Happiness and Quality of Life in a Sustainable Built Environment

Dear Colleagues,

At its heart, sustainability is about making virtuous change in the world, while resilient societies are those with happy and contented people. This Special Edition of Sustainability explores particular perspectives in reconciling and achieving these goals.

The built environment has a significant impact on individuals’ lifestyles and habits, ranging from the impacts of car use or, conversely, movement by bicycle or foot, to housing design and developments that generate segregated, for instance, gated communities, to those that support integration of diverse social, race, income, etc. groups. It is now understood that the built environment has a role to play in improving the sustainability of societies, including by reducing the carbon and other environmental impacts of the built environment, protecting and enhancing natural biodiversity and providing opportunities for low environmental impact living. However, unless these lower-impact lifestyles also improve the quality of life of those who adopt them, they may be short-lived and therefore not sustainable. Furthermore, for those engaged in the developments of our cities and buildings, there is an ethical imperative not only to ensure the safety of societies, but also to create physical frameworks and promote built environment-related processes that support just, physically and mentally healthy sustainable societies for the long term.

While mindful of the complexity and the wide-ranging scope of the fields of sustainability, quality of life and the built environment, this issue investigates and discusses the relationships between the three fields and the extent to which the built environment can or should aim to make a positive contribution to these spheres of human life. The issue invites disciplinary specific, multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary contributions, including but not limited to the fields of the built environment, transport, health, psychology, sociology and ethics.

Possible topics could include:

• Paths to sustainability;
• Visions of sustainability;
• Built environment and behaviour change;
• Built environment and nature;
• Built environment and happiness in an ethical society;
• Physical and mental wellbeing within a sustainable society;
• Sustainable happiness;
• Ethical practices in the built environment.

Dr. Paola Sassi
Mr. John Brennan
Dr. Mina Samangooei
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 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.