Current strategies to reduce the climate impact of production and consumption are insufficient to meet the pressing targets of the Paris Agreement. To expand visions of the possible ‘solution space’ in climate transitions, we explore a framework based on two dichotomies centred around the role of labour and the composition of economic output. From these dichotomies we sketch out four pathways for a future low-carbon society: Green growth , Care economy , Degrowth and Green accelerationism . Using a stylized representation of the Swedish economy as a case, we explore possible changes in the economic structure following the different pathways with respect to labour inputs, production volumes, GHG emissions and resource use in different sectors. The pathways suggest different strategies and overarching logics for decarbonisation. The results indicate that the technological emphasis in prevalent green growth strategies is not sufficient to stay within a carbon budget in line with the Paris agreement. Depending on the pathway taken, the upholding of social welfare, reassessing the role of labour and shifting production and consumption patterns become key challenges. Overall, key insights indicate that swift, radical transformation can advance climate goal attainment but also demands major societal reorganisation. The results also illustrate how the different transformation pathways entail distinct trade-offs, each associated with its own set of advantages and challenges.

Shortcomings in mainstream housing provision are increasingly met by alternative – particularly collaborative – initiatives addressing sustainability. We explore how sustainability in alternative housing is framed in Swedish media and policy, and map prevalent categories. Findings indicate a gap between claims and practice. Key aspects concern the framing of housing as collaboration or as a service, that the emphasis on sharing is not necessarily translated into typological innovations, and that few projects unify multiple sustainability aspects. Further examinations should address how alternative practices are moving into the mainstream and what sustainability potentials are gained or lost along the way. 

The housing sector in Sweden, as elsewhere, faces major transitions to meet far-reaching sustainability targets. Eco-efficiency has tended to dominate the sustainability discourse, with a reliance on incremental improvements. This paper explores what is needed to reach a system-level framing of sustainability transformations in housing and home-related structures and practices. Based on previous research and empirical insights from workshops with diverse actors in the Swedish housing sector, we explore different narratives of what needs to change and perspectives on agency and collective action. Shifting the narrative from efficiency to sufficiency, and from a focus on technology and behaviour to complex interactions between actors and systems, offers opportunities as well as tensions in the sector. While the current paradigm offers limited space for action, the emergence of perspectives, policies, and practices concerning, for example, living smaller, simpler, and sharing posits the housing sector as an arena for socio-ecological transformations.

In this article, we explore the transition discourses and values expressed and foregrounded in Swedish national policy documents on sustainable consumption. Values, as material-discursive practices, shape the pace and direction of transitions, and for deep, system-wide sustainability transformations, it is critical to strengthen intrinsic, sustainability-aligned values. Public policy is especially well-positioned in this regard since policy shapes the discourse as well as the space for action. Our findings, however, reveal how market connotations frame Swedish sustainable consumption policy within a growth logic, where the public is to facilitate the market by removing barriers for the consumer while encouraging business innovation. As such, the Swedish policy discourse essentially reproduces a so-called improve discourse on sustainable consumption and reinforces extrinsic values of power and achievement. The scope of sustainable consumption is occasionally expanded, particularly in alignment with a shift discourse that emphasizes the move toward a circular economy. However, despite elements of benevolence and universalism in the overarching framing of the Generational Goal, these efforts remain overshadowed and co-opted by the extrinsically focused dominant market framing. Thus, we find limited potential for the policy discourse to help foreground more diverse values essential for deep transformations. Acknowledging the challenges of disentangling values in written policy documents, we call for future research to explore value tensions in practical policy-implementation contexts.

The complexities of contemporary planning, the urgent need for affordable housing and increasing demands for sustainable development are pushing current housing provision practices to their limits. In response, more collaborative housing approaches have (re)gained prominence in recent decades, offering diverse sustainability potentials. This paper explores the framing of sustainability within European and US literature on collaborative housing while contrasting the perceived sustainability potential with practical implementation challenges. Approached through a systematic sample of selected literature, the socio-economic and environmental sustainability claims associated with collaborative housing are explored. This analysis outlines identified knowledge gaps, financial hurdles, and political challenges, offering insights into the emerging discourse on structural support for collaborative housing models. The findings indicate an absence of substantiated support for the sustainability claims made, emphasising a reliance on individual case studies. Furthermore, a disparity emerges between the potential of sustainable collaborative housing and the current policy environment’s capacity to facilitate their realisation. This research underscores the urgency of strengthening empirical foundations and aligning policies and instruments to bridge the gap between sustainability aspirations and the realities of the housing sector.

In this paper, we explore narratives of sustainability in housing and everyday life, positing the home as an ‘opportunity space’ for sustainability transitions. Case studies of three Swedish housing associations provide empirical insights on how sustainability is understood and practiced among residents. Addressing aspects of power and problem framing in sustainability transitions, we analyse how sustainability engagements in the associations are shaped by intersecting discourses, power relations and norms relating to age, gender, class and ethnicity. The analysis suggests that reflexivity on sustainability in the associations on one hand links to different sustainability approaches, which relate to assumptions regarding who can become engaged and the organisation of the associations’ work. On the other hand, narratives and practices of ‘doing sustainability’ are made sense of in different ways, where issues of for whom, the type of knowledge that is premiered, and the ‘upscaling’ of initiatives pose challenges for a more inclusive and transformative approach to sustainability in housing associations. Taken together, this creates different conditions for sustainability transitions in housing and everyday life, shaped both by norms of who and what is seen as sustainable, and by structures that outline the space for action for the associations and their residents.