The aims of this and the following two chapters are to provide examples of the use of the concept of inhabitation practices in order to provide some guidance on the practical use of the concept and to illustrate the contribution that its application can make to the study of inhabitation and to housing policy. Therefore, the aim is not to provide a comprehensive account of research and policy in each area. The scope of the topics covered would make this a difficult enterprise for any one individual to undertake. But, more importantly, the knowledge is not available in many areas to draw any conclusions that would be generalisable in different contexts. Therefore, the aim is to provide examples of the research topics that would be important to pursue, and to provide insight into the methods that could usefully be employed, in the hope that this will inspire the research that will contribute to goals such as climate change and to the health of Nature in general.

In this chapter, the focus is on examples from the consumption of houses and Chapter 6 covers examples from the production process. The following chapter focuses on inhabitation practices outside the home. This division is arbitrary, as will soon become apparent, as the three elements are closely related at many points. It was argued in the previous chapter that the choice of the inhabitation practice to focus on is a subjective one that can be made according to the aims of the particular study and the practical resources of the analyst. Therefore, the division is adopted here as a simplifying mechanism to make the discussion easier to follow. The choice of inhabitation practices to examine in each chapter is meant to show a variety of topics. Some are well covered in housing studies and the aim here is to show the contribution and new insight that the approach can make to traditional concerns of housing policy. However, some of the chosen topics are relatively new to housing studies and here the aim is to increase the scope of the field. Some topics have a strong ecological impact on issues such as climate change or wildlife survival and diversity, but others may not.