Enhancing Community Wellbeing: Innovations in Sustainable Urban Planning and Built Environments

Dear Colleagues,

Current buildings in use (comprising the largest segment of the built environment) are shown to be responsible for more than 40% of energy consumption and one-third of the global harmful emissions. Therefore, we must pay increasing attention to sustainable construction and renovation in the building sector. However, providing appropriate retrofit strategies is a vital issue as it not only saves energy and reduces CO₂ emissions from this sector but also considers occupants’ health and wellbeing.

However, broad thinking is required to address the energy wastage from buildings that require renovation. The focus is often placed on the technical aspects of the built environment, and the non-technical dimensions (social, economic, etc.), which are also important aspects in terms of sustainable development, tend to be disruptive. Hence, it is usually recommended to deal with retrofit at the neighbourhood scale (instead of single buildings) to make it more efficient in terms of environmental, social and economic sustainability.

Given the recent attention to the development of smart cities and following sustainable development goals as the agenda of smart cities, this Special Issue aims to collect the recent research and studies on innovative retrofit technologies in smart cities, on the building and neighborhood scales.

Submissions are encouraged on, but not limited to, the following general areas:

• Construction technologies supporting energy efficient and healthy buildings/neighbourhoods;
• Sustainable and healthy retrofit strategies;
• Building and neighbourhood performance and occupant wellbeing;
• Neighbourhood revitalisation plan and resident social and physical wellbeing;
• Resident engagements in retrofit plans in neighbourhoods;
• Smart buildings and neighbourhoods;
• Waste minimisation strategies during renovation.

Dr. Mina Jowkar
Dr. Nirodha Fernando
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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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. World is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly 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 1000 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.

• retrofit technology
• healthy building
• innovative renovation
• sustainable renovation
• occupant wellbeing
• building renovation
• neighborhood renovation