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Special Issues

Trusting Building Performance Simulation

As codes and regulations become stricter, is simulation the right tool for compliance as well as sketching performance to assist design?

Energy Sufficiency in Buildings and Cities

How can conditions be created for decent living standards for all without exceeding planetary limits?

Health Inequalities and Indoor Environments

How do indoor environments affect health inequalities, inequities and injustice?

Urban Adaptation: Disrupting Imaginaries & Practices

How can we create a more pluralistic, inclusive approach to urban climate adaptation? How can ill-suited approaches be disrupted?

Social Value of the Built Environment

How is social value created, defined and measured in both placemaking (urban design, architecture and real estate) and construction (procurement and labour) processes?

Understanding Demolition

Understanding Demolition

This special issue examines why demolition occurs, its consequences and how a more sustainable approach can be created.

Data Politics in the Built Environment

This special issue advances understandings of the practices, politics and power implications of data-driven buildings and cities

Urban Expansion

Urban Expansion

This special issue examines how cities in the Global South can predict & manage their expansion in effective, sustainable ways.

Transformational Climate Actions by Cities

This special issue advances understandings of the nature, extent and effectiveness of cities' implementation efforts to realise low-carbon, climate resilient cities.

Energy, Emerging Technologies and Gender in Homes

Gender 'blindness' impacts negatively on engagement with smart home technologies. If the energy transition is to be realised, then gender must be addressed.

Modern Methods of Construction: Beyond Productivity Improvement

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.

Housing Adaptability

Housing Adaptability

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.

Alternatives to Air Conditioning

In an increasingly hotter world, what policies, designs, technologies & behaviours can provide thermal adequacy for coolth?

Urban Systems for Sustainability and Health

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?

Retrofitting at Scale: Accelerating Capabilities for Domestic Building Stocks

What are the capabilities and capacities for delivering retrofit at scale?

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 Peer-Reviewed Journal Content

Journal Content

Simulation and the building performance gap [editorial]
M Donn

Developing criteria for effective building-sector commitments in nationally determined contributions
P Graham, K McFarlane & M Taheri

Reimagining circularity: actions for optimising the use of existing buildings
R Lundgren, R Kyrö, S Toivonen & L Tähtinen

Effective interdisciplinary stakeholder engagement in net zero building design
S Vakeva-Baird, F Tahmasebi, JJ Williams & D Mumovic

Metrics for building component disassembly potential: a practical framework
H Järvelä, A Lehto, T Pirilä & M Kuittinen

The unfitness of dwellings: why spatial and conceptual boundaries matter
E Nisonen, D Milián Bernal & S Pelsmakers

Environmental variables and air quality: implications for planning and public health
H Itzhak-Ben-Shalom, T Saroglou, V Multanen, A Vanunu, A Karnieli, D Katoshevski, N Davidovitch & I A Meir

Exploring diverse drivers behind hybrid heating solutions
S Kilpeläinen, S Pelsmakers, R Castaño-Rosa & M-S Miettinen

Urban rooms and the expanded ecology of urban living labs
E Akbil & C Butterworth

Living with extreme heat: perceptions and experiences
L King & C Demski

A systemic decision-making model for energy retrofits
C Schünemann, M Dshemuchadse & S Scherbaum

Modelling site-specific outdoor temperature for buildings in urban environments
K Cebrat, J Narożny, M Baborska-Narożny & M Smektała

Understanding shading through home-use experience, measurement and modelling
M Baborska-Narożny, K Bandurski, & M Grudzińska

Building performance simulation for sensemaking in architectural pedagogy
M Bohm

Beyond the building: governance challenges in social housing retrofit
H Charles

Heat stress in social housing districts: tree cover–built form interaction
C Lopez-Ordoñez, E Garcia-Nevado, H Coch & M Morganti

An observational analysis of shade-related pedestrian activity
M Levenson, D Pearlmutter & O Aleksandrowicz

Learning to sail a building: a people-first approach to retrofit
B Bordass, R Pender, K Steele & A Graham

Market transformations: gas conversion as a blueprint for net zero retrofit
A Gillich

Resistance against zero-emission neighbourhood infrastructuring: key lessons from Norway
T Berker & R Woods

Megatrends and weak signals shaping future real estate
S Toivonen

A strategic niche management framework to scale deep energy retrofits
T H King & M Jemtrud

Generative AI: reconfiguring supervision and doctoral research
P Boyd & D Harding

Exploring interactions between shading and view using visual difference prediction
S Wasilewski & M Andersen

How urban green infrastructure contributes to carbon neutrality [briefing note]
R Hautamäki, L Kulmala, M Ariluoma & L Järvi

Implementing and operating net zero buildings in South Africa
R Terblanche, C May & J Steward

Quantifying inter-dwelling air exchanges during fan pressurisation tests
D Glew, F Thomas, D Miles-Shenton & J Parker

Western Asian and Northern African residential building stocks: archetype analysis
S Akin, A Eghbali, C Nwagwu & E Hertwich

See all peer reviewed articles

Latest Commentaries

Building-Related Research: New Context, New Challenges

Raymond J. Cole (University of British Columbia) reflects on the key challenges raised in the 34 commissioned essays for Buildings & Cities 5th anniversary. Not only are key research issues identified, but the consequences of changing contexts for conducting research and tailoring its influence on society are highlighted as key areas of action.

Lessons from Disaster Recovery: Build Better Before

Mary C. Comerio (University of California, Berkeley) explains why disaster recovery must begin well before a disaster occurs. The goal is to reduce the potential for damage beforehand by making housing delivery (e.g. capabilities and the physical, technical and institutional infrastructures) both more resilient and more capable of building back after disasters.

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