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
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.