ABSTRACT

Climate change presents a significant challenge to scholars and practitioners of housing and urban studies. This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. In terms of scope, the focus is on homeowner-dominated cities in the Global North but the focus is on the key issues of urban housing and climate change that affect all city-regions. This book addresses these challenges and, in so doing, aims to contribute to 'debate about the indoor environment and associated ways of life to avoid becoming locked into social and technical trajectories that are ultimately unsustainable'. An overarching argument in this book is that housing sustainability is not simply a matter for carbon policies or for housing policies, nor can housing sustainability be boiled down to equity or affordability, planning, or politics and power in and between cities.