Special Issues
What understandings and processes do built environment actors need to address mitigation and adaptation risks in the built environment?
How can the complexity and challenges of physical reconstruction across diverse disciplines, stakeholders and governance be organised and synthesised?
What are the roles and impacts that Living Labs play in increasing civic resilience and supporting ecological transition in different contexts and at different scales?
How might the building stock transition towards net zero? How big a change is achievable? What factors determine both the overall potential as well as the transition process?
As codes and regulations become stricter, is simulation the right tool for compliance as well as sketching performance to assist design?
How can conditions be created for decent living standards for all without exceeding planetary limits?
How do indoor environments affect health inequalities, inequities and injustice?
How can we create a more pluralistic, inclusive approach to urban climate adaptation? How can ill-suited approaches be disrupted?
How is social value created, defined and measured in both placemaking (urban design, architecture and real estate) and construction (procurement and labour) processes?
This special issue examines why demolition occurs, its consequences and how a more sustainable approach can be created.
This special issue advances understandings of the practices, politics and power implications of data-driven buildings and cities
This special issue examines how cities in the Global South can predict & manage their expansion in effective, sustainable ways.
This special issue advances understandings of the nature, extent and effectiveness of cities' implementation efforts to realise low-carbon, climate resilient cities.
Gender 'blindness' impacts negatively on engagement with smart home technologies. If the energy transition is to be realised, then gender must be addressed.
This special issue investigates the broader implications and consequences of MMC over the life of the building - for both civil society and the construction industry.
This special issue advances the understanding and implementation of housing adaptability and flexibility across a range of issues: spatial, social, environmental, economic, time and multi-use and multiuser adaptability.
In an increasingly hotter world, what policies, designs, technologies & behaviours can provide thermal adequacy for coolth?
Urban areas are highly complex systems. Solutions to urban problems are often co-dependent and inter-connected. How can a systems approach to cities improve sustainability and health outcomes?
What are the capabilities and capacities for delivering retrofit at scale?
How can urban densification be defined, monitored and controlled to create positive outcomes and avoid unintended consequences / negative impacts?
Latest Peer-Reviewed Journal Content
Moving homes and energy poverty: residents’ concerns, capabilities and responses
M Jalas, J Rinkinen, S Numminen & E Valkealahti
Reference study for biogenic carbon storage in the residential building stock
O Iliescu, I Talvitie, A Amiri & S Junnila
Building space heating and cooling in NDCs 4.0
T P Lützkendorf
Building component reuse as sociomaterial interaction: lessons from precast concrete
J Uusikartano, L Alkki & V Capitani
Validating national reuse indicators from regional demolition data: a Swedish example
F Ericsson, K Mjörnell & U Janson
Climate change risk and decision-making [editorial]
S Foxell & I Cooper
Technologies of reconstruction [editorial]
P Tombesi
Urban form metrics for building occupancy modelling: applications and impacts
D Reiter, M Jehling & R Hecht
Retrofit realism: affordable low-carbon policies for existing homes
N Eyre & R Khosla
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Latest Commentaries
Who is Responsible for Climate Change?
Ian Cooper (Eclipse Research) explores the questions of responsibility raised in the recent Buildings & Cities special issue ‘Climate Change Risk and Decision-Making’. Focusing here on carbon emissions and mitigation, global responses will require grounding in what can work locally. New responsibilities arise for the wide range of built environment decision-makers: clients, professionals and their institutions, central and local governments, product suppliers, financiers, insurers, etc. A framework is needed to manage the complexity of responsibilities especially for variety of actors, the time frames and spatial scales.
Professional Ethics in a Climate Crisis
The climate crisis has progressed into a dangerous phase with tragic consequences often counted in numbers of excess deaths, but also by powerful economic impacts of rising food prices, the increased costs of insurance and lending, costly damage to the built environment. Celia Davies, Director of Impact at the UK’s Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA) and Hugh Ellis, Director of Policy at TCPA, consider the responsibilities of professionals in shaping a built environment which is fit not just for today's climate risks but for the dramatic increase in severe and unpredictable weather which is now locked into our climate systems.