School of Architectural, Building &

Design

Sustainable Housing Development

Topic: Lack of awareness and understanding in sustainable

housing

Name: Moy Chin HoongStudent ID: 0314014

In this 21st century, the rapid growth of economy and numbers of people

around the world has led to the invention of technologies in order to fulfill the

humans’ needs. Housing development is also being technologized by not only

using the old traditional method but it has to be green and sustainable. The

need of a high quality and comfortable housing area is very important and

essential for people especially for those in the developing countries like

Malaysia, which focuses mainly in industrialization (Goh, Seow, & Goh, 2013).

According to Tan (2011), “the concept of sustainability has become central not

just in environmental preservation, but also in the consideration of the quality

of development in human settlements”. Thus, this has led the topic of

“sustainable housing” becoming a hot debate topic among the citizens. But,

do they know what is actually “sustainable housing” defined as? There are

different definitions from several researchers. But as an overall, it is the

housings, which is developed with less waste and maintenance, lower

environmental impacts and costs, more re-use and recycling materials that

produce the better reliability and greater user satisfaction (Finch, 2007). “In

short, it is basically related with the three domains, which are nature,

economy and society” (Tahir & Asmawi, 2012).

This research is carried out in order to find out the challenges of implementing

the sustainability concept in housing development in Malaysia (Goh, Seow, &

Goh, 2013). Regardless of the efforts that have been done by the

government, there are still a lot of issues going on such as lack of awareness

and understanding, awareness on environment, high capital cost and energy

consumption level. Lack of awareness and understanding is the main issue,

which is going to be discussed in this study.

The idea of sustainable housing has been promoted in Malaysia many years

ago, but it is also considered as a “new” concept as the responses from

stakeholders, developers and contractors are not as good as expected. As we

all know, developers and stakeholders always take profit as their first

consideration and they want immediate return from their investment, therefore

they are not interested in sustainable housing as it is a low profit development

and it requires more upfront cost. This is the key issue that makes them not

willing to understand and implement the concept of sustainable housing.

Besides, government does not offer enough incentives and benefits like

subsidies for the related parties (Abidin, Yusof, & Othman, 2013). That is

another reason why the stakeholders and developers are not willing to take

the first step beyond this concept.

Moreover, lacking in enforcement is also one of the factors that cause the

stakeholders not aware about this concept. This is because government does

not encourage the stakeholders to understand and implement this concept

and there is no policy that enforces the developers to practice this concept.

Even though there are some benchmarks like Green Building Index (GBI) and

policies about sustainable housing in Malaysia, but the major amount of

developers unwilling to refer to these regulations as the policies are not clear

(Goh, Seow, & Goh, 2013). Besides, the policies contain a lot of rules and

regulations, which require a lot of efforts from the stakeholders and

developers.

Insufficient education is the main and direct influence that leads to lack of

understanding and awareness. As most of the stakeholders have never been

taught about sustainable housing in university, therefore they usually have

zero or only a little knowledge about this concept. Furthermore, there is a

shortage of professionals or experts with the recognition qualification, skills

and experiences in this field (Goh, Seow, & Goh, 2013). This eventually leads

to less educational conferences and seminars about this concept. There is

also a short of referencing like books or articles, which enables the parties

related to refer instead of going to the seminar when needed (Abidin, Yusof, &

Othman, 2013). All these factors will cause the failure in delivering the

important information like the benefits and essential criteria of sustainable

housing, technologies involved and the related environmental issues.

Besides the stakeholders and developers, the customers or buyers will also

have low understanding and awareness in sustainable housing. This is

because the idea of sustainable housing is not being well promoted across

the country and thus they are not aware of the benefits and essentials of this

concept.

In addition, the issue of having low understanding and awareness will result in

some consequences like low market demands and low quality of sustainable

houses. First and the most important, the quality of the building will be

affected. For instant, a developer tends to develop a sustainable housing

area. But, the final products are not categorized as a green and sustainable

building as the quality of the building does not meet the standard

requirements that set by the council. This is due to less effort and commitment

given by the developer as they only have limited understanding in the

concept. Besides, the quality control of the project and the quality of the

building will also decrease since the requirements from stakeholders are not

high.

