Concepts of sustainable housing development revolve around various economic policies; environmental strategies as well as social considerations are widely discussed in global scales. By nature of its multi-faceted, the housing sector continues to consume various natural resources and this has major impacts on the overall status of the natural environment. The fact that it constitutes a large number of economic activities as well as impacts on economic developments in ways that are important components of quality of life and social development makes this issue a fundamental concern (Nadia & Scialabba, 2010). Therefore, sustainability issues need not face exemptions in issues of housing development having housing to be the critical ingredient in the progress and governance of social welfare.
The creation of sustainable housing developments heavily depends on the involvement and knowledge of all profound players in the sector. It is for this reason that this paper seeks to identify various levels of implementation and awareness of sustainable housing development and subsequently chart the aspects of sustainable development based on the current practices through different construction key players. In this respect, the key players will be the contractors, professionals and clients who are were approached during the focus on measuring the levels of awareness and persistence of the issues in sustainable development through the means of interviews and questionnaires. The findings of the paper benchmark and identify the elements that are important in the creation of sustainable housing developments. Future research will involve carrying out thorough surveys that combine both approaches through the extension of the focus to larger sized housing respondents such as buyers as well as key respondents in acquiring better sampling findings.
Sustainable developments are the acts of establishing a balance in the fulfillment of various human needs against the different levels of natural environment protection and making sure that all human needs are sufficiently met both presently as well as in the future. It is on this ground that sustainable development can be defined as the kind of development, which meets the present needs without necessarily having to compromise the capability and capacity of future generations in meeting their individual needs. Housing development has becomes a key ingredient in the focus of progress and governance in all nations of the world (Nadia & Scialabba, 2010). This means that creating sustainable housing development will require the accent and involvement of different parties within the industry. Such a construction industry will not exempt issues on housing sustainability or the incorporation of basic principles of sustainability, at their very least.
The kinds of inferences on the completion of adapting the sustainable economic domain are supported through the division of the cohort by the differences in financial obligations. In all segments of the stated life cycle, any increase in the level and amount of goods that are owned becomes greater for people with more financial capability. This is because it is expected that based on the levels of their greater income growth there will be an increase in amount of goods, which are desired for people with more education. Additionally, for all social groups, an increase in their housing desires is of a similar order in magnitude as increasing the number of items owned. Therefore, material aspirations are commensurately increasing with the levels of material possessions and at the same time, greater increment in possessions will lead to greater increment of their desires (Finnveden, G. et al. 2009).
This differential change of their aspirations to correspond to the actual differential income changes explains the levels of happiness constancy over each social group’s life cycle. Further, the point-of-time differential happiness is explained through aspirations. At the beginning of adult life cycle, there are substantial differences of material aspirations between each of the groups. This way, the better educated closely fulfill their aspirations and achieve happiness in the end. Subsequently, housing aspirations increase more for the people with better financial positions.
For low-income countries, there are common experiences of unsatisfactory situations in the conditions of urban housing. To improve in these situations, which are constrained by various categories of factors, including rapid population growth, inequitable social structures, persisting poverty and poor economy and hostile natural environments will require that there is a review of the effectiveness of public policies. For sustainability terms, large-scale housing demands and rapid urbanization in urban areas pose several problems from ecological sustainability. Actually, there are issues of competitive and conflicting issues in economic and technological sustainability against social and cultural sustainability (Nadia & Scialabba, 2010). Providing easy access to aspects such as housing finance, for models of various banks’ housing credits, increasing access to land and ensuring realistic building standards will generally add the scope of access to various affordable building materials accompanied by community involvement as some of possible options in achieving sustainable housing policies. Furthermore, political commitment that is time strong as well as stable political environments will recognise preconditions towards sustainable urban housing.
There are new perspectives to issues pertaining to housing developments. The major concerns on urban development and growth around social impacts on fuel use, congestion, pollution as well as variations in building forms attract different forms of debates in different parts of the globe. Similarly, the planning systems as well as legislative frameworks are becoming rather reworked for issues to do with sustainability and environmental concerns. Due to the characteristics of housing, it consumes a great extent of the available natural resources together with the production of various impacts on the different natural environments (Nadia & Scialabba, 2010). The gradual positioning of these houses, occupancy demands, building materials, energy and water consumption have critical environmental implications. In this respect, housing is seen as a prevailing factor, which affects the overall economy that is also part of the important social development components cultivating cultural attributes and the manifestation of various aesthetic values including their way of life.
