ABSTRACT
A plethora of policy initiatives are ostensibly targeted at enabling housing sustainability in low carbon cities. This chapter explores how such initiatives might be purposively joined up, thus curating a coordinated set of actors and actions around a transition. Housing changed radically across the Global North: furniture started to arrive, then the idea of cleanliness began to take hold, driving up the need for hot water. But it was the late nineteenth century arrival of electricity that enabled the high carbon transition to really take off. Three substantial questions involving socio-technical transitions to housing sustainability are treated: who steers the transition; how are strategic niches managed; and what are the limits to steering transitions. Reflexive governance is easier said than done. The chapter also discusses four observations regarding the application of socio-technical transitions approaches to housing sustainability.
