Abstract
By 2050, there will be nearly 70 percent of the world’s population living in cities resulting in an increase in global energy demand. Cities consume almost two-thirds of global energy therefore making buildings and inhabitants an obvious target to reduce our carbon footprint. The use of resource efficient processes and renewable energy sources tackles the problem of buildings generating 30% of the world’s greenhouse gas emission causing sustainable and net-zero buildings to increase in popularity. As the world continues to focus on environmental sustainability by creating sustainable buildings, inhabitants in the cities contribute to the consumption of global energy and green buildings do not drive “green habitants”. This sparks the notion of creating conducive environments which encourage inhabitants to practice pro-environmental practices and at the same time fostering relationships between inhabitants within the building and inhabitants across buildings. This notion uses the concept of pairing Environmental sustainability with Social sustainability whereby buildings interacts with the inhabitants to promote Environmental sustainability. This thesis seeks to look into the proenvironmental behaviors such as waste recycling and water usage, which can be encouraged and integrated into the building and to create a prototypical urban housing by using the concept of ESS (Environmental and Social sustainability).