The 3 pillars of sustainable housing: environmental, social and economic.
What are the 3 pillars of sustainable housing?
The number of variables to describe sustainable housing are uncounted and there are many different viewpoints from architects, engineers, builders, environmentalists, health care specialist and sustainable living advocates. Considering the different priorities from different groups, all opinions are a combination of the following 3 pillars of sustainability, but typically lean towards one or two of the following three:
Environmental sustainability energy, waste, recycling, materials, pollutants, emissions, contamination, vegetation, balance of species
Environmental sustainability is about taking care of everything natural and living around the human population. The animal kind (including the human kind) would not survive without the limited natural resources that the earth has and we need to use these resources wisely. It is about making sure the earth could recover the majority of what we take from it.
Economic sustainability
cost and benefit, profit, cost and access to utilities, taxes, resale value, maintenance, predictability of the supply chain
Economic sustainability is about finding the balance between the cost, benefit and long-term existence of companies and countries.
Social sustainability
quality of life, safety, accessibility, equality, diversity, functionality, aesthetics, democracy, consideration for future generations
Social sustainability is about the well-being of the society on a local, country and world level. Inclusion, consideration, social cohesion, equal opportunities and an overall quality of life assure long term sustainability.
What do the 3 pillars mean from a building perspective?
How to build environmentally sustainable (new) buildings?
The fact is that all materials have an environmental cost and all built environment requires a lot of them. More than 50% of all the extracted natural resources go into the construction sector. The question is how to design and install a house which would be energy efficient in the long term, reduce the use of materials and essentially, be recycled one day.
Analysing the building life cycle is the best-known method for understanding buildings’ environmental impact. Briefly put, it is important to think 40-50-100 years ahead, analyse the currently available options from materials, energy sources to building practices and, if possible, choose the lowest environmental impact solutions. We briefly speak about sustainable materials in an article called “Materials, well-being and sustainability”.
How to build socially sustainable buildings?
Social sustainability is the hardest pillar to define, analyse and essentially measure as is it extremely complex due to the variety of variables that it has (and associated trade-offs).
Generally, social sustainability speaks about overall wellbeing which is influences by a large variety of factors mentioned above. Defining social sustainability from the built environment perspective has focused on more specific concepts to examine the links between urban design, infrastructure and amenities (‘physical factors’), and the way people feel and react to their environment (‘non-physical’).
How to achieve economic sustainability for buildings
Economic sustainability is dealing with the cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness of buildings, including the building and maintenance of them.
The cost-benefit analysis involves considering alternatives for different designs, materials and processes. It is used to find out the best options which would achieve the highest benefits while keeping in mind the end goals and the opportunity cost. When a housing project’s goal is achieving environmental sustainability, then clearly, the alternatives considered are different to when the goal is to build as many sellable square meters as possible with the lowest cost possible (meaning that the chosen alternative will always be the cheapest acceptable option).
This takes us the projects’ cost effectiveness which is about the cost and outcomes (effects) of alternatives. Let’s say that the goal is to build environmentally sustainable buildings. In this case, when designing the house and its building processes, different factors, such as materials (quality, recycled vs new), transportation (local vs imported), the size and usability of the house, technology for energy production and deconstruction are being considered for their cost effectiveness in the long term. This means that not only the cost-benefit of building is considered, but also the long-term maintenance cost is analysed.
Is globally sustainable housing possible?
Answering this question surely depends on who is the one answering. Theoretically, absolutely, in reality, very complicated. This is due to one or two of the sustainability pillars typically dominating, especially when we look at housing sustainability from a global perspective.
In simple terms, sustainable housing has the same problem as any other complex issue – it is difficult to have it all and as a society we don’t often expect to have it all. We always make trade-offs as individuals as well as societies and make concessions on one or two of the pillars to gain for another. How to fix it? Step-by-step, more efficient, better quality technical solutions as well as communication, policies and incentives’ systems are in constant development.