Low market demand is also one of the consequences that caused by this

issue, as the demand from societies is the critical factor that directly

influences the production of sustainable housing. The societies always think

that it is better to choose a conventional house rather than a sustainable

house due to the conventional house has a lower cost compared to the

sustainable house. Moreover, the societies are not familiar with the benefits of

sustainable housing; as a result they are reluctant to pay more (Goh, Seow, &

Goh, 2013). This will then result in a low market demand of sustainable

houses and thus the stakeholders will not have the intention to develop a

sustainable housing.

However, this issue should be solved before it is getting serious. The

government, stakeholders and societies should work hand to hand in order to

adopt the sustainable concept throughout the country. The government

should take the lead to make changes such as providing subsidies or

incentives for the stakeholders, developers and even societies in order to get

their attentions. This will eventually increase the profits gained by the

stakeholders and developers while the buyers are able to afford the

sustainable houses at a lower price.

The local authorities should also work together with the government to

produce a better sustainable-related rule and regulation with clearer

information. This is to make the parties related to have a clear concept and

information about the sustainable housing. Other than that, the local

authorities should set a minimum standard for the requirement and monitor

the sustainable housing project based on the related laws and legislations in

order to maintain the quality.

Besides, the sustainable housing concept should be implanted into

youngsters’ mind through university education in order to produce more

professionals in the future. For example, this can be done by adding

“sustainable housing” as a core subject for those who are having building-

related courses like architectural, quantity surveying, civil engineering and

interior design. On the other hand, some sustainable housing articles and

books should be produced as the references for the corresponding parties. As

Benjamin Franklin stated that, “an investment in knowledge always pays the

best interest”. The government can also collaborate with the professions to

hold more campaigns and conferences to promote sustainable housing

concept among the stakeholders, developers and societies. Thus, they will be

able to aware and understand more about this concept.

According to Said, Osman, Mohd Shafiei and Tee (n.d.), sustainable housing

is the combination of fulfillment of human needs and protection of the natural

environment, which provides us a good living culture for now and also in the

future. Thus, sustainable housing is considered as environmental and social

friendly and it should be adopted for our future (Goh, Seow, & Goh, 2013). But

the implementation of sustainable housing concept in Malaysia is still in the

early stage, which there are still a lot of barriers to overcome. Hence, the

construction key parties should work cooperatively with the government and

local authorities to solve related issues in order to get holistic results in

sustainable housing.

Reference List

Goh, K. C., Seow, T. W., & Goh, H. H. (2013). Challenges of

implementing Sustainability in Malaysian Housing Industry. Retrieved

April 14, 2015, from

http://eprints.uthm.edu.my/3964/1/SBE2013__Kcgoh.pdf

Finch, R. (2007, June). Sustainable housing. Retrieved April 12, 2015,

from

http://www.thenbs.com/topics/Environment/articles/sustainableHousing.

asp

Tahir, M. M., & Asmawi, M. Z. (2012). Significance Of Eia Study In

Achieving Sustainable Housing Project In Malaysia. Retrieved April 14,

2015, from

http://www.earoph.info/pdf/2012papers/DAY2/session3/S2/S2-3-P1.pdf

Abidin, N. Z., Yusof, N. A., & Othman, A. A. E. (2013). Enablers and

challenges of a sustainable housing industry in Malaysia. Construction

Innovation, 13(1), 10-25. Retrieved from

http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/pdfplus/10.1108/147141713112960

39

Tan, T. H. (2011). Sustainability and Housing Provision in

Malaysia. Strategic Innovation and Sustainability, 7(1), 62-71.

Retrieved from http://www.na-businesspress.com/jsis/tanweb.pdf

Ibrahim, F. A., Mohd Shafiei, M. W., Said, I., & Ismail, R. (2013).

Malaysian Housing Developers’ Readiness in Green Homes

Development. World Applied Sciences, 28(3), 343-352. Retrieved from

http://www.idosi.org/wasj/wasj28(3)13/10.pdf

Said, I., Osman, O., Mohd Shafiei, M. W., Abd Razak, A., & Tee, K. K.

(n.d.). Sustainability in the Housing Development Among Construction

Industry Players in Malaysia. Retrieved April 16, 2015, from

http://www.jgbm.org/page/2 Ilias Said .pdf