Towards sufficiency in housing: Agent-based model and transition scenarios

Research problem: Housing is responsible for a considerable part of global resource consumption. In Switzerland, it accounts for almost one third of the country's CO2 emissions and half of the total energy demand. Thus, housing plays an important role in the transition to sustainable development. Housing has been thoroughly studied from a disciplinary perspective, e.g., economics, social sciences, psychology, engineering. However, little attention has been paid to housing as a system of interrelated actors, e.g., developers, owners, tenants and state, whose actions might be described by different disciplines. Aim: The aim of this thesis is to investigate how a change in the construction practices of property owners in combination to a more space-efficient allocation of dwellings to households and a behavioural change of tenants can achieve a substantial reduction in the environmental impact of housing. This dissertation focuses on the interrelations of housing actors, concentrating mainly on the property owners and explores which measures and to what extent can lead to a reduction of space consumption of housing.Methods: Housing is characterised by a high level of complexity, therefore a transdisciplinary approach is adopted. Firstly, the Swiss housing market and its unique attributes are studied. However, in this thesis, we study a subset of the Swiss rental housing market; it comprises two housing cooperatives: ABZ in Zurich and SCHL in Lausanne as well as the insurer and asset manager Swiss Mobiliar. Their housing stocks, of approximately 10,000 dwellings, are examined in depth and are used as a case study. Extensive data gathering allowed to create an exhaustive inventory of the building stock of the three property owners. The data on tenants was limited, thus, we conducted a tenant survey. Furthermore, a series of workshops with both tenants and property owners were organised to study their decision-making processes. A bottom-up agent-based model (ABM) is built, which portrays the case study housing system. The main actors of the rental housing market (property owners and households) are represented in the model by agents; the owner agents make decisions about their building stock and tenants, while the household agents choose a dwelling based on their needs and housing preferences. The dynamic evolution of both owners and households and the interaction between them is simulated in the model and allows the study of emergent phenomena. The present thesis attempts the assessment of the environmental impact of housing through the lens of housing sufficiency. Space consumption, in terms of dwelling surface and floor area per capita, is considered as the largest determinant of resource consumption.Results: The simulation results show that measures taken to decrease the environmental impact of housing and space consumption are inadequate if owners do not change their construction practices and households do not actively change their housing behaviour. Most measures explored in this thesis, if implemented individually, succeed in reducing the rate of increase in space consumption but fail to reverse the upward trend. A more space-efficient allocation of dwellings to households proves to have a certain effect. However, only when combined with other measures, such as the densification of the existing building stock and a change in construction practices, a significant decrease of environmental impact is observed.

Agent-based modeling for studying the choices of households in Switzerland

Claudia Rebeca Binder Signer, Anna Pagani

Housing plays a fundamental role in the transition towards a more sustainable society. In Switzerland, the unbalanced relationship between environmental, economic and social factors manifests itself in the current market trends of rental apartments, where data show a discrepancy between demand and supply. In fact, the impossibility for the supply to actively anticipate the change in tenants’ housing preferences often results in residential redistribution and new demand pressure. In this context, we have identified the following gaps: (i) Supply responds to the fast change in society (e.g., new family’s structure, lifestyles and comfort levels) with short-term satisfactory solutions. However, their long-term impact leads to a mismatch with the future evolving demand. In fact, the lack of understanding of system dynamics often causes actors to react to the system’s outputs, and to neglect the structure responsible for a specific behavior. Understanding the system structure is key to recognizing patterns, and to propose sustainable solutions accordingly. Therefore, studying the way tenants make decisions concerning their residential mobility is fundamental to design scenarios based on the system’s dynamics and to provide support for policy-makers, practitioners and households. (ii) Research on residential mobility and location choices is often fragmented in disciplinary silos, prioritizing the role played by housing characteristics (e.g., size, location, view) as determinants of decisions for the selection of a new dwelling. However, going beyond disciplinary fragmentation, housing function can be considered as the most crucial determinant of the system’s dynamics. Considering the lack of interdisciplinary and systemic approaches to housing and the related difficulty of the sector to predict and adapt to changing needs while providing sustainable solutions, the research aims to develop a model representing the way households take decisions concerning their residential situation. This allows to evaluate and propose measures supporting the transition towards housing sustainability in Switzerland. To fulfill this goal, a conceptual framework is developed, representing the factors influencing tenants’ decisions to move and where to move. From the framework, decision-making rules are derived, which allow for developing an Agent-Based Model (ABM) simulating tenants’ relocation decisions. To run the model, quantitative data on buildings and households are gathered from the database of our three partners: the cooperatives SCHL and ABZ and the insurer and asset manager Swiss Mobiliar. With the support of the qualitative findings of two Group Discussions with our partners’ tenants in Vaud and Zurich, we will conduct a large survey. Its results will feed into the model allowing, together with the behavioral rules, for simulating the interplay between households and dwellings. The Agent-Based Model of households’ residential decisions will feed an interdisciplinary collaborative model including social, economic and environmental factors as well as demand and supply requirements. The resulting baseline scenario will be used for the simulation of policy changes and the identification of new paths for the transition towards a more sustainable housing. These paths will be developed and assessed with a transdisciplinary approach involving our three partners and the Federal Housing Office, with the aim to propose a set of agreed policy recommendations for property owners as well as cantonal and federal authorities.

