Selected Papers From the CIB WBC 2025—Sustainable Development and the Built Environment: Legal Challenges and Opportunities
A special issue of Buildings (ISSN 2075-5309). This special issue belongs to the section "Construction Management, and Computers & Digitization".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 December 2025
Special Issue Editors
Interests: Infrastructure Planning; Risk Management and Decision-making; Disaster Risk Reduction; Profitability of Construction Companies; Built environment law; Construction Engineering and Management; Intelligent Planning Units
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: Human factors; human AI teaming; smart occupational safety; risk and decision making
Interests: construction law; building control; regulation
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
This Special Issue of Buildings invites contributions aligned with the CIB World Building Congress 2025, hosted at Purdue University. The Congress theme, “Sustainable built environment – the role of the construction community in meeting the UN SDGs”, offers an opportunity to explore interdisciplinary approaches to global challenges in construction and design as they relate to the sustainable built environment.
The Special Issue will focus on legal considerations for addressing SDGs in the built environment and ethical practice across the life cycle of buildings and infrastructure. We invite empirical, theoretical, and practice-based papers addressing social, environmental, legal implications, and the legal/contractual transformations required in the built environment to effectively address the SDGs. Contributions are particularly encouraged from participants of the CIB WBC 2025, as well as members of CIB Task Groups and Working Commissions.
The Special Issue welcomes original contributions from conference participants and broader academic and professional communities. Submissions should address the challenges and opportunities at the intersection of innovation, responsibility, ethics, law, and the Sustainable Development Goals in the built environment.
We welcome empirical studies, theoretical contributions, legal and policy analyses, case studies, and interdisciplinary research from across architecture, engineering, construction management, law, planning, and design fields.
Topics of interest include (but are not limited to) the following:
- Regulatory pathways to SDG compliance in urban development;
- Climate resilience and building codes: legal innovations and challenges;
- Human rights, housing law, and the right to a sustainable living environment;
- Circular economy and construction waste regulation;
- Green finance, eSg disclosure, and legal accountability in real estate development ;
- Litigation, enforcement, and the role of environmental courts in upholding SDG commitments
Prof. Dr. Makarand Hastak
Dr. Behzad Esmaeili
Dr. Andrew Agapiou
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
- Sustainable Construction Law
- Environmental Regulation
- Built Environment Governance
- Legal Barriers to Sustainability
- Climate-Responsive Policy
- Green Infrastructure Compliance
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