This ‘video challenge’ celebrates a diversity of built environment research from PhD students in many countries and built environment disciplines. PhD students are invited to make a video explaining why your research matters...
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Once you have read about the Video Challenge and are ready to enter your video, use this to register. The deadline for submitting your video is noon on Monday 17 October 2022.
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By Stephen M Wheeler and Christina D Rosan. University of California Press, 2021, ISBN: 978052038121-6
Katherine Sugar reviews this book which highlights the need for proactive public sector leadership if we are to achieve sustainable cities.
Could a focus on city dwellers to reduce individual emissions – personal carbon allowances – have value in meeting city Net Zero targets?
Many cities throughout the world have set carbon and / or energy targets including renewable energy production and emissions reduction goals. Despite the commitment to take action, cities do not directly control the majority of the uses of energy or consumption-related sources of carbon emissions within their boundaries. Could a focus on household energy use, personal travel and consumption of material goods help to achieve this transition at city level? Tina Fawcett (University of Oxford), Kerry Constabile (University of Oxford) and Yael Parag (Reichman University) consider whether and how cities could harness personal carbon allowances in a practical manner.
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By Fergus Nicol, Hom Bahadur Rijal and Sue Roaf. Routledge, 2022, ISBN 9781032155975.
Ray Cole reviews this Handbook which captures a breadth of current knowledge on resilient thermal comfort.
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Guest Editor: Satu Huuhka (Tampere U)
Deadline for Abstracts: 7 October 2022
Is it environmentally, economically, socio-culturally more sustainable to extend buildings’ lives or to build new? What are the specific challenges, potentials, and contributions for retaining existing buildings as opposed to their demolition and replacement? What are the drivers for the demolition of buildings? How can a more sustainable approach be created? How can retention and adaptive change be applied in different conditions and different scales (buildings, neighbourhoods, building stocks)?
Demolition / deconstruction has so far mainly been approached as a technical undertaking of engineering. Building preservation is primarily framed as historic conservation i.e. rarity, architectural quality, historic role, etc). Social scientists (e.g. Gilbert, 2009) have criticised mass-replacement policies and the consequences for underprivileged people who are dislocated. There has been relatively little problematisation both in- and outside of academia whether and when demolition should be performed, apart from Thomsen et al. (2011) and the RetroFirst campaign in the UK by the Architect’s Journal (2019).
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Guest Editors: Andrew Karvonen (Lund U) & Tom Hargreaves (U of East Anglia)
Deadline for abstracts: 26 September 2022
How are data reconfiguring life in buildings and cities? Who are the subjects and objects of data-driven buildings and cities? What are the implications of data-driven buildings and cities for social equity and justice? How do these powers and associated practices align with policies and regulation?
The aim of this special issue is to improve our collective understanding of the practices, politics, and power implications of data-driven buildings and cities. How is data generated, metabolised, and gathered in the built environment? Who designs and governs these data flows and to what end? Who and what is enrolled in the datafication of buildings and cities? What forms and types of data are collected and what gets ignored in data flows at and across different scales? What are the broader implications for social justice and equity? We invite social scientists, planners, designers, building scientists, data scientists, and environmental scientists to shine a critical spotlight on the motivations, methods, and consequences of data-driven buildings and cities.
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In an increasingly hotter world, what policies, designs, technologies & behaviours can provide thermal adequacy for coolth?
Buildings and cities have become highly dependent on air-conditioning and mechanical ventilation. Without significant intervention demand for air-conditioning (AC) is projected to rise by 700% by 2050. The implications of an unsustainable increase in cooling demand are being recognised in many countries around the world.
Recent discussions about ‘build back better’ after the Covid-19 pandemic afford an opportunity to reconsider many contemporary practices in the built environment: health and wellbeing, thermal comfort and the agency of building occupants, adaptation to climate change, energy use and environmental impacts, economics and equity, social expectations and demographics, design and innovation, thermal characteristics of buildings and cities. In addition, many countries have stipulated that new buildings must be carbon neutral. Climate change will create an increasingly warmer world – impacting on summer overheating in buildings. This is an urgent concern for both mitigation and adaptation: how can thermal comfort be provided during hotter summers without the GHG emissions? ‘Conventional’ air conditioning will soon be technologically redundant. Can our cities and buildings be designed to have little or no mechanical intervention?
