in’ future energy use throughout occupation of a dwelling. Yet, across this obduracy lie dynamic socio-economic processes punctuated by disruptive forces, from renewable technology to digital urbanism (Hommels 2008). Cyclical housing markets and the global financial crisis and its aftermath (especially the rise of insecure employment, unemployment and underemployment) have worsened already-unfolding crises in housing affordability. New understandings of urban housing in transition are needed – theories that encompass provision, production and consumption – to shed light on the ‘perfect storm’ of housing need, unaffordability and carbon ‘lock in’. This book addresses these challenges and, in so doing, aims to contribute to ‘debate about the indoor environment and associated ways of life … to avoid becoming locked into social and technical trajectories that are ultimately unsustainable’ (Chappells and Shove 2005, 32).

Housing sustainability and low carbon cities are increasingly popular terms, yet they carry multiple meanings. On a cautionary note, a materially deterministic meaning is pervasive; houses are considered to be sustainable, or not, depending upon factors such as technical equipment and design. Of course, this is not strictly accurate, since occupiers of buildings draw upon potentially unsustainable resources in undertaking their everyday routines. This said, the amount of energy they use is partly associated with the condition and design of the building and its appliances; and the amount of greenhouse gas emitted is also a function of the source of the energy produced – typically via power stations and other energy infrastructures.

In this book, ‘housing sustainability’ means ‘locating and accommodating environmental, social and economic capability’ in the home. The term ‘housing’ also has a broader meaning than simply shelter. It is an adjective but also a verb – as in the housing of sustainability in cities. Here sustainability not only requires a focus upon carbon and energy, but also extends to include affordability, capability and socio-economic security into the future. Similarly, the term ‘low carbon cities’ is open to interpretation. While this book has a focus on the city as citizens in a place where policy makers can and do act in ways that effect and affect sustainability, I invite readers to bear in mind a complete supply chain of energy and carbon when we consider the establishment and operation of cities and housing. Thus, when I refer to housing energy efficiency or low carbon cities, I am pointing to urban housing settings that are more likely to facilitate human activities that ultimately account for less energy and fossil fuel consumption through relatively energy-efficient and low carbon practices.

An overarching argument in this book is that housing sustainability is not simply a matter for carbon policies or for housing policies, nor can housing sustainability be boiled down to equity or affordability, planning, or politics and power in and between cities. It is all these things; carbon, inequality and governance are imbricated together along with every scale of governance. This argument explains the logic behind the arrangement of chapter topics.

This chapter outlines the structure, arguments and themes of this book and, then, discusses definitions and matters of scope and boundaries. Broad discussions follow on topics that recur through the book, directing readers to chapters where each topic is introduced or examined in greater depth.

The structure of this book

There is a growing range of books on housing and climate change. The ambition of this one is to offer various perspectives from different disciplines and fields, and to draw connections between these perspectives. For example, links between building science and behaviour change, and between urban economies and housing affordability, are highlighted. The book is written for scholars and practitioners of urban sustainability and housing studies from across the disciplinary divides. It is intended to enable students, peers and the general public to engage with critiques and debates across the range of challenges to housing sustainability in low carbon cities.

Those from architecture, design, engineering and building science will encounter social science concepts presented in an accessible yet critical and reflexive way. Housing, urban planning, geography and social science scholars and policy makers, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and the wider public will recognise familiar discussions of housing and climate change, but also new perspectives from emerging theory and empirical work on this rapidly emerging major interdisciplinary field.

The book is organised into three parts:

•Part I, ‘Perspectives, policies and transitions’, provides a conceptual framework for studying housing sustainability in low carbon cities.

•Part II, ‘Dynamics of housing sustainability’, presents fresh insights into housing production, household consumption, lifetime affordable housing and housing retrofit in the context of shifts towards housing sustainability.

•Part III, ‘Governance of housing sustainability in low carbon cities’, examines processes of urban intensification, initiatives to promote smart, sustainable, resilient and ethical cities, and prospects for governing household carbon.

In many ways, the material in Part I anchors this book. Chapters 2–5 inclusive set out to shape the problems and key perspectives of housing and climate change in cities. Chapter 2 and 3 address the questions of assessment of housing sustainability in low carbon cities, and of different perspectives, respectively. Chapter 4 reviews international trends and policy making on housing, carbon and sustainable development. Using levers of policy as a starting point, Chapter 5 reviews the literature on sustainability transitions, evaluating the contribution of innovation studies in ideas of socio-technical change and presenting key ideas about how transitions towards housing sustainability in low carbon cities might be achieved.

Part II of this book is concerned with four key aspects of the dynamics of housing sustainability. First, Chapter 6 focuses on housing production, specifically the development of contemporary practices of housing design, construction and policy to produce housing designed to enable sustainable living. Historically, housing production systems have been site-based and project-based enterprises, although ‘pre-fab’ housing has been attempted from time to time and place to place. Such patterns of innovation in design and construction are described in the context of climate change and resource scarcity in particular.

Chapter 7 is concerned with the consumption dimensions of low carbon housing and resilience debates. Policy makers and programme designers concerned with curbing GHG emissions have tended to make untested assumptions about the ‘normal’ practices of householders and the motivations for their behaviour and decisions. ‘Behaviour change’ is high on the urban agenda, typically manifest in environmental policy as market incentives, and education and awareness campaigns. However, the focus on individuals as primary agents of changing emission-intensive ways of life has been challenged and those offering a broader set of factors with which to explain and influence domestic life are increasingly recognised. This chapter charts the social, cultural, economic and political structuring factors at play that both shape consumption patterns and constrain and distribute aspects of ‘choice’ about urban consumption.

Chapter 8 outlines the efforts of many governments to maintain owner-occupied housing as a site of household wealth generation while grappling with an attendant rapidly expanding housing affordability gap in growing cities. The main focus is on reframing this debate around housing sustainability, that invariably requires attention to equitable, affordable, well-located and sustainable low carbon homes. Some commentators and housing industry organisations have lobbied against low carbon building regulations on the grounds that they undermine affordability. Chapter 8 reviews this debate and proposes an extension of the affordability concept to include estimates for rising household energy bills and transport costs. Thus, the concept ‘Lifetime Affordable Housing’ is explained using evidence and case studies.

Chapter 9 focuses on increasing attention given to low carbon retrofit and renovation. Situated within the broader home improvements regime, the emergent industries and practices of low carbon retrofit are described. A key question is posed: ‘How might industries need to change to remake appropriate and adequate urban housing in our era of climate change?’ In addressing this question, the dynamics and technologies of energy efficiency and energy renewables retrofits, and examples of associated policy and programme initiatives, are reviewed along with commentary on the size, skills and institutional capacity of the sector.

Part III of the book shifts scales from housing to in...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of boxes
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction: Housing sustainability in low carbon cities
• PART I: Perspectives, policies and transitions
• PART II: Dynamics of housing sustainability
• PART III: Governance of housing sustainability in low carbon cities
• Index