The Potential of the Built Environment in Climate-Related Challenges

Dear Colleagues,

The built environment has a great responsibility with respect to the grand climate challenges we are currently facing. An increasing proportion of the world’s growing population is living in cities, which are facing great pressures and expanding. The built environment consumes almost half of the total energy requirements, and thus largely contributes to greenhouse gases emissions, aggravating climate change and other more local phenomena such as the urban heat island effect. The construction industry is responsible for almost half of total raw material consumption.

The most immediate direction that can be taken is to reduce this consumption. However, this is not sufficient, and the challenges faced by researchers and professionals in the field of the built environment cannot be reduced to this mere action.

Indeed, a preferable and more up-to-date approach consists of exploring the potential of the built environment to meet the challenges posed by climate change, in order to mitigate them and adapt to them. This must be done in a multidisciplinary manner, with a view to the bigger picture. In essence, this Special Issue proposes a different perspective, which considers the current situation but also future projections, in order to adapt to the challenging future, boosting an innate resilience in our built environment. We aim to identify and implement strategies to deal with the effects that will inevitably result from the above-mentioned challenges. Additionally, it is crucial to do this while considering the conditions of the actual built environment, what we experience around us, and the restrictions that derive from its features, as a base for the conscious and effective implementation of any intervention strategy.

Prof. Dr. Marco Ferrero
Guest Editor

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