The 2008/9 recession had a pronounced impact on the financial performance, stability and output of Britain's volume housebuilders, leading to a historic decline in new housing supply.

Despite the significant role that speculative housebuilders have in new housing provision, little attention has been paid to understanding the behavioural practices of speculative housebuilders and, in particular, evaluating their response to state-led policy initiatives seeking to influence their business practices. In addressing this gap, this paper uses the policy switch favouring brownfield development as a mechanism for examining how housebuilders respond to increasing state intervention in their business practices and, in doing so, explores the increasingly contested relationship between the state and the market in housing supply. It then reflects on what impacts this may have on housing delivery within the changing financial and policy context beyond 2010 and warns that public policy seeking to influence the location, type, quantity and quality of new housing needs to be supported by policies that encourage widespread behavioural change in the speculative housebuilding industry.

In this paper, we argue that current research on carbon regulation neglects the complex interactions of institutional norms and market behaviour that characterise responses to regulatory change. We draw on empirical research undertaken with English housebuilders and housing market stakeholders to examine how transitional pathways toward a low carbon housing future might be advanced and consider the implications of such for carbon regulation and low carbon economies. Our core proposition is that carbon regulation research can no longer ignore the impact of institutionally-constituted market behaviour in shaping pathways and transitions towards low carbon futures. 1.! IntroductionThe growth of global concern over the anthropogenic impacts of climate change has done much to narrow the focus of environmental concern from the broad idealism of sustainable development to a preoccupation with the management of carbon cycles. The challenge that lies ahead is a significant one. According to Kennedy and Sgouridis (2011) addressing planetary CO2 limits (stabilisation of 350 parts per million) will require the developed world to cut carbon emissions by around 95%. Whilst there is evidence of a slowing in overall global emissions (DECC, 2016) certain regions remain dominant sources of CO2 production and have, as a result, had to review the efficacy of interventions centred on carbon efficiency. In the latest update published by the EUJRC (2015), the EU was found to account for 10% of global outputs with the US and China accounting for 15% and 30% respectively. The main focus of attention within these regions has, unsurprisingly, been on the built environment (Gill et al., 2007;Bulkeley et al., 2010;Chavez and Ramaswami, 2011;Hodson et al., 2013;Carter et al., 2015). Rydin (2013) attributes this not only to the potential impact that decisions regarding design and construction of individuals buildings might have on carbon reduction, but also the role played by urban layout and associated travel choices.In response, a persuasive body of literature has emerged which has attempted to indicate the contribution that specific modes of intervention might achieve within the built environment 2 (see for example: Pataki et al., 2006;Dhakal and Betsill, 2007;Metz et al., 2007;Shukla et al., 2008;Dhakal, 2010; Li et al., 2010;Feng et al., 2013). This work has contributed to the modelling of carbon futures through the use of scenario-based tools and has identified the range of technical solutions that might ease the carbon crisis. In parallel, state-level actors have advanced a plethora of regulatory and policy-based mechanisms geared towards meeting ambitious reduction targets to be delivered by non-state actors (Bailey and Wilson, 2009;Geels, 2014). To a certain extent, these trends represent a positive move towards addressing climatic impacts, yet they also raise important questions about realisation and effectiveness. We argue that one of the problems of achieving a low carbon economy is that much of the language of carbon red...

The concept of green housing has been introduced in China to deal with climate issues in the housing sector. Green housing development requires a complex socio-technical transition based not just on green materials or technologies, but also, and most importantly, on the behavioural transition of housing market actors. Little is known about how Chinese real estate enterprises are responding to the green housing transition within a Chinese context. Addressing this gap, our research aims to determine whether, and to what, extent Chinese real estate enterprises are transitioning toward greener housing practices and what constraints may exist. This C the new urban building sector by requiring 50% of urban new buildings to be green buildings by 2020 (NDRC, 2016). Our research r C institutional constraints that currently frustrate their uptake of green housing practices. Our research furthers knowledge on environmental and housing market governance within non-western and non-liberal contexts.

The vicissitudes and volatilities of recent housing market cyclicality have restructured, reconfigured and reorganised housing systems and their supply demand characteristics. Surprisingly little attention has been paid to (re)examining supply side outcomes, much less the influencing effect of supply behaviour in response to demand-side change and their interactions. Indeed, one of the biggest unanswered questions in housing studies today is how supply side characteristics, specifically those of speculative housebuilders, have been affected by the turbulent, transitionary context presented by the global financial crisis. Addressing the gap, this paper presents a novel analysis of how Britain s biggest housebuilders respond to significant institutional shock in their operating environment and considers how this enables and constrains housing supply outcomes in the post-recession context.