Journal of Sustainable Building Technology & Urban Development Spatial Quality Determinants for Residential Building RenovationA Methodological Approach to the Development of Spatial Quality Assessment Improved spatial quality contributes to the attractiveness and public image of a building, as well as to users' well-being. This article identifies spatial quality determinants that are affected by renovation in residential buildings. We performed a detailed assessment of changes in spatial quality due to mechanical installations in renovation. The article presents two main findings. First we identified common spatial quality determinants in the research literature: view, privacy, lighting, spatiality, spatial arrangements, the transition between public and private spaces, and perceived, built, and human densities. Second we found that the available assessment for the renovation of dwellings covers only partially the impact of mechanical installations on spatiality. We suggest, based on these findings, a general spatial quality checklist to support architects, developers, and building owners. We probed deeper into the impact of mechanical installations on the spatiality of dwellings to propose a spatial quality assessment to be considered before and after renovation. The proposed assessment represents a further step toward the inclusion of spatial quality in building renovation processes, which benefits stakeholders from design professionals to end users.

A main challenge in building carbon-neutral built environments is the ability to scale and replicate solutions. We examine how to develop low-carbon neighbourhoods and districts, while aiming at climate-friendly and sustainable livable urban environments. We take a view that not only scales up individual building solutions, but embraces the added complexities arising from the scale change and utilizes them for a novel approach. It includes a strong focus on co-creation and open innovation to develop sustainable solutions. In this contribution, we present the approach of the +CityxChange project in implementing Positive Energy Blocks (PEB) through a European H2020 project from the topic of Smart Cities and Communities. A PEB comprises several connected buildings that have a averaged yearly positive energy balance between them. This definition excludes embodied emissions, but allows to focus on the infrastructure and systems between buildings as part of the built environment, and ways to implement and incorporate them within existing cities. The +CityxChange approach relies on co-creating Europe-wide deployment of Positive Energy Districts, with Integrated Planning and Design, Creation of a Common Energy Market, and CommunityxChange with all stakeholders of the city.

Smart Cities denote a stronger integration of information technology into the organisation of a city and the interaction and participation of its citizens. In developing the concept further, we propose to understand Smart Cities through the lens of Social Machines and thus stronger focus on the city as a socio-technical construct. We draw from an interdisciplinary background of computer science and urban planning to reexamine and combine existing theories and find a common understanding. We substantiate our claim to the validity of the concept of Smart-City-as-a-Social-Machine with a thorough literature study and comparison. We discuss the resulting system complexity issues and ways to address them. We further propose areas where this understanding can be useful in furthering research on both the Smart City and the Social Machine topics.

In Europe, energy and climate policies started to take shape from the 1990s onwards culminating with the ambitious 20-20-20 climate goals and the Low Carbon Europe roadmap 2050. The European Commission empower the importance of achieving the objective of the recast Directive on energy performance of buildings (EPBD) that new buildings built from 2021 onwards will have to be nearly zero-energy buildings. The general belief is that the energy performance optimization of buildings requires an integrated design approach and crossdisciplinary teamwork to optimise the building's energy use and quality of indoor environment while satisfying the occupants' needs. In this context, there is a substantial need for professionals such as architects and engineers specifically trained and educated in integrated design approach and trained to work in crossdisciplinary teams. To be able to push forward the development, it is essential that educational institutions foster professionals with such knowledge, skills and competences. An initiative towards this direction is the EU project of IDES EDU: "Master and Post Graduate education and training in multidisciplinary teams". The paper describe the necessity of more integrated and cross-disciplinary approaches to building design through state-of-the-art of the building sector and educational initiatives in the participating countries in the project, and through theory of design processes. The paper also communicates the results of newly developed cross-disciplinary education established by fifteen different educational institutions in Europe. Finally, the paper explains and discusses the challenges encountered during development and implementation of the education across different professions and countries.

The Positive Energy District (PED) concept is a localized city and district level response to the challenges of greenhouse gas emission reduction and energy transition. With the Strategic Energy Transition (SET) Plan aiming to establish 100 PEDs by 2025 in Europe, a number of PED projects are emerging in the EU member states. While the energy transition is mainly focusing on technical innovations, social innovation is crucial to guarantee the uptake and deployment of PEDs in the built environment. We set the spotlight on Norway, which, to date, has three PED projects encompassing 12 PED demo sites in planning and early implementation stages, from which we extract approaches for social innovations and discuss how these learnings can contribute to further PED planning and implementation. We describe the respective approaches and learnings for social innovation of the three PED projects, ZEN, +CityxChange and syn.ikia, in a multiple case study approach. Through the comparison of these projects, we start to identify social innovation approaches with different scopes regarding citizen involvement, stakeholder interaction and capacity building. These insights are also expected to contribute to further planning and design of PED projects within local and regional networks (PEDs in Nordic countries) and contribute to international PED concept development.