What factors influence our decision to stay or move?
What makes a dwelling a place we want to call home? And why do we find it so hard to move, even when downsizing is the logical choice? To answer to these questions, a team of scientists surveyed 968 tenants in Switzerland. Swiss homes - just like our cars, TVs and waistlines - have gotten considerably larger over the past four decades. Average floor area per capita increased from 32 m² in 1980 to 46 m² in 2019, and this figure looks set to keep growing. What's behind this growing appetite for space? How can we reverse this trend in order to make housing more environmentally sustainable? And, most important of all, how can we shrink the size of our homes without compromising on our standard of living? Claudine Karlen, Anna Pagani and Claudia Binder, from EPFL's Laboratory on Human-Environment Relations in Urban Systems (HERUS), tackle these questions in a paper published in the Journal of Housing and the Built Environment . Their research touches on some thorny housing-related issues that have never been studied in this depth before. Taking a more sustainable approach to this segment of the country's housing market could make a huge difference over the coming decade National Research Programme Housing is the second-largest contributor to Swiss energy consumption and CO2 emissions, just behind transportation. And if the current pace of growth continues, there'll be no option but to keep building new homes on greenfield sites outside city centers.
