How to get grandpa moving? Understanding the potential of voluntary programmes in achieving urban sustainability and resilience

The practice of exempting existing buildings from complying with new and amended building codes and other regulatory requirements (i.e., grandfathering) poses a significant weak link in the chain of urban sustainability and resilience. Using fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) this article seeks to understand whether a global trend of voluntary programmes is able to overcome this problem. Such programmes built on collaboration between governments, businesses and citizens, and seek voluntary commitment from their participants to achieve outcomes that move beyond existing regulation. Building on a series of 20 of such programmes in Australia, the Netherlands and the United States it finds that the majority of these have not succeeded in incentivising their participants to take meaningful action. A major failure stands out: the arrangements ask too much of their participants and reward them with too little.