
www.buildingsandcities.org/insights/news/cop27-expectations.html
For COP27, Buildings & Cities presents a series of 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 climate action.
The range of topics goes from overarching issues (e.g. overconsumption, multilevel governance, intergenerational equity, climate justice, nature-based solutions - 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 COP27 relating to the built environment. This can be a direct aspect of what should be agreed at COP27 or the impact of COP27 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.
Latest Commentaries
Building Performance Evaluation in Education – Why Not?
Building performance evaluation (BPE) is a process to understand how buildings perform in use and how inhabitants interact with their buildings. BPE can harness these insights to improve building design, operation and use. Paradoxically, BPE is rarely part of the curriculum for education of designers, buildings and managers. Fionn Stevenson (independent scholar) considers why BPE / post-occupancy evaluation is not being taught to architecture students in the UK and how to mainstream BPE in education and practice.
Freedom from Stress is Symptomatic of Death
Marcel Schweiker (RWTH Aachen University) and Richard de Dear (University of Sydney) discuss the neutrality fallacy and resilience. They explain why indoor environments do not need to be stress free in order to support their occupants’ resilience.