Improving Urban Environments: Strategies for Healthier and More Sustainable Cities

Book Preface

Environmental assessments have been developed with increasing emphasis since the wide-scale emergence of environmental concerns in the 1970s. However, after decades there is still plenty of room left for development. These assessments are also rapidly becoming more and more crucial as we seem to be reaching the boundaries of the carrying capacity of our planet. Assessments of the emissions from the built environment and especially of the interactions between human communities and  emissions are in a very central role in the quest to solve the great problem of sustainable living. Policymakers and professionals in various fields urgently need reliable data on the current conditions and realistic future projections, as well as robust and scientifically defensible models for decision making. This recognition was the main motivation to call for Chapter 1. This editorial provides brief summaries and discussions on the 16 articles of a Focus Issue, depicting the several interesting perspectives they offer to advance the state of the art. The authors encourage academics, practitioners, government, industry, individual consumers, and other decision makers to utilize the available findings and develop the domain of environmental assessment of the built environment further. Indeed, the authors hope that the Focus Issue is merely a kernel of a significantly large future body of literature.