The Role of Mandatory and Voluntary Approaches for a Sustainable Housing Transition: Evidence from Vancouver and Melbourne

ABSTRACT

Housing performance has typically been governed by mandatory performance policies. There are examples of voluntary policies and programmes which have been introduced to augment mandatory requirements and push innovation. This paper investigates mandatory and voluntary sustainable housing approaches in Vancouver and Melbourne through a multi-level governance approach. The paper highlights key opportunities for voluntary approaches to help raise the outcomes of mandatory approaches if key limitations of each are addressed

KEYWORDS:

• Sustainable housing
• policy
• regulation
• multi-level governance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. In this paper we define sustainable housing as near net zero (or better) energy/carbon housing as calculated by annual impact. We define the sustainable housing transition as the change from current housing performance standards to near net zero energy/carbon housing.

2. Metro Vancouver represents 21 municipalities, one electoral area, and one treaty First Nation. It is a cooperative policy making and service delivery entity designated by provincial legislation. Membership is voluntary, as members can opt out of certain services, but it operates through consensus. In 2016, Metro Vancouver has an operating budget of CAD672.1million and ~1,500 employees (Horak and Doyon 2018).

3. In this paper we use the term “approaches” to cover policies, tools, and guides. In this paper we are focused on policies which improve greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption and efficiency in the lived phase of the dwelling.

Additional information

Funding

This research did not receive any specificgrant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.