•COVID-19 reduces the implicit price of metro accessibility.•The price elasticity of distance to the metro is −0.024 before COVID-19 but turns to −0.018 during the pandemic.•COVID-19 does not harm ...property prices in Chengdu.•This study points out an innovative and interesting research direction.
The metro (or underground railways) has become a backbone in the transit systems of many cities. It has numerous externalities, such as ameliorating traffic congestion and enhancing nearby property prices. Previous studies extensively focused on the relationship between metro accessibility and property prices and obtained various interesting findings and enriched practical implications. However, this relationship in the era of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and other epidemic shocks has not been investigated. Based on a unique property transaction dataset (including tens of thousands of transactions stretching from 2018 to 2020) in Chengdu, China, this study develops a battery of hedonic pricing models and difference-in-differences models to decipher the time-varying relationship between metro accessibility and residential property prices. The results show that the implicit price of metro accessibility modestly decreases in COVID-19, which can be explained by the declining role of the metro. In other words, the price gap between proximate and distant properties is narrowed, and the property price gradient is flattened. Specifically, the price elasticity of distance to the metro is − 0.024 before COVID-19, but it turns to − 0.018 during the pandemic. The relative price of properties within 500 m from metro stations to those farther away (500 m − 3 km) decreases by 15.4% during the pandemic. Additionally, COVID-19 does not jeopardize property prices in Chengdu. Furthermore, the decrease in metro access premiums may be short-lived and only persisted for several months or years. The plausibility and robustness of the core findings have been confirmed through alternative treatment groups, alternative model specifications, and placebo tests.
The Special Issue on “Human Factors in Green Building” addresses the design of indoor environment quality for users’ needs. The collected papers cover various building types and the research ...highlights the different needs of users. In working environments, employees’ stress is the main concern in the workplace design, especially for open plan offices where lack of privacy and over exposure to environmental stress have been reported. In residential environments, residents have great opportunities to adjust their environments to suit their needs; therefore, passive design such as natural ventilation is explored in residential buildings with climates such as cold or humid tropical. In healthcare environments, the papers in this issue are concerned with the needs of patients, especially the older adults who require special care. In learning environments, thermal and visual aspects are investigated for optimal comfort conditions and learning outcomes. The special issue demonstrates insightful critical thinking of indoor environment quality and proposes a new understanding for more practical design solutions. This editorial note is a brief review of the 12 papers, concluding with reflections about design of built environments to meet users’ needs.
The roofs of buildings play an essential role in energy efficiency because a significant amount of solar radiation is absorbed by roofs in hot weather and a significant amount of heat is lost through ...roofs in cold weather. This paper is a systematic literature review about roofing methods for flat roofs. Ten roofing methods are reviewed in this paper. They are concrete roof, cool roof, insulated roof, roof garden, photovoltaic panels’ roof, biosolar roof, double-skin roof, roof ponds, skylight roof, and wind catcher. The review covers each roof’s main features, heat flux reductions, payback periods, and the appropriate climate for its implementation. Furthermore, the basic principles for selecting appropriate roofing methods are discussed and future studies for integrating these roofing methods are suggested. Some of these methods can eliminate the need of installing HVAC (Heating Ventilation and Air-conditioning) systems and others can achieve a high percentage of heat reduction if they are the right choice and they are implemented in the right circumstances. An incorrect selection could result in mild to severe energy penalties. The review contributes to the increasing knowledge about sustainable roofing and helps designers to increase building energy efficiency by selecting the appropriate roofing method.
•A measurement of dynamic green space exposure based on individual moving trajectory was developed.•Constructed a research framework for the interactive analysis of static and dynamic green space ...exposure indices.•Users’ travel behavior patterns influenced their dynamic green space exposure.•Users in greener working environments have higher levels of dynamic green space exposure.•Accessibility of small-scale green space increases individual green space exposure.