Guest editors: Brian Ford, Dejan Mumovic, Rajan Rawal
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This series of perspectives considers personal comfort systems: decentralized building thermal control, in which occupants control their local environments with personal devices while the amount of central space conditioning (HVAC) is scaled back.
Can the construction and property industries implement innovative practices and technologies to improve building performance and thermal comfort?
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The ‘Level(s)’ provides professionals with a framework guiding the sustainability performance assessment of buildings.
Building sector policies and legislation at EU level are being updated to help improve sustainability performance throughout the building life cycle – from design to end-of-life. This reorientation to a more circular built environment will be essential in delivering on commitments under the European Green Deal to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050 and to decouple economic growth from resource use.
The ‘Level(s)’ provides professionals with a framework guiding the sustainability performance assessment of buildings. Josefina Lindblom (Directorate-General for Environment, European Commission) explains how construction professionals, property developers, investors, business leaders and policymakers at national, regional and local level can prepare for EU legislation and embrace these changes.
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Presentations, performances, debates and exhibitions provide a positive message about embracing change in the built environment.
The first annual festival of the New European Bauhaus – a cultural initiative of Ursula von der Leyen (President of the European Commission) – took place in Brussels 9 – 12 June 2022. This ambitious programme and its recent festival recognises the built environment's centrality to creating climate neutrality, quality of life and social equity. Matti Kuittinen (Aalto University, coordinator of the Nordic Bauhaus programme) reflects on the festival, summarises its takeaways and applauds the mainstreaming of the New European Bauhaus.
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Concrete has high environmental impacts. Can the construction industry reduce the volume of concrete that is used?
After water, concrete is the most widely used substance on earth. Paul Shepherd (University of Bath) explains how deep reductions in the amount of concrete used in buildings can be achieved through advanced structural design and fabrication.
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Buildings & Cities gratefully acknowledges and thanks our reviewers.
Buildings & Cities is most grateful to the many people in 2021 listed below who provided detailed, rigorous reviews of submitted manuscripts in 2021.
An enormous thank you to this diverse community of scholars who help to maintain the highest standards for both the journal and the wider community.
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Latest Peer-Reviewed Journal Content
Institutionalisation of urban climate adaptation: three municipal experiences in Spain
M Olazabal & V Castán Broto
Energy housekeeping: intersections of gender, domestic labour and technologies
R Martin
Speculation beyond technology: building scenarios through storytelling
R M Dowsett, M S Green & C F Harty
Professional judgement: an institutional logic approach to contractor tender pricing
D Jefferies & L Schweber
Emerging technologies’ impacts on ‘man caves’ and their energy demand
Y Strengers, K Dahlgren & L Nicholls
The gender of smart charging
S Pink
Fire performance and regulatory considerations with modern methods of construction
B J Meacham
Who cares? How care practices uphold the decentralised energy order
K Lucas-Healey, H Ransan- Cooper, H Temby & A W Russell
Alternatives to air-conditioning: policies, design, technologies, behaviours [editorial]
B Ford, D Mumovic & R Rawal
Benchmarking energy performance: indicators and models for Dutch housing associations
H S van der Bent, H J Visscher, A Meijer & N Mouter
Emissions from a net-zero building in India: life cycle assessment
M Jain & R Rawal
Lack of adaptability in Brazilian social housing: impacts on residents
S B Villa, P B Vasconcellos, K C R de Bortoli & L B de Araujo
Participation in domestic energy retrofit programmes: key spatio- temporal drivers
E Mohareb, A Gillich & D Bristow
Embodied carbon of concrete in buildings, Part 2: are the messages accurate?
