Dear Colleagues,

The last IPCC reports demonstrate how cities are still quite far from meeting the expected mitigation and adaptation targets for fighting climate change. The current energy crisis, the instability of the global political landscape and the rise in populism across Europe and worldwide are only some of the many challenges that society is facing nowadays. In this complex context, energy and environmental design can play a role in alleviating these issues, especially in the built environment and through the integration of digital and physical innovations with site-specific necessities. This is all the truer if it is matched with collaborative approaches which are able to fully integrate humans, communities, and citizens into the transition of the built environment, providing resources for their full engagement in urban transformations; additionally, ICTs can play a role in fostering their understanding and involvement in environmental matters.

Some recent key scientific contributions, together with the implementation of real projects in cities, show how there are many emerging trends in energy and environmental design that are at the forefront of the smart concepts being applied to cities and buildings: 1) digital and technological innovations that propose the application of IoT, machine learning, artificial intelligence, blockchain and building information modelling in cities and buildings for an optimized and highly informative immaterial network; 2) permeating service design solutions that make people’s lives easier and support their growth and wellbeing, while also including innovative forms of participation in the energy system, such as energy communities and the wider concept of energy citizenship; and 3) pervading nature-based solutions and softer uses of temporary architectures with natural elements and materials that combine the optimization of the indoor–outdoor environment with more qualitative and resilient public and private spaces.

This Special Issue of Energies is aimed at collecting scientific contributions on the emerging trends of smart buildings and smart cities, focusing on the implementation and development of innovative solutions and services for supporting energy efficiency, citizen participation in the energy sector, energy and resource flow optimization, environmental quality, and people empowerment and wellbeing both at the building and at the district/city scale, while also considering technical, social, economic, architectural and, in general, feasibility implications.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Energy and environmental design emerging trends;
• Smart cities and smart districts and their emerging trends;
• Smart building innovations and integrated applications;
• IoT, machine learning, artificial intelligence and blockchain applied to cities, districts and/or buildings;
• Digital twins and the multiverse applied to cities, districts and/or buildings;
• Integration of BIM into cities, districts and/or buildings;
• Innovations in GIS for smart cities and smart districts;
• Resource and energy flow optimization;
• Energy communities and/or energy citizenship;
• Energy optimization in buildings, cities and/or districts;
• Nature-based solutions in buildings, cities and/or districts;
• Environmental design and its impacts;
• Environmental impacts of mitigation and adaptation strategies;
• Impact frameworks of solutions applied at the city, district or building level;
• Citizen-centred design approaches;
• Service design for cities, districts and/or buildings;
• Citizen science applied to cities, districts and/or buildings.

Dr. Saveria Olga Murielle Boulanger
Prof. Dr. Andrea Boeri
Dr. Gonçalo Mendes
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Energies is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• energy and environmental design emerging trends
• smart cities and smart districts and their emerging trends
• smart building innovations and integrated applications
• IoT, machine learning, artificial intelligence and blockchain applied to cities, districts and/or buildings
• digital twins and the multiverse applied to cities, districts and/or buildings
• integration of BIM into cities, districts and/or buildings
• innovations in GIS for smart cities and smart districts
• resource and energy flow optimization
• energy communities and/or energy citizenship
• energy optimization in buildings, cities and/or districts
• nature-based solutions in buildings, cities and/or districts
• environmental design and its impacts
• environmental impacts of mitigation and adaptation strategies
• impact frameworks of solutions applied at the city, district or building level
• citizen-centred design approaches
• service design for cities, districts and/or buildings
• citizen science applied to cities, districts and/or buildings

Title: Smart City and energy. A bibliometric review of the Smart City and Smart Energy concept from the perspective of the bioclimatic approach.
Authors: Saveria Olga Murielle Boulanger
Affiliation: Department of Architecture, University of Bologna
Abstract: Smart Cities have emerged as a promising approach for transforming urban living into more sustainable and resilient systems through technology-driven innovations and data-driven governance. Despite their growing implementation, and their diffusion around the globe, many questions surrounding this topic have emerged. Indeed, many critics have emerged since its first conceptualization, in the first decade of the current century. Among the main critics: utopian objectives, security, safety, people's freedom and privacy within these systems, capitalistic and neoliberalism-related critics but also the current climate cost of Smart City initiatives. In the context of those critics, bioclimatic and passive strategies, that might provide an interesting evolution of the concept, seem to be left in the background. This paper aims to contribute to the understanding of the linkages between environmental design approaches and the Smart City discourse. The contribution will explore to which extent bioclimatic and environmental design principles are present in the Smart City discourse and what are the patterns inside the current literature. The methodology of the research will include a quali-quantitative analysis of the body of literature in Scopus and a bibliometric analysis with the use of the VOS viewer tool.

Title: Environmental design on site-specific energy solidary communities around public high schools in the metropolitan area of Naples (Italy)
Authors: Roberto Bosco*; Savino Giacobbe; Salvatore Losco; Louise Ann Mozingo; Renata Valente
Affiliation: Università degli studi della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”
Abstract: Renewable Energy Communities (RECs) around photovoltaic systems on public buildings are optimal solutions to counter energy poverty, ensuring all stakeholders access to cheap, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy systems. As the neighbourhood is the minimum suitable unit for the implementation of highly sustainable settlements, this article discusses the potential and criticality of actions at this scale in Southern Italy. The authors collaborate with the Metropolitan City of Naples (Italy) to study the possibility of creating Sustainable Urban Communities around school buildings for higher education. By operationally considering available data, enriched by information from environmental and social contexts, strategies for energy efficiency, vegetation increase, and water management are developed for proper sizing of these communities. An interactive scorecard is developed to rank high schools useful for their transformation into community hubs, also considering the scale of distribution substations. At the urban scale, different areas are analysed based on the morphologies, microclimate, characteristics and density of buildings and population around each assumed community hub. The study provides valuable guidance to local designers and administrators for the implementation of sustainable technologies by preparing a map of potential urban communities.