Buildings & Cities is an international, open access, peer-reviewed academic journal publishing high-quality research and analysis on the interplay between the different scales of the built environment: buildings, blocks, neighbourhoods, cities, building stocks and infrastructures. The journal focuses on built environment policy, practices and outcomes and the range of human development, economic, environmental, political, social and technological issues occurring over the full life cycle in urban, suburban and rural contexts. It provides a platform for insights that can help improve the built environment.
Buildings & Cities aims to make research accessible and relevant to academics, policymakers, practitioners, clients, and occupants.
More detailed information can be found at www.buildingsandcities.org.
We are pleased to announce that B&C has been formally approved for inclusion in The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). The journal has been awarded DOAJ's 'SEAL OF APPROVAL' that is given to only 10% of eligible publications.
DOAJ is a long-standing mark of journal quality. Inclusion is only open to journals with high quality editorial process and transparency, complexity of peer review, easy and freely available articles in open access publishing mode.
All peer-reviewed content in Buildings & Cities will be indexed in the DOAJ. This means B&C is Plan S compliant.
Buildings & Cities was awarded the DOAJ Seal of Approval for demonstrating best practice in open access publishing.
Posted on 07 Sep 2020
Guest Editors: Jonathon Taylor (Tampere U) and Philippa Howden-Chapman (U of Otago)
Deadline for abstract submission: 30 July 2020
Cities are complex systems with interactions between various factors e.g.: urban density, ‘green’ infrastructure and open space, housing, transport, waste management, water and sanitation, air quality, health systems, and city governance. With an increasing majority of the global population now inhabiting urban areas, it is essential that cities reduce their environmental footprints and increase their resilience to environmental change whilst protecting and promoting planetary health.
This special issue seeks to explore how cities can address the multiple challenges of health and sustainability. This involves the development and implementation of evidence-informed solutions in a variety of different contexts (mature cities, rapidly expanding urban areas, shrinking cities, and informal settlements; Global North and Global South); political systems (high centralised, decentralised, autocratic, democratic) and scales (city, neighbourhood, street, building). Papers are sought on a variety of topics that model, track or evaluate the effectiveness and outcomes of different policies or practices, as well as the interaction between various systems.
Evidence is sought from different contexts from which we expect distinctions, complementarities and comparisons to be drawn for informing equitable development pathways for improving sustainability and public health in cities. In particular, we are interested in research that accelerates the implementation of large-scale ‘transformational’ changes that improve health and sustainability in low-, middle- and high-income settings, and across different socioeconomic and demographic groups.
Papers in this special issue address key urban topics including but not limited to:
Timeline
Deadline for abstract submission: 30 July 2020
Full papers due: 30 January 2021
Referees’ comments: 09 April 2021
Final version due: 01 June 2021
Publication: August 2021
Download the full Call for Papers here.
Posted on 27 Apr 2020
Guest Editors: Faye Wade (U of Edinburgh) and Henk Visscher (TU Delft)
Deadline for abstract submission: 13 July 2020
What are the capabilities and capacities for delivering retrofit at scale?
This special issue explores the accelerated delivery of domestic energy retrofitting at different scales – national, municipal, neighbourhood and individual sites. It will interrogate governance, economic / business, organisational, social and technical aspects and their interactions: existing planning capabilities; available building stock data and what more is needed; rural and urban retrofit strategies; the roles, capabilities and capacities of existing and new actors / enterprises in delivering retrofit (e.g. local authorities, urban planners, construction professionals, contractors and subcontractors); how can renovation elements be produced in an industrialised way to increase capacity and reduce costs; the economic, social, political, legislative, regulatory aspects of delivery models; what owners or inhabitants require; forms of user engagement; what future proofing is appropriate; what requirements and guarantees will ensure performance in use. There will be insights across different scales and geographical contexts as well as top-down vs bottom-up models. Distinctions & complementarities will be drawn for policies and delivery strategies for different scales, stakeholders, inhabitants and disciplines.
Papers in this special issue will address key questions and offer solutions in these areas:
Timeline
Deadline for abstract submission: 13 July 2020
Full papers due: 11 January 2021
Referees’ comments: 22 March 2021
Final version due: 10 May 2021
Publication: July 2021
Download the full Call for Papers here.
Posted on 26 Apr 2020
Guest editor: Jacques Teller
University of Liège, Belgium
E-mail: Jacques.Teller@uliege.be
The expansion of built-up urban areas progressively often leads to a loss of agricultural land and green spaces. It tends to increase distance travelled by car and contributes to habitat fragmentation.Accordingly, a number of cities and regions have adopted planning policies dedicated to fostering urban densification, through in-fill development and urban consolidation, in order to prevent a further expansion/sprawl of urban areas and the concomitant artificialization of open/green spaces. Other cities have an ad hoc or laissez faire approach to planning, respond to specific proposed projects on an individual basis or lack enforcement.
This special issue investigates the specific challenges, impacts and fragilities that urban densification creates in many cities and the different scales where these can be found.
The process of densification can typically be observed through two variables, i.e. through the increase of population and jobs or through the increase of built floor area within a defined area. There is a need for a better understanding of the complex relations between densification and expansion processes across different spatio- temporal scales. Densification may indeed be measured across a very wide spectrum of temporal units,from the hourly concentration of pedestrians in given public spaces to the long-term consolidation of low-density areas.
For either Global North cities or Global South cities, topics for the special issue may include (but are not limited to):
Download the full call for papers here.
Timeline
Deadline for abstract submission: 02 March 2020
Full papers due: 01 September 2020
Referees' comments: 15 December 2020
Revised papers due: 01 February 2021
Publication: April 2021
Posted on 14 Nov 2019