A Moncaster, T Malmqvist, T Forman, F Pomponi & J Anderson
An alternative approach to delivering safe, sustainable surgical theatre environments
C A Short, A W Woods, L Drumright, R Zia & N Mingotti
Adapting owner-occupied dwellings in the UK: lessons for the future
T Hipwood
Integrating low energy cooling & ventilation strategies in Indian residences
M J Cook, Y Shukla, R Rawal, C Angelopoulos, L Caruggi-De-Faria, D Loveday, E Spentzou, & J Patel
Balconies as adaptable spaces in apartment housing
T Peters & S Masoudinejad
Inclusive Living: ageing, adaptations and future-proofing homes
V McCall
Residential geothermal air-conditioning: inhabitants’ comfort, behaviour and energy use
L Thomas, A Woods, R Powles, P Kalali, & S Wilkinson
Energy retrofit and passive cooling: overheating and air quality in primary schools
D Grassie, Y Schwartz, P Symonds, I Korolija, A Mavrogianni & D Mumovic
Outdoor PM2.5 air filtration: optimising indoor air quality and energy
E Belias & D Licina
Architects’ ‘enforced togetherness’: new design affordances of the home
E Marco, M Tahsiri, D Sinnett & S Oliveira
Overheating assessment in Passivhaus dwellings: the influence of prediction tools
V L Goncalves, V Costanzo, K Fabbri & T Rakha
The use of apartment balconies: context, design & social norms
M Smektała & M Baborska-Narożny
Sharing a home under lockdown in London
F Blanc & K Scanlon
Projected climate data for building design: barriers to use
P Rastogi, A Laxo, L Cecil &D Overbey
Residents’ views on adaptable housing: a virtual reality-based study
J Tarpio & S Huuhka
See all
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Endorsements
I am excited about the prospects of this new journal, Buildings and Cities. Its highly respected and experienced editorial team will ensure that the journal’s focus on interdisciplinary and multi-scale approaches will push our industry forward in addressing critical issues facing the built environment.
The quality of editorial work and support to authors is unmatched within the landscape of property and construction journals. The editors are highly experienced and have a strong track record of working closely with each author.
By crossing the scale of buildings and cities, as well as bridging the gap between social and technical research, Buildings and Cities is of vital importance to academics and practitioners working to support sustainable and socially just improvements in the built environment. The editor-in-chief has an extraordinary and well-deserved reputation for fostering new ideas as well as thoughtful and constructive critique. This journal is poised to make significant contributions to the fields its topics integrate.
My experience of the review process has been extremely positive: it has always been rigorous, constructive and improved the papers considerably.
The launch of Buildings and Cities has to be warmly welcomed. The members of the editorial team have an excellent track record in actively engaging with the scholarly community for ensuring that published papers are not only rigorous but also relevant.
Featuring integrated, topical perspectives about the issues in built environment, authors will find guided support, an expert editorial team, and a superior, high quality publication with a visionary, not-for-profit journal, Buildings and Cities. Readers will see articles addressing key research and high-level discussion about accelerating and implementing strategies to address stringent climate goals.
I wholeheartedly commend the new Buildings and Cities journal under its Editor in Chief, Richard Lorch, together with Niklaus Kohler, Ray Cole, Fionn Stevenson and others. It was a privilege to serve on the editorial board of its predecessor, Building Research and Information for 19 years. It is my opinion that it was consistently the most interesting and impactful journal in its field – which Lorch, together with other Board members and contributors essentially defined. I have every confidence that Buildings and Cities will continue this record.
In light of the many challenges that cities face, we need a journal that cuts across disciplinary and professional boundaries to enhance our understanding and insights. This new transdisciplinary journal with a strong editorial team will be a great support to researchers and practitioners alike.
Buildings and Cities is poised to be a leading scientific peer reviewed journals. Its Editor in Chief, Richard Lorch, has an unparalleled reputation of upholding academic fairness and complete integrity. Consequently, I have no hesitation in recommending 'Buildings and Cities' to my peers.
Interdisciplinary insight is vital in addressing the sustainability of the built environment, which encompasses the complex intersection of resources, infrastructures, institutions, communities and citizens. In recognizing this Buildings and Cities is set to become one of the foremost journals supporting innovative research in sustainability across diverse urban settings and scales. With an experienced editorial team at the helm it offers a valuable resource for students, scholars and practitioners interested in inclusive and integrated approaches to sustainable development.
Does built environment research and practice need a new, international, independent, authoritative and openly accessible resource? Buildings & Cities offers a timely and exceptionally relevant response to this question because it is designed to inspire dialogue, engage debate and promote robust evidence, ideas and knowledge. It is founded on principles of rigorous peer-review, relevance, integrity, and inclusiveness, and driven by the recognised competence of it editorial team.
Not only is the evaluation of buildings’ and cities’ performance through time and across scales more possible than ever before, it is more necessary. The journal Buildings and Cities, with its experienced editorial team led by Richard Lorch, is poised to be a leader in this important role.