Sustainable Buildings and Cities: Integrated Research on Smart Strategies for Renewal and Resilience

Dear Colleagues,

Urbanization and climate urgency demand innovative synergies between architectural intelligence and systemic urban resilience. This Special Issue explores how smart technologies, heritage-sensitive approaches, and ecological principles can reshape built environments. We seek interdisciplinary research addressing the following topics:

Smart Renewal: AI-driven retrofits, circular construction, and digital twins for adaptive reuse.

Resilient Systems: Climate-responsive buildings, urban metabolic networks, and cross-scale governance.

Temporal Balance: Blockchain-enabled heritage conservation, community-centric digital tools for inclusive renewal.

Contributions may span the following:

• Smart materials and self-healing building systems;
• Data-integrated urban regeneration frameworks;
• Low-carbon transitions in historic districts;
• Participatory platforms bridging rural–urban synergies;
• Policy innovations aligning building codes with smart city agendas.

We welcome multi-scale studies—from nanotechnology to regional planning—and methodologies including computational modeling, living labs, and socio-technical analyses. Submissions demonstrating actionable pathways where sustainability, technology, and cultural continuity co-evolve are particularly encouraged.

Shape the future of cities that remember, adapt, and thrive.

You may choose our Joint Special Issue in Urban Science.

Dr. Haibo Guo
Guest Editor

Bolun Zhao
Guest Editor Assistant
Affiliation: School of Architecture and Design, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China
Interests: smart city; thermal comfort; residential building; sustainable city; energy efficiency; overheating; traditional settlement; computational design

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 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

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.