Sustainable Futures in the Built Environment to 2050

Preface

The inspiration for this book came through our increasing realisation that there was a deficit in current thinking about how not only the built environment, but also the real estate (or property), construction and development sectors could, and should, evolve now and into the future. As we sit at the cusp of a hugely important time for the world, both environmentally and politically, it is tempting to think that just solving the short‐term problems that we face is enough to soak up and even nullify our capacity to think and act. Yet this ignores the importance of the long‐term view and thinking about the sort of world we, and our children and grand‐children, want to inhabit in 2050 and beyond. In a sense, the importance of overcoming the disconnection that exists between relatively short‐term political and planning perspectives and longer‐term environmental change has never been greater. We strongly believe that futures thinking and foresight need to be part of this movement and change in our thinking.

The construction and development sectors matter because the built environment, or the buildings and hard infrastructure we see in our cities and urban areas, matter too. In our world, both construction and real estate play a big role in contributing to carbon emissions and resource depletion, but the deployment of new technologies, the emergence of new business and financial models, and changing professional roles in the built environment are also a vital means of ensuring ...