The role of housing managers in sustainable development of residential properties

Abstract

Since the formal announcement of the guiding principles of sustainable development in the 1999 Policy Address, sustainable development has become a hot topic in various industries. Housing management is one of the fields that sustainable development principles could be taken place. It was believed that the diversified job natures of housing management give potential opportunities to enhance sustainable development. The aim of the project is to find absent the potential roles of housing manger in contributing the sustainable development.

Before applying the concept of sustainable development into housing management, in order to study the rationale behind this concept, the emerge of this idea and its historical development would be discussed.

While the functions of housing manager were differentiated in different countries and different properties, the fundamental job function would be discovered, followed by the evolution of change till the modern century.

To investigate the prospective relationships between the living environment and sustainable development, residential property was chosen as the scope of this study. Six residential apartments with different scales and different management structures were selected for case studies. It was found that there are numbers of opportunities for housing manager to enhance the sustainable development in the housing estates, while most of these opportunities were related to the job functions of housing manager.

The study found that housing manager could be a good facilitator to integrate the effort of all stakeholders in constructing a sustainable living community.