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Key Principles

Key Principles

Read our 10 principles that provide the values underpinning our journal. These broadly explain the ethos and aspirations for what we do.

In addition to being a peer-review journal, we provide an intellectual space for engagement between researchers, practitioners and policy makers.

To achieve this, we will:

  1. Seek to publish highest quality research that has been evaluated through a fair, rigorous and robust peer-review process.
  2. Encourage and publish research and ideas that help improve the built environment, not just describe it.
  3. Maintain integrity in all our work with authors and oblige them to undertake and present their work according to ethical research and publishing guidelines.
  4. Make all research articles in the journal freely available (open access).
  5. Translate: make the research accessible not only for academics and researchers, but also for the end-users of research: policymakers, practitioners, clients, teachers and occupants.
  6. Inspire and engage: promote dialogue and greater understanding between authors and the end-users of research, to have greater impact through discussions in virtual and live events.
  7. Create an inclusive and supportive community of authors, and assist those without funding to publish in our journal.
  8. Operate as a not-for-profit, reinvesting any surplus funds into the journal and the research community that we serve.
  9. Be independent: our role and content are independent of the interests of any organisation, institution, company or government.
  10. We are inclusive: we value the different perspectives and experiences of researchers, academics and practitioners from around the world who understand both the content, context and applications of built environment research. We support authors in the Global South.

Latest Peer-Reviewed Journal Content

Journal Content

Designing for pro-environmental behaviour change: the aspiration–reality gap
J Simpson & J Uttley

Lifetimes of demolished buildings in US and European cities
J Berglund-Brown, I Dobie, J Hewitt, C De Wolf & J Ochsendorf

Expanding the framework of urban living labs using grassroots methods
T Ahmed, I Delsante & L Migliavacca

Youth engagement in urban living labs: tools, methods and pedagogies
N Charalambous, C Panayi, C Mady, T Augustinčić & D Berc

Co-creating urban transformation: a stakeholder analysis for Germany’s heat transition
P Heger, C Bieber, M Hendawy & A Shooshtari

Placemaking living lab: creating resilient social and spatial infrastructures
M Dodd, N Madabhushi & R Lees

Church pipe organs: historical tuning records as indoor environmental evidence
B Bingley, A Knight & Y Xing

A framework for 1.5°C-aligned GHG budgets in architecture
G Betti, I Spaar, D Bachmann, A Jerosch-Herold, E Kühner, R Yang, K Avhad & S Sinning

Net zero retrofit of the building stock [editorial]
D Godoy-Shimizu & P Steadman

Co-learning in living labs: nurturing civic agency and resilience
A Belfield

The importance of multi-roles and code-switching in living labs
H Noller & A Tarik

Researchers’ shifting roles in living labs for knowledge co-production
C-C Dobre & G Faldi

Increasing civic resilience in urban living labs: city authorities’ roles
E Alatalo, M Laine & M Kyrönviita

Co-curation as civic practice in community engagement
Z Li, M Sunikka-Blank, R Purohit & F Samuel

Preserving buildings: emission reductions from circular economy strategies in Austria
N Alaux, V Kulmer, J Vogel & A Passer

Urban living labs: relationality between institutions and local circularity
P Palo, M Adelfio, J Lundin & E Brandão

Living labs: epistemic modelling, temporariness and land value
J Clossick, T Khonsari & U Steven

Co-creating interventions to prevent mosquito-borne disease transmission in hospitals
O Sloan Wood, E Lupenza, D M Agnello, J B Knudsen, M Msellem, K L Schiøler & F Saleh

Circularity at the neighbourhood scale: co-creative living lab lessons
J Honsa, A Versele, T Van de Kerckhove & C Piccardo

Positive energy districts and energy communities: how living labs create value
E Malakhatka, O Shafqat, A Sandoff & L Thuvander

Built environment governance and professionalism: the end of laissez-faire (again)
S Foxell

Co-creating justice in housing energy transitions through energy living labs
D Ricci, C Leiwakabessy, S van Wieringen, P de Koning & T Konstantinou

HVAC characterisation of existing Canadian buildings for decarbonisation retrofit identification
J Adebisi & J J McArthur

Simulation and the building performance gap [editorial]
M Donn

Developing criteria for effective building-sector commitments in nationally determined contributions
P Graham, K McFarlane & M Taheri

See all peer reviewed articles

Latest Commentaries

COP30 Report

COP30 Report

Matti Kuittinen (Aalto University) reflects on his experience of attending the 2025 UN Conference of the Parties in Belém, Brazil. The roadmaps and commitments failed to deliver the objectives of the 2025 Paris Agreement. However, 2 countries - Japan and Senegal - announced they are creating roadmaps to decarbonise their buildings. An international group of government ministers put housing on the agenda - specifying the need for reduced carbon and energy use along with affordability, quality and climate resilience.

Building-Related Research: New Context, New Challenges

Raymond J. Cole (University of British Columbia) reflects on the key challenges raised in the 34 commissioned essays for Buildings & Cities 5th anniversary. Not only are key research issues identified, but the consequences of changing contexts for conducting research and tailoring its influence on society are highlighted as key areas of action.

Join Our Community

Join Our Community

The most important part of any journal is our people – readers, authors, reviewers, editorial board members and editors. You are cordially invited to join our community by joining our mailing list. We send out occasional emails about the journal – calls for papers, special issues, events and more.

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