www.buildingsandcities.org/insights/commentaries/5th-anniversary-essays.html
5th Anniversary Essays
It's B&C's 5th year of publication. Celebrate with us by reading these thought-provoking essays.
These commissioned essays from Buildings & Cities' authors and readers explore how the research landscape is changing. New essays are continuously being added to the collection during 2024 as part of B&C's anniversary.
Collectively, these essays offer fresh insights into the processes and issues that are currently inadequate or missing in the built environment research landscape. A wide perspective from different disciplines and geographies creates a positive, collective vision for shaping the research agenda. Recommendations are made for what needs to change.
We hope this will provoke and inspire research funders, researchers and other stakeholders to discuss, reflect and act. Ideas range from systemic change to key research questions to improving engagement to change of focus.
Overview and reflections on key built environment research challenges raised in B&C's anniversary essays
Why the built environment research community is vital for policy and strategy implementation
Strategies for decolonising street names: top-down by city authorities or bottom-up by local communities?
Nature-based design, combined with the transformation of underlying worldviews, can enhance urban resilience.
Why a coordinated programme of built environment research needs to be based on the public good
How building research can harness AI for mass decarbonisation
Understanding the interactions between urban form, outdoor and indoor spaces, and local climate requIres interdisciplinary interaction
Why large cities will need to contract or be abandoned altogether
Why the next industrial revolution needs to be based on nature and not "technology"
Both research and practice have a key role in developing positive, shared visions for the built environment
Why a just transition to sustainable cities depends on quality, affordable housing
Why urban innovation is not enough to create sustainable cities
The destruction of cultural heritage is a war crime. Should peacetime destruction or displacement be a crime too?
Observations from 15 years of built environment reuse research about how change occurs
Partnering with NGOs and integrating local knowledge can enable researchers to develop effective and context-specific solutions
Why research funders, institutions and academics need to frame research agendas that are locally responsive
Challenges ahead: why urban planning and urban design need robust quantitative evidence for decision making.
Challenges ahead: why robust research and education can help drive the necessary changes in regulating construction products to meet society's demands
Challenges ahead: collecting, managing, integrating and sharing comprehensible findings on actual performance from cradle to grave
Challenges ahead: how the recent past is shaping the research agenda
Challenges ahead: research has a role to protect the public interest and inhabitants
Challenges ahead: Making the UN's Building Breakthrough a reality
Challenges ahead: how the conduct of research needs to change
Challenges ahead: why relational research is vital for society and reduces dysfunction and disaster
Challenges ahead: the curriculum in many US built environment courses needs to change
Message to COP29: more effective collaboration is essential
Challenges ahead: addressing the complex issues of building performance, public safety, climate change and socio-ecological value
Looking forward: citizen science is changing the research landscape
Challenges ahead: understanding and protecting the end-users of the built environment
Challenges ahead: why research must focus on potential problematic consequences and provide proactive built-in fail-safes
Challenges ahead: sustainable design is much more than addressing climate change
Challenges ahead: framing urban research as a commons activity and as a research agenda
Challenges ahead: how the conduct of research needs to change
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.