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Buildings
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Urban Sustainability: Sustainable Housing and Communities—2nd Edition
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Urban Sustainability: Sustainable Housing and Communities—2nd Edition

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: 31 December 2025 | Viewed by 443

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Daizhong Tang

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Economics and Management, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, China
Interests: urban development and management; urban renewal; land resource management; real estate investment and development; smart cities; operations management
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

As urbanization accelerates globally, the pursuit of sustainable housing and communities has emerged as a pivotal area of research. This domain encompasses environmental, social, and economic considerations to address the challenges posed by rapid urban growth. Sustainable housing and communities are crucial in fostering urban well-being, resource efficiency, and resilience. In the context of the stock development model, it is imperative to scrutinize communities and residences, as the fundamental units of urban fabric, to elucidate the interests at play in this multifaceted process and to establish scientific and effective policy frameworks that ensure the sustainable development of residences and communities, thereby enhancing the well-being of inhabitants. Against this backdrop, our SI aims to explore the scientific underpinnings of urban sustainability in the context of housing and communities, emphasizing the paramount importance of this research area. Several relevant studies have already been published in the first volume of this Special Issue [https://www.mdpi.com/journal/buildings/special_issues/797B24I1XI].

The goal of this Special Issue is to curate a collection of original research articles and review papers that offer comprehensive insights into sustainable housing and communities. This initiative aligns seamlessly with the broader scope of our journal as we seek to contribute cutting-edge research that advances our understanding of urban sustainability. Through the exploration of sustainable housing and community development, we aim to present valuable knowledge to inform urban planning, policy making, and sustainable practices.

This Special Issue invites manuscripts connected with the following themes:

  • Innovative approaches to sustainable housing design;
  • Community engagement for sustainable urban development;
  • Renewable energy integration in urban housing;
  • Smart technologies for sustainable communities;
  • Policy frameworks and governance for urban sustainability;
  • Green infrastructure and urban planning.

Dr. Daizhong Tang
Guest Editor

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 housing
  • community engagement
  • policy optimization
  • urban sustainability
  • smart cities
  • multi-subject participation
  • urban planning

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

24 pages, 5980 KiB  
Article
Performance Evaluation and Simulation Optimization of Outdoor Environmental Space in Communities Based on Subjective Comfort: A Case Study of Minhe Community in Qian’an City
by Yuefang Rong, Jian Song, Zhuofan Xu, Haoxi Lin, Jiakun Liu, Baiyi Yang and Shuhan Guo
Buildings 2025, 15(12), 2078; https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings15122078 - 17 Jun 2025
Viewed by 297
Abstract
With the continual expansion of global urbanization and population growth, urban energy demands have intensified, and anthropogenic activities have precipitated profound shifts in the global climate. These climatic changes directly alter urban environmental conditions, which in turn exert indirect effects on human physiological [...] Read more.
With the continual expansion of global urbanization and population growth, urban energy demands have intensified, and anthropogenic activities have precipitated profound shifts in the global climate. These climatic changes directly alter urban environmental conditions, which in turn exert indirect effects on human physiological function. Consequently, the comfort of outdoor community environments has emerged as a critical metric for assessing the quality of human habitation. Although existing studies have focused on improving singular environmental factors—such as wind or thermal comfort—they often lack an integrated, multi-factor coupling mechanism, and adaptive strategy systems tailored to hot-summer, cold-winter regions remain underdeveloped. This study examines the Minhe Community in Qian’an City to develop a performance evaluation framework for outdoor spaces grounded in subjective comfort and to close the loop from theoretical formulation to empirical validation via an interdisciplinary approach. We first synthesized 25 environmental factors across eight categories—including wind, thermal, and lighting parameters—and applied the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to establish factor weights, thereby constructing a comprehensive model that encompasses both physiological and psychological requirements. Field surveys, meteorological data collection, and ENVI-met (V5.1.1) microclimate simulations revealed pronounced issues in the community’s wind distribution, thermal comfort, and acoustic environment. In response, we proposed adaptive interventions—such as stratified vegetation design and permeable pavement installations—and validated their efficacy through further simulation. Post-optimization, the community’s overall comfort score increased from 4.64 to 5.62, corresponding to an efficiency improvement of 21.3%. The innovative contributions of this research are threefold: (1) transcending the limitations of single-factor analyses by establishing a multi-dimensional, coupled evaluation framework; (2) integrating AHP with ENVI-met simulation to realize a fully quantified “evaluation–simulation–optimization” workflow; and (3) proposing adaptive strategies with broad applicability for the retrofit of communities in hot-summer, cold-winter climates, thereby offering a practical technical pathway for urban microclimate enhancement. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Urban Sustainability: Sustainable Housing and Communities—2nd Edition)
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