Role of LSF technology in economic housing for urban sustainability, case of Iran

The concepts of sustainability and sustainable development are considered as the current controversial issues in most countries especially the developing countries, leading up to the sustainable architecture. One of the most important challenges opposing the sustainable development is the high housing costs along with the low-income strata's economic limitations, whereas according to the Millennium Development Goals, the governments are required to provide all the people with the housing. This paper is to emphasize on the role of new technologies like LSF to supply the economic and sustainable housing. The research main question is whether the utilization of LSF structures can reduce the construction costs and so enhance the possibility of housing ownership. And how is the situation for the case of Iran? To answer the research question, the base construction costs to construct a 75 square meter standard residential house with the conventional structures and the LSF structures are calculated separately. Then the construction costs of a 75 square meter standard residential house with two mentioned constructive methods in the cities of Qom, Kashan, Isfahan and Tehran as the research case-studies are estimated separately. The comparison of the conventional construction costs with the LSF costs shows that LSF technology reducing the construction costs plays the pivotal role in the control of housing shortage crisis and the increase of the house ownership's possibility and finally the housing sustainability. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of APAAS