Towards Long-Term Housing Sustainability and Affordability: Governing Change Across Systems, Scales and Values
A special issue of Buildings (ISSN 2075-5309). This special issue belongs to the section "Architectural Design, Urban Science, and Real Estate".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 November 2026 | Viewed by 15
Editors
Interests: affordable housing; design with scarcity; appropriate technologies; vernacular architecture; passive strategies; green building; social innovation; community engagement
Interests: adaptability; circularity; building reuse; temporary urbanism; regenerative design; transdisciplinary design; community engagement
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Housing solutions worldwide often lack affordability, exhibit substandard quality and low environmental sustainability, and show limited capacity to adapt to ongoing social, economic and environmental changes. In response, researchers and organizations increasingly advocate for Sustainable Affordable Housing (SAH) (Adabre, Chan, 2019), an approach that extends the “adequate shelter for all” strategy of the Habitat Agenda (UN-Habitat, 2012). SAH integrates sustainability and affordability while promoting higher-quality buildings with reduced lifecycle costs and environmental impacts.
However, implementing SAH requires managing trade-offs among multiple objectives and defining robust and adaptive project requirements. One promising strategy is to conceive housing not as a static product, but as a dynamic system capable of adaptation (Araji, Shahin, 2021), enabling progressive transformations and accommodating evolving needs within available resources.
This Special Issue aims to advance knowledge on long-term Sustainable and Affordable Housing by fostering contributions that explore adaptable and future-proof housing systems. Particular attention is given to approaches that enhance building adequacy, user satisfaction, and climate resilience, while reducing environmental impacts and costs over time.
Areas of interest include, but are not limited to, the following topics, encompassing both theoretical developments and empirical evidence:
- Housing problems and the relationship between buildings as products and the governance of processes during the use phase;
- Buildings’ technical capacity to adapt over time and its implications for the housing sector;
- Adaptation to environmental conditions, including climate resilience and energy performance in both renovation and new construction;
- Socio-economic impacts of affordable and social housing, including housing supply management and use-phase processes.
Dr. Francesca De Filippi
Prof. Dr. Robert Schmidt III
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.
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-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Buildings 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.
Keywords
- sustainable and affordable housing
- housing affordability
- building adaptability
- future-proofing
- life cycle assessment (LCA)
- building performance
- climate change adaptation
- urban housing governance
- socio-technical transitions
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