Socio‐cultural sustainability of housing: a conceptual exploration

As an important component of the built environment, housing has a crucial role to play in the sustainable development of cities. The sustainability of housing development embraces the environmental, social, cultural and economic aspects of housing, which intertwine with one another. This paper specifically investigates the concepts of social and cultural sustainability and then situates them within the housing context. It discusses the areas of concern of these two strands of sustainability in housing, arguing that they converge where the use of environmental resources for and the ecological impacts of housing activities are influenced and determined by socio‐cultural factors. Social and cultural sustainability diverge where “social well being” and “culture” respectively become the subjects of sustainability. Some results of a residents' survey conducted in Hong Kong are used to provide empirical examples for some of the arguments raised in this paper. This article concludes that the sustainable development perspective offers an integrative approach to housing inquiries.