www.buildingsandcities.org/insights/news/cop28-expectations.html
COP28 Expectations
For COP28, 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. equity, climate justice, carbon targets for the built environment, regulatory approaches, linkages to SDGs - 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 COP28 relating to the built environment. This can be a direct aspect of what should be agreed at COP28 or the impact of COP28 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.
Both technical advancements AND human- and nature-centred solutions of culture & heritage are needed.
by Matti Kuittinen (Aalto University & the Nordic authority group working for climate declarations for buildings 2020-2023)
By Alexander Passer, Thomas Lützkendorf, Rolf Frischknecht (representing IEA EBC Annex 89)
Latest Commentaries
Living Labs: Maturity, Impact and the Role of Researchers
Living labs are blossoming more than ever. Their first appearances in academic literature were roughly 25 years ago. Dimitri Schuurman (Ghent University) responds to the recent Buildings & Cities special issue “Living Labs: Agents for Change” and focuses on two important drawbacks that also come with living labs booming in practice as well as in the literature.
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.