Index
Climate Change and Social Context
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Images: Climate change and environment
Projects
- Beyond Behaviour Change
- Re-imagining the Australian Suburb
- Sustainable Homes and Living
- The social practice of going green
- Remaking suburbia
- More Than a Roof Overhead
- Lifetime Affordable Housing
- Carbon Neutral Communities
- Urban Infrastructure
Staff in the Climate Change and Social Context group are concerned with the interplay of policy and regulation, industry, technology, design, economy, demography, culture and social practices, in the transition towards sustainable communities and consumption patterns. Climate change is the key driver for a range of research projects centred on housing/households, communities and flows of goods and services. The wide disciplinary mix required for such projects has enabled links to be drawn across RMIT, particularly with the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (RMIT); School of Global Studies, Social Science and Planning; and the School of Creative Media.
CCSC Objectives
- Increase knowledge and understanding of the relations between policy, infrastructure and social practice in determining environmental performance outcomes
- Develop applied research projects with policy development and/or practice change-related outcomes aimed at effective climate change mitigation and adaptation
- Strengthen national and international research links by developing collaborative research projects across the climate change and social context research areas
CCSC Strategic focus
- Affordable, sustainable homes – including building and locational efficiency, renovation practices, behaviour and relevant mechanisms to drive and assess programmes aimed at climate change mitigation and adaptation
- Sustainable practices of consumption – practices of purchasing, exchange and use of goods and services, and prospects for more sustainable outcomes
- Sustainable communities, cities and organisations – urban scale infrastructure, social and organizational responses to climate change
CCSC Project examples
Lifetime affordable housing is an Australian Research Council Linkage project, which involves carbon assessments of housing and lifetime costing of greenhouse gas savings and financial costs for different housing configurations. Partners include state government agencies in Victoria and South Australia: Building Commission, VicUrban and Land Management Corporation.
City infrastructures shape - and are in turn shaped by - human practices of habitation and movement. Moreover, they are not fixed in time, but are continuously being reshaped, added to and reused for new purposes. Our social practices, standards of living, expectations and consumption practices have previously led to ever-rising greenhouse gas emissions. The interplay of infrastructure, institutional and policy frames, and social practices and context are the focus of the Sustainable Homes and Living series of projects, which include research with several Universities and the Federal Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts.
Climate change is set to be the major environmental driver for 21st century eco-cities, and the Australian Research Council Linkage project Carbon Neutral Communities is designed to develop methods and techniques to identify carbon neutral potential, and social, economic, cultural and capacity barriers to achieving this potential.