Description du projet
Tendances et effets de la vie solitaire
Sous l’effet du développement économique, les conditions de la vie humaine s’améliorent, mais la consommation croissante pose des défis à notre environnement. Nombre d’experts pensaient que le développement durable serait favorisé par une baisse de la fécondité. Or, les niveaux de consommation de la plupart des pays développés et en développement en forte baisse démographique n’ont pas diminué. En effet, le nombre de ménages ne diminue pas, car de plus en plus de personnes vivent seules. Dans l’UE, les foyers unipersonnels représentent un tiers de la population totale. Le projet LACONIA, financé par l’UE, va étudier la tendance croissante à la vie en solitaire. Pour ce faire, il va se pencher sur les raisons de ce phénomène, la variabilité de ses tendances, et sur son influence sur la consommation et les autres configurations de logement durable. Le projet produira de précieuses connaissances nécessaires pour assurer la durabilité et la nouvelle planification urbaine.
Objectif
Human population has wide ranging and often negative consequences for the natural environment. Population stability and decreasing fertility have thus been heralded as promising for sustainability. However, household size has been decreasing steadily in both developed and developing countries, at an accelerating pace, since the 1980s. The European Union (EU) leads this trend, with nearly a third of total households consisting of single residents. As a result of more people living alone with associated higher consumption, slowing population growth has resulted in neither fewer residences nor decelerating human impact on the environment. This MC-IF aims to investigate the trend toward living alone and create new knowledge about environmental impacts of different household configurations, drivers for different occupancy trends and alternative sustainable housing configurations. The research will be carried out in three phases, firstly by using existing population, housing and consumption databases; secondly be interviewing both high and low impact single resident households and finally by studying low impact household configurations in-depth. This will provide new knowledge on: how different household configurations impact sustainability; why people choose to live in different various configurations; and drivers and barriers for emerging sustainable alternatives. This knowledge will be valuable for policy makers planning sustainable urban environments. During period of training the ER will: Acquire specialised knowledge on sociology of consumption; deepen her mixed methods analysis; improve her multicultural and team communications skills; have policy impact; and publish scientific articles in international journals. Thus the MSCA-IF will allow her to consolidate her academic profile in order to enter the EU academic job market in a tenure-track position.
Champ scientifique
Programme(s)
Régime de financement
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinateur
9220 Aalborg
Danemark