Safe and just housing for all–Towards establishing a sustainable consumption corridor for housing

Abstract

This paper introduces a sustainable consumption corridor (SCC) framework designed to define a ‘safe’ and ‘just’ space for housing provisioning, integrating social equity with ecological sustainability in the housing sector. It proposes a comprehensive set of ecological ceilings and social foundations, providing actionable threshold indicators for measuring and guiding sustainable housing practices. Through the SCC, this work addresses the pressing socio-ecological challenges the housing sector faces, especially the need to balance housing expansion with environmental limits. In doing so, this work provides a platform to discuss the consumption-based versus absolute limits for social and ecological thresholds, the need to integrate social and environmental thresholds, and the need to model the provisioning system dynamics which in turn influence the social and environmental performance of housing provisioning systems. This provisioning includes both the physical and political economic factors which influence these outcomes. The study sets the stage for future empirical research and the refinement of indicators that can be adapted across different contexts to ensure relevance and applicability. The ultimate aim promote policies to reconfigure housing provisioning systems to meet human needs within the planetary boundaries.