Energy transition challenges in under-occupied homes: Assessment of two peri-urban neighbourhoods of single-family houses

Current planning policies aim at putting a stop to urban sprawl by favouring densification processes. In this context, future developments are more likely to happen in strategic urban areas than in existing peri-urban neighbourhoods of single-family houses. There, a possible path of development is the inertia and the submission to demographic evolutions of population ageing and reduction of household sizes. Under those unfavourable conditions, the evolution of two case-studieslocated in the Swiss contextis measured by 2050. The paper investigates the energy transition potential of two off-centred residential areas by assessing the environmental impacts owing to construction/retrofit and operation of dwellings, and to the induced daily mobility of the inhabitants. The innovative methodology implemented for this research project supports a spatiotemporal data management that allows establishing an annual assessment throughout the 35-year period of study (2015-2050). The results highlight the submission of the transition potential to the alternation of household’s life-cycles. This study underlines the importance of considering over-time assessments for a more reliable prospective evaluation, and it questions the transition slowness of owner-occupied dwellings.