In 2007, the UK Government announced an ambitious zero-carbon target for all new housing in England. This paper shows how the definition and its associated policies emerged from discourses of environmental policy innovation; how the problem subsequently became framed as one of mainstreaming, consequent upon the apparent success of experimental schemes and defined in more detail through the interaction between pressure group politics and the technical analyses that accompanied the government's consultation exercises. Finally, it shows how regional and local variations in housing and property markets are likely to influence the ease of zero carbon development. The analysis uses concepts drawn from both the science and technology literature and the literature on policy implementation.
Despite a 40 year history of housing modernisation in England and the unrivalled scale of the recent Decent Homes programme, we know little about the experiences of residents as the immediate beneficiaries. This paper helps to address this absent perspective by drawing on data generated through qualitative research in a West Yorkshire city where innovative research methods were employed to reveal rare insights into the residents’ experience of housing modernisation. In doing so, the importance of understanding the impact of built environment interventions, especially those associated with a space as personal as the home, from the perspective of their users is underlined.
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