Holistic perspectives are necessary in charting the way forwards of housing development with special focus on the sustainable development paradigm of housing offers like possibility. It is for this reason that housing becomes categorized as part of the basic human needs through which various quality costs as well as availability becomes crucial components to all individuals’ quality of life. With a vast number of homes as well as significant projected growths in the form of buildings and stock transfer, most housing associations play major roles in helping the society achieve sustainable futures (Bates, 2009). The extended system approaches to sustainability are specifically applied more to the urban development’s thorough viewing each of the urban housing developments as a unique system. However, the implementation of these basic sustainable development principles within the residential sector are many pronged where various approaches are used in the ultimate achievement of the desired outcomes.
Lack of defined and standard systems approaches will cause decreased interest and high levels of confusion in the vested parties because housing development practices, which are currently implemented, are in place for a long time now. Running operations of these fundamentals of housing sustainability and the application of it to real-world situations of human settlements is rather difficult than what most people expect. It is not until recently that housing sustainability is assertively applied to the considerations of the overall qualities of human settlements development (Nadia & Scialabba, 2010).
Part of these actions include developing homes which are constructed based on recyclable and renewable materials that are designed for use for longer periods of time as well as having minimal environmental impacts. It is argued that all environmentally friendly houses provide an allowance for affordable forms of living for the long run and they essentially minimize the increments in energy costs. However, it can be perceived that neither public housing providers nor the private market has shown high levels of interest in developing environmentally sustainable housing. This is because housing is driven by the question of affordability and the marginal costs of construction (Finnveden, G. et al. 2009). The ideology of housing development sustainability is limited within the needs of fulfilling basic human needs; waste absorption limits and their respective absorptive capacity and minimization of using nonrenewable resources through the promotion of renewable resources use. With such an inclusion, a general approach of sustainability is tailored towards addressing different human settlement issues.
The current focus on economic sustainability places much emphasis on financial aspects of housing affordability and life cycle cost. The development of building life spans through the incorporation of building maintenance elements and the opportunity of optimizing existing infrastructure is also an area of much interest. Most crucial players develop preferences for housing property into having and more facilities larger space. On the other hand, the context of housing sustainability does not necessarily illustrate the achievement of more facilities. Such a scenario offers a reflection that there is a possible element of misunderstanding of the overall concepts of the particular elements within sustainable housing developments. Due to these social sustain abilities, the housing industry and services including public transport, schools and recreational facilities as well as security to tenure need to be provided.
The elements of easing accessibility, improving security to tenure and the overall of housing quality affects the occupants’ physical and mental health and are thereby perceived as important. However, with reference to implementation, dimensions such as design is aimed at presenting long-term usage and better quality of living environment and housing through encouraging social solidarity and social networks in the neighborhood (Hertwich, 2005). The main objective of sustainable housing is the development of affordable housing which are long lasting and durable, practical to maintain and cost effective to build and efficiently use natural materials and resources on the basis of their environmental impacts on life-cycles. They also promote water conservation through reducing runoff and introduction of treats waste-on site. They maximize energy efficiency and conservation through reducing building footprints and simplifying building shapes for purposes of maximizing space efficiency. The optimization of building orientation will facilitate the integration of natural daylight as well as ventilation through healthy elimination of toxic and harmful waste materials within facilities and the immediate environment.
References
Bates, W. (2009) Gross national happiness: Asian-Pacific Economic Literature, Nov2009, Vol. 23 Issue 2, 1-16.
Finnveden, G. et al. (2009) Recent developments in life cycle assessment: Journal of Environmental Management, 91, 1, 1-21.
Scialabba, Nadia. El-Hage. Muller-Lindenlauf, (2010) Organic agriculture and climate change: Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems: 25(2); 158169.
Hertwich, Edgar G. (2005) Consumption and the rebound effect. An industrial ecology perspective: Journal of industrial ecology, Vol. 9, 1-2, 85-98.
