Special Issues

Urban Densification

Urban Densification

How can urban densification be defined, monitored and controlled to create positive outcomes and avoid unintended consequences / negative impacts?

Education and Training: Mainstreaming Zero Carbon

How can education and training develop the capacities, capabilities and competences to rapidly decarbonise both new construction and the existing building stock?

Carbon Metrics: Assessing & Controlling GHG Emissions Across Scales

What constitutes appropriate and scalable carbon metrics in the built environment? How can a basket of different metrics inform policy and practice?

Climate Justice: The Role of the Built Environment

Questions of justice are embedded in every aspect of climate change. Ongoing and future anthropogenic climate change will exacerbate inequities worldwide.

Latest Commentaries

Mombasa City, Kenya. Photo: Sebastian Wanzalla

Brian Dean and Elizabeth Wangeci Chege (Sustainable Energy for All) respond to the Buildings & Cities special issue Alternatives to Air Conditioning and explain why thermal comfort is not only a construction industry problem to solve but needs to be placed in the policy agenda on global warming. Thermal adequacy is still not understood as an essential need for human survival and that governments have an essential role.

Image: Dedraw Studio, Getty Images

Tom Hargreaves and Nickhil Sharma (University of East Anglia) comment on contributions of the Buildings & Cities special issue Energy, Emerging Technology and Gender in Homes on the role of gender in technology development and the energy transition. This must be broadened further to social justice issues. A failure to do so risks fuelling resistance and pushback to new and emerging energy technologies. Three key avenues for future research and practices for a just energy transition and emerging technologies are set out.

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