2018

Towards sustainability through housing functions: a systems perspective for the study of Swiss tenants' residential mobility

Anna Pagani

Problem. Housing is a major contributor to Switzerland's carbon footprint and energy consumption, but it is also a basic need. Research on climate change mitigation strategies has so far paid insufficient attention to households' preferences and their contribution to housing sustainability. Depicting residential preferences requires an understanding of the multilevel, context-specific, and interrelated determinants of the match between households and dwellings, which are made explicit in the residential mobility process.Goal. The goal of this thesis is to clarify the determinants of residential mobility and their interrelations to illuminate the effects of measures aimed at reducing housing's environmental footprint while meeting the needs of its households. Methods. This research employs a systems and transdisciplinary approach to explore, dig into and disentangle the complex relations governing the residential mobility process. It starts by conceptualising residential preferences and dwelling forms as the manifestations of the housing human and material subsystems, which are determined by the system's function. The applicability of this framework to residential mobility is explored by sequentially gathering and integrating qualitative and quantitative data on the tenants of three Swiss multifamily housing owners. This empirical basis is used to develop an agent-based model (ABM) of households' residential dynamics for the exploration of the emergent effects of housing sustainability measures.Results. Firstly, the present work shows that several functions coexist in the housing realm, each of which determines, for given elements of the societal and environmental supersystems (e.g. culture, location), different residential preferences and dwelling forms. Secondly, empirical investigations demonstrate that the notion of function offers analytical support to the study of Swiss tenants' residential mobility, as it permits the identification of linkages between the qualities of residential environments and residents' characteristics, their residential satisfaction, and triggers to move. In particular, functions help explain the observed preference for larger dwellings and the low propensity of shrinking households to relocate. Furthermore, this notion enables the observation of the effects of the exceptional circumstances posed by the COVID-19 on residential preferences, and the increased desire for a place for 'self-representation'. Lastly, using this empirical and context-specific knowledge, the thesis introduces the agent-based model ReMoTe-S. Simulation experiments show that measures to reduce space consumption are insufficient if not accompanied by an offer of dwellings that simultaneously meet and reshape households' preferences. They also reveal that these preferences cannot be fulfilled via the direct correspondence between desired and current housing characteristics, as housing functions result from several compromises between them. These results invite practitioners and citizens to collectively reimagine the way housing functions express themselves in dwelling forms with a lower environmental footprint.Conclusions. This thesis offers a platform for systemic co-inquiry that enables researchers and practitioners to navigate the complex interactions at play for the provision of sustainable housing. To limit human-induced global warming, the approaches and tools used must rapidly permeate practice and teaching in architecture.

EPFL2022

New Vernacular Architecture as Appropriate Strategy for Housing the Poor

Sytse de Maat

Improving living conditions of the poor often involves a drastic change in lifestyle, in order to fit daily life into industrially produced dwellings. Slum rehabilitation programs replacing informal settlements with standardized mass housing, have often resulted in a mismatch of inhabitants and their built environment. Participation strategies meant to counter this problem, show little effect unless the user is in charge. What is the problem with development and participation? This chapter will discuss ‘housing the poor’ as a case to illustrate how industrialization and systemization are at odds with participation. We will consider two ways of producing housing: industrial mass housing, and informal settlement. The focus is on the connectedness of the user, the inhabitant, with his dwelling. It will lead to the observation that participation aims at meeting the diversity that is natural to human beings, whereas systemization requires and produces the opposite: uniformity. Moreover, the term user-participation implicitly states the user is an outsider participating in developers' projects, which after all are dominated by the interests of the construction industry. An Appropriate Technology - approach in housing the poor would benefit from a focus on user-building interaction as it taps directly into people’s most powerful resource: creativity. Western systemization is not the only route to improvement. Strategies based on vernacular are at least as effective, appropriate, and humanly sustainable.