A Framework to Guide Sustainable Housing Development

This paper presents two urban case studies of attempts at developing sustainable housing in the Boston, Massachusetts metropolitan area. The case studies are used to test a multidimensional framework to see how well it might be applied as a guideline for development and a tool for understanding and evaluating actual housing development projects. This framework includes 10 sustainable housing development principles formulated from previous research. Using this framework, the manuscript examines two housing developments that incorporate several principles from the framework. Using these principles as a definitional and evaluative tool, this manuscript assesses the extent to which these projects make reasonable progress in achieving sustainable housing and why certain aspects of sustainable housing and the principles presented here are or are not included in these projects. The paper concludes with a detailed discussion of key findings and how they impact the likelihood of sustainable housing development in the future.