The development of a basic framework for the sustainability of residential buildings in Pakistan

Housings is one of the biggest resources consumer and largest greenhouse gases emitter. For measuring the sustainability, a number of different sustainability frameworks developed. However, these tools mostly take environmental and economical issues into accounts and specific to their country. While this framework take environmental and economical and social sustainability issues of inhabitants like marriage, education, source of income, justice, drugs and smoking, tolerance and patience into account. For the development of this framework, initially a questionnaire was designed and thoroughly tested for face, content and construct validities. Data was collected from 234 respondents by using a questionnaire. The Cronbach's Alpha of 0.881 confirms the reliability of the questionnaire. According to analysis, water, justice and safety remained the top three issues (13% of the total issues). While, noise, location, transportation, designed by a professional and approved from authority, natural ventilation, marriage, neighborhood, education, security, tolerance and patience turned out to be the next top ten issues summing up to 40% of the framework. The contributions of the environmental, economical and social issues in the framework are 61.5%, 11.5% and 27% respectively. The framework would ensure sustainable cities and society if implemented.