ABSTRACTS DUE: 7 October 2022
FULL PAPERS DUE: 15 February 2023

Buildings & Cities is an international, open access, double-blind peer-reviewed research journal. Its focus is the interactions between buildings, neighbourhoods and cities by understanding their supporting social, economic and environmental systems.

The special issue "Understanding Demolition" will explore why demolition occurs with the aim to understand its environmental, socio-economic and cultural drivers, potentials and consequences, as well as policy and practices pertaining to avoiding demolition at different scales – supra-urban (country/region), urban (city/neighbourhood), building stock and building scale. How can planners and other stakeholders compare alternatives for densification without demolition i.e. by extending and infilling?

Key questions include:
• what drives the replacement of existing buildings with new ones?
• what are the wider environmental, economic, and socio-cultural impacts on the sustainability of cities?
• whether short-term financial gain is too privileged compared to other concerns?
• what policies and strategies are needed to support stewardship and extend service life?
• what methods / tools can help to assess the tradeoffs between retention/adaptation and demolition?

Submissions are welcomed that examine these phenomena in the different contexts of shrinking/growing communities. Contributions that explore the impacts of demolition from various viewpoints and multiple perspectives (urbanism, urban planning, obsolescence, resource efficiency, mass flows, embodied carbon, social value, etc.) are particularly welcome.

A suggested list of topics and more details can be found in the CFP here.