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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday March 10 2020, @09:01AM   Printer-friendly
from the tiny-homes dept.

Downsizing the McMansion: Study gauges a sustainable size for future homes:

What might homes of the future look like if countries were really committed to meeting global calls for sustainability, such as the recommendations advanced by the Paris Agreement and the U.N.'s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development?

Much wider adoption of smart design features and renewable energy for low- to zero-carbon homes is one place to start -- the U.N. estimates households consume 29% of global energy and consequently contribute to 21% of resultant CO2 emissions, which will only rise as global population increases.

However, a new scholarly paper authored at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) assesses another big factor in the needed transformation of our living spaces toward sustainability -- the size of our homes.

The paper published in the journal Housing, Theory & Society makes the case for transitioning away from the large, single-family homes that typify suburban sprawl, offering new conceptions for what constitutes a more sustainable and sufficient average home size in high-income countries going forward.

The article surveys more than 75 years of housing history and provides estimates for the optimal spatial dimensions that would align with an "environmentally tenable and globally equitable amount of per-person living area" today. It also spotlights five emerging cases of housing innovation around the world that could serve as models for effectively adopting more space-efficient homes of the future.

"There is no question that if we are serious about embracing our expressed commitments to sustainability, we will in the future need to live more densely and wisely," said Maurie Cohen, the paper's author and professor at NJIT's Department of Humanities. "This will require a complete reversal in our understanding of what it means to enjoy a 'good life' and we will need to start with the centerpiece of the 'American Dream,' namely the location and scale of our homes.

"The notion of 'bigger is better' will need to be supplanted by the question of 'how much is enough?' Fortunately, we are beginning to see examples of this process unfolding in some countries around the world, including the United States."

Maurie J. Cohen. New Conceptions of Sufficient Home Size in High-Income Countries: Are We Approaching a Sustainable Consumption Transition? Housing, Theory and Society, 2020; 1 DOI: 10.1080/14036096.2020.1722218


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  • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday March 10 2020, @06:15PM (2 children)

    by DeathMonkey (1380) on Tuesday March 10 2020, @06:15PM (#969191) Journal

    Notice that the argument is to make smaller homes not to develop better technologies for making new and existing homes more sustainable.

    Notice how that's actually the very first argument in the summary?

    Notice how the anti-environmentalists will just ignore reality and insert their own words into other people's mouths?

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 10 2020, @06:54PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 10 2020, @06:54PM (#969214) Journal
    Sorry, no it wasn't. Mentioning something in passing is not an argument.
  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 11 2020, @02:12AM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 11 2020, @02:12AM (#969419) Journal
    Since I have a real computer, I'll copy/paste a couple of quotes to describe what's actually going on:

    Much wider adoption of smart design features and renewable energy for low- to zero-carbon homes is one place to start — the U.N. estimates households consume 29% of global energy and consequently contribute to 21% of resultant CO2 emissions, which will only rise as global population increases.

    However, a new scholarly paper authored at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) assesses another big factor in the needed transformation of our living spaces toward sustainability — the size of our homes.

    So they mention it once and never again. That's not an argument in any sense. It's lip service. It's even worse in the article which claims

    Accumulating evidence demonstrates that the field of sustainable consumption is undergoing a “sufficiency turn” (Princen 2005; Figge, Young, and Barkemeyer 2014; Schneidewind and Zahrnt 2014; Gorge et al. 2015; Bocken and Short 2016; Spengler 2016; FOEE 2018; Daoud 2018; Yan and Spangenberg 2018). After nearly two decades of research and policy focused primarily on the efficacy of relative decoupling, efficiency improvements, renewables substitution, and behaviour change, the focus is shifting to system-scale innovation aimed at achieving a sustainable consumption transition (Tukker 2005; Fuchs 2013; Lorek and Fuchs 2013; Hobson 2013; Røpke 2015; O’Rourke and Lollo 2015; Van Gameren, Ruwet, and Bauler 2015; Chatterton 2016; Greene 2018; Welch and Southerton 2019; see also Geels et al. 2015). This new emphasis seeks to encourage implementation of transformational strategies, to facilitate absolute reductions in energy and materials throughput, and to create the preconditions for enhancement of human and ecological well-being (Akenji et al. 2016; Cohen, Brown, and Vergragt 2010, 2013; Jackson 2016; Pettersen 2016; Fuchs et al. 2016; Gough 2017). A related commitment to articulate conceptions of sufficiency is evident in several consumption domains – from food to energy to mobility (see, for example, Cooper 2005; Crivits et al. 2010; Berg 2011; Bocken et al. 2014).

    They merely mention that some sort of research on "relative decoupling, efficiency improvements, renewables substitution, and behaviour change" has been done, not even bothering at that point to mention in passing whether it furthers the goals they claim to care about or not.

    What I think is profoundly ridiculous about the whole thing is that energy and materials investment in a large house just isn't that important in the scheme of things. There is this continued insistence to sacrifice peoples' preferences and living standards for modest conservation of energy and materials.