Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1480753
12 OPINION Rachel Scicluna The impact of the shrinking household on the environment AT first glance, the relationship between the shrinking house- hold, its consumption practices and climate change may seem a strange mix of social and envi- ronmental factors. At the last In- ternational Social Housing Festi- val held in Helsinki, as an active member of the UNECE Com- mittee Bureau on Urban De- velopment, Housing and Land Management, I had the oppor- tunity to discuss how affordable climate-neutral housing based on cohousing models can be a solution in Malta. There is compelling statisti- cal evidence indicating a glob- al transition towards smaller households. The average num- ber of people living in the same address has been sharply dimin- ishing for a large majority of the world's countries since the 1900s. Around a third of house- holds in North America, Europe and Japan are now of only one person, and indicators show that this trend is forecasted to con- tinue. Like other post-industrial countries Malta is also showing such indicators. The phenomenon of one-per- son households and alternative living arrangements are now be- coming urgent matters in policy terms due to their environmental consequences and have not been theorised or explored at a hous- ing policy level. As larger house- holds consume fewer resources per person due to economies of scale, shrinking households have been named among the major problems facing climate change mitigation efforts. Small- er households tend to increase (direct and indirect) energy and resource consumption, domestic waste, production of CO2 and bi- odiversity losses across a range of national contexts. In reality, peo- ple living alone do, own, make and consume resource-intensive things alone rather than together. These mechanisms mean that in- creased solo living fundamentally affects domestic life and domes- tic resource consumption. The above suggests that it is time for the local and interna- tional housing sector to rethink the way housing developments, including neighbourhoods and their amenities are designed and planned by taking the current changing household arrange- ments and their shrinkage as real social and environmen- tal indicators. Building more one-bedroomed apartments is not the solution for the obvious reasons of high consumption use and the dire implications related to social fragmentation, isolation and loneliness. This shift in finding energy effi- cient solutions through planning and design requires political will and a regulated housing system based on good governance. It is important to highlight that the housing industry can itself be the driver of certain abuse, ine- qualities and injustices especially those related to energy poverty based on class, gender, ethnicity, and race. My point is, that with- out a functioning housing sys- tem based on a justly governed system which sees a direct rela- tionship between the domestic lives of people, housing policy, financial prosperity, inclusive infrastructure and good health, our society cannot truly flourish. Our homes need to be put at the centre of our society. The above requires an intersec- tional approach to developing climate-neutral housing policies. This can also be extended to in- stitutional decision-making and the planning of housing devel- opments and urban policies. The co-housing design typology may be the right solution as it offers the possibility of implementing shared energy resources, while providing a good balance be- tween social interaction and pri- vacy. The simultaneously share of amenities in multiple-person households of appliances, water and energy usage has environ- mental benefits as it reduces the overall carbon footprint through sharing as opposed to usage in private households. Addition- ally, this housing typology is promoting the idea that good housing is also about communi- ty engagement. Moreover, common resource use can offer a window of oppor- tunity in collecting environmen- tal data based on domestic life. This collected data can become a new parameter that feeds in- to real time decision-making processes, enabling us to think of a health-value of domestic space and economic growth. The goods and services availa- ble in households, and the things considered normal to produce and consume in them, are inter- dependent with what is provid- ed by the state, market and the community. A household may not need a car if there is excel- lent public transport available; green spaces and allotments may compensate private gar- dens. Shifting towards common resource use in new housing de- velopments can be ideal even in understanding the health value of domestic space. In short, national housing pol- icy and the private housing in- dustry in Malta can really benefit by including the demographic, social and environmental di- mension at policy level and plan- ning stage. Often these factors are side-lined where the empha- sis is more on the importance of the hardware of cities and its economic outcome rather than the wellbeing of our society. maltatoday | SUNDAY • 2 OCTOBER 2022 The phenomenon of one-person households and alternative living arrangements are now becoming urgent matters in policy terms due to their environmental consequences Rachael Scicluna is a consultant and lecturer, Faculty of the Built Environment University of Malta