www.buildingsandcities.org/insights/news/cop26-expectations.html
COP26 Expectations
Read this vital series of essays providing multiple perspectives on expected and needed outcomes from COP26.
For COP26, Buildings & Cities presents this major series of 30 short, learned commentaries from the built environment community that are primarily aimed at policy makers. These essays reveal the diversity of issues that need to be embraced and, most importantly, point to constructive approaches to mitigation and adaptation.
The range of topics goes from overarching issues (e.g. overconsumption, geopolitics, intergenerational equity, climate justice, nature-based solutions and long-term thinking - to mention only a few) to more specific issues at the levels of cities and buildings. Lessons and actions can be drawn for different actors in central and local governments, the construction industry supply side, NGOs, higher education and civil society.
Each essay focuses and discusses one vital outcome that is needed from COP26 relating to the built environment. This can be a direct aspect of what should be agreed at COP26 or the impact of COP26 at the national or local levels. A variety of perspectives are presented - from different disciplines, geographies and scales. Taken together, this provides a powerful overview of overarching policy issues and the necessary strategic / practical actions at the societal, urban and building levels.
Were the needs and demands of cities and local governments marginalised in their roles and representation at COP26?
By Harpa Birgisdóttir (Aalborg University Copenhagen, DK)
By Sonja Klinsky (Arizona State University, US) and Anna Mavrogianni (University College London, UK)
By Timon McPhearson (The New School, US)
By Linda K. Westman (University of Sheffield, UK)
By Jason Corburn (University of California, Berkeley, US)
By Thomas Lützkendorf (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, DE), Ursula Hartenberger (PathTo2050, BE), York Ostermeyer (Chalmers U, SE)
By Ellen van Bueren (Delft University of Technology, NL)
By Rohinton Emmanuel (Glasgow Caledonian University, UK)
By Michael Donn (Victoria University Wellington, NZ)
By Christhina Candido, Rebecca Bentley and Samin Marzban (U Melbourne, AU)
By Jonathon Taylor (Tampere U, FI), Lauren Ferguson* , Anna Mavrogianni* & Clare Heaviside* (*University College London, UK)
By Ankit Kumar (U of Sheffield, UK), Joshua Kirshner (U of York, UK), Lata Narayanaswamy (U of Leeds, UK) and Enora Robin (U of Sheffield, UK)
By Wei Yang and Jie Li (Tianjin University, CN)
By Clare Heaviside (University College London - UCL), Jonathon Taylor (UCL & Tampere U), Oscar Brousse (UCL), Charles Simpson (UCL)
By Sarah J. Darby (Oxford University, UK)
By William E. Rees (Professor Emeritus, University of British Columbia, CA)
By Stefan Siedentop (ILS - Research Institute for Regional and Urban Development & TU Dortmund University, DE)
By Maria Balouktsi (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, DE)
By Robin Nicholson CBE (Cullinan Studio and The Edge, UK)
By Raymond J. Cole (University of British Columbia, CA)
By Thomas Lützkendorf (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, DE)
By Magdalena Barborska-Narozny (Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, PL)
By Mark Levine (Senior Advisor, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, US)
By Jeroen van der Heijden (Victoria University of Wellington, NZ and Australian National University, AU)
By Bruno Peuportier (MINES ParisTech, PSL Research University, FR)
Latest Commentaries
Remote Sensing for Urban Development Policies
At the 2026 Sustainable Buildings and Construction Summit Magnus Andersson, David Muthui & Reza Roodaki (Malmö University) argued that remote sensing should be a core evidence infrastructure for sustainable urban governance. Satellite derived and geospatial analysis can observe and monitor urban expansion, densification, land consumption, building form and material demand across jurisdictions and over time. A shift from two-dimensional to three-dimensional sensing and analysis provides new data to inform policies for housing, land-use efficiency, disaster exposure, public space, resource efficiency and resilient construction.
Disaster Reconstruction: Practitioner Insights Improve Outcomes
Regan Potangaroa (Auckland University of Technology - AUT), Kelvin Zuo (Massey University), Suzanne Wilkinson (AUT) explain why experience-led knowledge from the field, when triangulated with contemporaneous documentation, can constitute evidence for understanding post-disaster reconstruction systems. People working within reconstruction environments (engineers, builders, logisticians and community actors) provide crucial observations about how reconstruction systems function in practice, particularly supply chains, material flows, procurement and governance in post-disaster rebuilding. Integrating this knowledge can lead to better outcomes.