Carbon-Neutral Pathways for Urban Building Design
A special issue of Buildings (ISSN 2075-5309). This special issue belongs to the section "Building Energy, Physics, Environment, and Systems".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 May 2026
Special Issue Editors
Interests: construction industry; carbon neutrality; low-carbon design; urban buildings; household energy-use; whole life cycle; circular building
Interests: water-energy; green building; rainwater harvesting; water management; climate change; urban waterlogging; urban microclimate
Interests: building energy efficiency; building energy management system; data-driven load forecasting; building-integrated photovoltaics; building flexible loads; integration of building energy use and storage; thermodynamic simulation
Interests: household energy-use; low-carbon operation; family characteristics; carbon pathways; sustainable design; urban infrastructure; carbon cycle
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Urban buildings stand as both a core source of carbon emissions and a key carrier of human settlements, and thus the sustainable development of the building sector has become a core issue. Guided by the carbon neutrality objective, the buildings sector faces pressing practical challenges: insufficient integration of advanced technologies, weak adaptability in low-carbon retrofits, inadequate precision in operational carbon management, and limited environmental resilience. To resolve these issues, there is an urgent requirement to systematically build a carbon neutrality pathway from a whole lifecycle perspective, which includes construction, operation and maintenance, and renovation and demolition. As the logical starting point and critical cornerstone of this endeavor, buildings design fosters synergy between buildings, urban energy networks, regional climates and ecological cycles to support cities’ carbon neutrality. Advancing design practice-research alignment for carbon neutrality further guides the building sector’s green transformation and holds practical value for sustainable urban development.
We sincerely invite you to contribute to the special issue Carbon-Neutral Pathways for Urban Building Design. This issue aims to systematically synthesize cutting-edge research in the field, focusing on core priorities such as carbon reduction at the design source and collaborative carbon mitigation across the whole lifecycle. It will highlight practical themes in sustainable urban renewal, including building retrofitting and upgrading, flexible energy regulation, resource recycling, and climate change adaptation. Additionally, it will address frontier trends such as renewable energy and energy storage integration, the recycling of C&D Waste, urban water-energy relationships, and responses to regional ecological cycles.
We warmly welcome submissions of original research papers, case studies, and systematic reviews in related areas. The scope of research may include, but is not limited to:
- Design strategies for building whole life cycles under the guidance of carbon-neutral pathways
- Low-carbon renewal, renovation and performance enhancement technologies for urban existing buildings
- Collaborative design of building energy systems for flexible operation and maintenance and energy storage integration
- Collaborative design of water-energy systems in low-carbon buildings for urban ecological cycle regulation
- Carbon-neutral potential assessment of circular buildings oriented by C&D Waste recycling
- Carbon reduction strategies for building water systems and resilient building design
Dr. Qinfeng Zhao
Dr. Weilun Chen
Dr. Xueyuan Zhao
Dr. Tian Wang
Prof. Dr. Xindong Wei
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 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
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. 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
- urban buildings
- carbon neutrality
- low-carbon design
- whole life cycle
- building design
- water-energy
- building energy systems
- circular buildings
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