Sustainable housing as part of sustainable development - visions and experiences from Denmark

The paper discusses different approaches to sustainable development with main focus on sustainable housing, but also local climate activities with focus on transportation, food and local businesses are discussed. The focus in the paper is mainly on experiences from Denmark. The paper starts out with a short introduction to theoretical approaches to analyses of sustainable housing and other sustainability initiatives as innovation processes. Afterwards some social and political characteristics of Denmark are presented and one of the recent sustainability initiatives in Denmark, the climate plan from the Danish Society of Engineers is described. The second part of the paper discusses Danish sustainable housing strategies focusing on new houses and refurbishment of existing houses. Finally some recent experiences from a local climate cooperation between a technical university, a municipal administration and the local branch of a national environmental organisation is presented.