Housing retrofit: the household-inclusive way? : Perspectives from China and the Netherlands

Abstract

Government officials and retrofit installers in both China and the Netherlands recognise the need to solve the problem of deteriorated housing and to do so while building trusting relationships with the citizen-consumers involved. Strongly regulated retrofit processes are being organised to improve the housing stock by housing retrofit. Carefully organised retrofit processes by installers and government officials are regarded as an important instrument to improve the quality of housing and to make energy-efficient use of apartments possible. In organised retrofit processes, the emphasis is commonly on a range of technical retrofit items. Typically, in the retrofitting of apartment buildings, basic measures, such as insulation solutions and heating, cooling, and ventilation systems, are considered to guarantee energy savings. The well-established policy ideals regarding smart homes and passive homes can be said to represent technocentric retrofitting strategies in which householders have passive roles. However, ongoing academic and societal debates have emerged about technocentric retrofit strategies. It is questioned whether or not the technology-centred strategies and ideals are best suited for organising retrofit projects in Chinese and Dutch cities, for example, when facing the specific development challenges of low-income householders with thermal comfort. It is argued that retrofitting existing homes, which is a societal problem, cannot be properly addressed without including the householders in the housing retrofit projects and processes.This thesis provides an academic discussion of the potential, benefits and challenges of householder inclusion faced by China and the Netherlands in the context of their ongoing and expanding housing retrofit programmes aimed at saving energy. The specific focus is on the retrofit policies, retrofit processes and the daily domestic routines or social practices of householders. The conventional strategies regarding householder participation and energy savings tend to be geared towards exploring whether or not and in what ways the packages of retrofit items are being adopted in the context of the 'new' domestic routines that come along with the retrofit. In this study, we aim to go beyond just studying (willingness to) adoption. We examine the impacts of organised retrofit processes on the The implications of household-inclusive housing retrofit projectsWhen studying the role of householders in retrofit processes, a promising approach would be to analyse how the householders' perspectives regarding everyday life match with or do not match with the perspectives of engineers and government officials as professional organisers of retrofit processes (Karvonen, 2013). Taking into account such a consumer perspective, therefore, requires not only understanding how the different domestic practices of heating, cooling and ventilation are composed and might change but also analysing how installers, engineers, policymakers and behaviour change practitioners attempt to reconfigure domest...