PATHWAYS FOR SUSTAINABLE HOUSING TRANSFORMATIONS: AN INTERNATIONAL COMPARISON OF RETROFITTING STRATEGIES FOR (SOCIAL) HOUSING

Paper in proceeding, 2009

The importance to address Europe’s large stock of aging, deteriorating and highly energy inefficient housing stock in order to reach goals for climate change and sustainable development is today widely accepted. This recently initiated research project will review cases of sustainable housing transformations in existing post-war housing stocks in Europe and other developed countries (i.e. USA, Canada, etc.) in which both environmental and social issues are addressed with an emphasis on affordable living. The focus is on process issues and on prime movers among housing associations and their role as construction clients in driving self-sustaining innovation processes to reach more sustainable housing transformations: how they support and drive innovation, learning and implementation in relation to this issue, and if their strategies are replicable for a larger selection of housing owners in an international perspective. This paper presents preliminary findings based on two case studies of prime movers among housing associations, one in the Netherlands and one in Sweden, that have carried out sustainable housing transformations. Based on literature on environmental innovation in construction and on a model to change individual behaviour in planning interventions by Green and Kreuter (1999) we have developed a framework for analysis of housing associations’ behaviour. This tentative framework singles out: predisposing, enabling, reinforcing, responsive and inhibiting factors as well as factors that will support the transferability and replicability of results. The findings will be used for the further development of the framework to be used in the continuation of the project where more cases in Europe and internationally will be studied and analysed.