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5th Anniversary Essays
It's B&C's 5th year of publication. Celebrate with us by reading these thought-provoking essays.
These commissioned essays from Buildings & Cities' authors and readers explore how the research landscape is changing. New essays are continuously being added to the collection during 2024 as part of B&C's anniversary.
Collectively, these essays offer fresh insights into the processes and issues that are currently inadequate or missing in the built environment research landscape. A wide perspective from different disciplines and geographies creates a positive, collective vision for shaping the research agenda. Recommendations are made for what needs to change.
We hope this will provoke and inspire research funders, researchers and other stakeholders to discuss, reflect and act. Ideas range from systemic change to key research questions to improving engagement to change of focus.
Strategies for decolonising street names: top-down by city authorities or bottom-up by local communities?
Nature-based design, combined with the transformation of underlying worldviews, can enhance urban resilience.
Why a coordinated programme of built environment research needs to be based on the public good
How building research can harness AI for mass decarbonisation
Understanding the interactions between urban form, outdoor and indoor spaces, and local climate requIres interdisciplinary interaction
Why large cities will need to contract or be abandoned altogether
Why the next industrial revolution needs to be based on nature and not "technology"
Both research and practice have a key role in developing positive, shared visions for the built environment
Why a just transition to sustainable cities depends on quality, affordable housing
Why urban innovation is not enough to create sustainable cities
The destruction of cultural heritage is a war crime. Should peacetime destruction or displacement be a crime too?
Observations from 15 years of built environment reuse research about how change occurs
Partnering with NGOs and integrating local knowledge can enable researchers to develop effective and context-specific solutions
Why research funders, institutions and academics need to frame research agendas that are locally responsive
Challenges ahead: why urban planning and urban design need robust quantitative evidence for decision making.
Challenges ahead: why robust research and education can help drive the necessary changes in regulating construction products to meet society's demands
Challenges ahead: collecting, managing, integrating and sharing comprehensible findings on actual performance from cradle to grave
Challenges ahead: how the recent past is shaping the research agenda
Latest Commentaries
Decolonising Cities: The Role of Street Naming
During colonialisation, street names were drawn from historical and societal contexts of the colonisers. Street nomenclature deployed by colonial administrators has a role in legitimising historical narratives and decentring local languages, cultures and heritage. Buyana Kareem examines street renaming as an important element of decolonisation.
Integrating Nature into Cities
Increasing vegetation and green and blue spaces in cities can support both climate change mitigation and adaptation goals, while also enhancing biodiversity and ecological health. Maibritt Pedersen Zari (Auckland University of Technology) explains why nature-based solutions (NbS) must be a vital part of urban planning and design.