Another Suburban Transition? Responding to Climate Change in the Australian Suburbs
This chapter considers the idea of destabilising the current high-carbon regime and establishing the preconditions for a new sociotechnical regime in Australian suburban cities. It does this in the following four sections. The first section argues that ci
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Another Suburban Transition? Responding to Climate Change in the Australian Suburbs Tony Dalton
Abstract This chapter considers the idea of destabilising the current high-carbon regime and establishing the preconditions for a new sociotechnical regime in Australian suburban cities. It does this in the following four sections. The first section argues that cities can be the site of sociotechnical regimes. In this case, the focus is on the suburbs as a sociotechnical regime within Australian cities. The second section describes the pattern of direct and indirect household energy consumption in large metropolitan cities, which are overwhelmingly suburban cities. This urban/suburban location of high energy-intensive household living is an integral element of the high-carbon sociotechnical regime. The third section argues that the underlying ‘lock-in mechanisms’ producing and reproducing the suburbs have at times been destabilised and reconfigured. It is important to understand what made the new ‘lock-in mechanisms’ viable because this can inform strategic thinking about future change. The fourth section draws a set of preconditions from the history of change in ‘lock-in mechanisms’ that should be considered in the development of transition to low-carbon suburban suburbs. It presents them at three levels – macro, meso and micro – as a means for clarifying the way different types of power is exercised in the making and remaking of energy intensive suburbs. The challenge is how might households live in and remake their cities while they continue to be suburban so that they are more sustainable. Keywords Suburbs • Energy • Housing • Housing policy • Lock-in • Households • Historical review
11.1 Introduction Households in Australian cities contribute to greenhouse gas emissions and to global warming and climate change through their use of energy. The most obvious way in which households contribute to greenhouse gas emissions is through their direct use
T. Dalton () Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2018 T. Moore et al. (eds.), Urban Sustainability Transitions, Theory and Practice of Urban Sustainability Transitions, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-4792-3_11
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of energy for services such as space heating and cooling, heating water, cooking, running appliances and lighting. When compared to other developed urbanised countries, Australian households rank somewhere in the middle of the range. The less obvious way that households contribute to greenhouse gas emissions is through other practices associated with living in a dwelling located in a city. They include obtaining and eating food, disposing of waste, travelling to and from work and other destinations, using and disposing of water and the purchase and use of many other goods and services produced outside the home. Through these practices households use what is described as indirect or embodied energy. The research shows that in industrialised countries,
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