This article examines the extents to which economic growth and housing stock growth has been decoupled from negative environmental impacts over the latest two decades in the metropolitan areas of Hangzhou (China) and Copenhagen (Denmark). Research results show that housing stock growth and economic growth has been, at best, weakly decoupled from environment impacts, implying that the goal of sustainable housing development has not been fulfilled by the decoupling strategies. The long-term incompatibility between housing stock growth and environmental sustainability suggests the necessity of non-growth in the housing sector in order to reduce the environmental impacts from housing consumption to be within the ecological capacity. On the basis of an analysis of drivers of housing stock growth, the visions for a non-growth housing stock in both city regions are imagined in terms of potential risks and countermeasures.