Facilitating low-carbon living? A comparison of intervention measures in different community-based initiatives

The challenge of facilitating a shift towards sustainable housing, food and mobility has been taken up by diverse community-based initiatives ranging from ‘top-down’ approaches in low-carbon municipalities to ‘bottom-up’ approaches in intentional communities. This paper compares intervention measures of these two types, focusing on their potential of re-configuring daily housing, food and mobility practices. Taking up critics on dominant intervention framings of diffusing low-carbon technical innovations and changing individual behaviour, we draw on social practice theory for the empirical analysis of four case studies. Framing interventions in relation to re-configuring daily practices, the paper reveals differences and weaknesses of current low-carbon measures of community-based initiatives in Germany and Austria. Low-carbon municipalities mainly focus on introducing technologies and offering additional infrastructure and information to promote low-carbon practices. They avoid interfering into residents’ daily lives and do not restrict carbon-intensive practices. In contrast, intentional communities base their interventions on the collective creation of shared visions, decisions and rules and thus provide social and material structures, which foster everyday low-carbon practices and discourage carbon-intensive ones. The paper discusses the relevance of organisational and governance structures for implementing different types of low-carbon measures and points to opportunities for broadening current policy strategies.