Apartments, co-ownership and sustainability: Implementation barriers for retrofitting the built environment

Environmental sustainability issues have been at the center of urban densification and the walkable city in Australia. While many newer developments are built with green star ratings, retrofitting existing buildings with shared governance structures is sometimes viewed as problematic. This paper explores the use of retrofitting for environmental sustainability within Victoria’s owner corporation environment. Little is known about how the use of privatized governance structures within apartment and townhouse developments adds to the complexity of implementing sustainability measures. This paper investigates the motivations and attitudes of strata managers and committees of management in relation to the retrofit measures by drawing on the findings of 13 semi-structured interviews with committee members and strata managers. Findings revealed that there was a substantial understanding of the benefits associated with retrofitting buildings for environmental sustainability; however, a range of reasons and attitudes existed within the strata environment that affected the implementation of such measures