Many studies have demonstrated the importance of green spaces in promoting human physical and mental health. However, traditional static green space assessment and planning methods with core indicators, such as green space ratio, cannot effectively assess an individual’s level of green space exposure. This study explores a method to calculate dynamic real-time green space exposure indices, such as total green space exposure level, green space exposure per unit time, and green space exposure per unit distance, and analyzes their relationship with static green space exposure indices measured using green space accessibility, availability, and visibility. A field study in a central business district in Shenzhen revealed that people whose workplaces had high levels of static green space exposure maintained relatively high levels of dynamic green space exposure. In addition, dynamic green space exposure was influenced by individuals’ green space usage behaviors and travel time preferences. This study built an interactive analysis framework for dynamic and static green space exposure based on individual behaviour.
The morphology of urban areas plays a crucial role in determining solar potential, which directly affects photovoltaic capacity and the achievement of net-zero outcomes. This study focuses on the ...City of Melbourne to investigate the utilization of solar energy across different urban densities and proposes optimized morphologies. The analysis encompasses blocks with diverse population densities, examining medium and high-density areas. By utilizing a multi-objective genetic optimization approach, the urban morphology of these blocks is refined. The findings indicate that low-density blocks exhibit photovoltaic potential ranging from 1 to 6.6 times their total energy consumption. Medium and high-density blocks achieve photovoltaic potential levels approximately equivalent to 40%–85% of their overall energy consumption. Moreover, significant variations in photovoltaic potential are observed among different urban forms within medium and high-density blocks. An “elevated corners with central valley” prototype is proposed as an effective approach, enhancing the overall photovoltaic potential by approximately 14%. This study introduces novel analytical concepts, shedding light on the intricate relationship between urban morphologies and photovoltaic potential.
This study presents a Quality of Life (QoL) survey to understand the influence of the housing environment and needs of residents from different housing sectors. The research focuses on Hong Kong ...where living conditions have become the main affect for people's QoL. Through a household survey using a standard instrument "Word Health Organisation (WHO) Quality of Life-BREF", the article found that among the four WHO QoL domains (Physical Health, Psychological Health, Social Relations And Environment), Environment, particularly its constitute aspect housing environment was the most influential factor for overall quality of life for the public rental housing sector where low-income people live. This research also found that different groups of people have differing needs of their housing environments: the low-income group needs better location and privacy while the medium and high-income groups need better architectural quality. Based on differentiating their needs and wants, this research argues for prioritizing the low-income group's needs for effectively improving their QoL.
•The mean energy use intensity decreased by 56.77 kWh/m², a plummet of 19.9%;•The impact on commercial buildings is: mixed development>retail>office>hotel;•Influential factors of energy consumption ...during COVID-19 were studied first time;•The study contributes to the improvement of energy management in commercial buildings.
Numerous studies have demonstrated that commercial activities have significantly reduced during COVID-19, while there are few studies disclosing the consequent impacts on the energy consumption of commercial buildings. This study explores the changes in energy consumption of different types of commercial buildings in Singapore under the impact of the pandemic, using commercial building energy performance data from 2017 to 2020 (n=540). The sampled buildings include 93 hotel buildings, 303 office buildings, 106 retail buildings, and 38 mixed developments. The analysis mainly used linear regression and paired sample t-test. The results showed that relative to 2019, the mean energy use intensity (EUI) of sampled commercial buildings decreased by 56.77 kWh/m² in the pandemic year (2020), a plunge of 19.9%. The extent to which the EUI of each type of commercial building is affected by the pandemic is found as: mixed development>retail>office>hotel. The study also identified the factors that significantly influenced the EUI of commercial buildings before and during the pandemic. The results of the study complement existing knowledge about the factors influencing energy consumption in commercial buildings by considering the impact of the pandemic and furthermore contribute to the improvement of energy management in commercial buildings by providing directions for building energy efficiency approaches.
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The health of office workers has become a major concern under the pressure of increasingly fierce job competition. As countries have gradually promoted healthy buildings, there is an urgent need to ...create and construct healthy office environments. Although the WELL Building Standard proposed management and design strategies based on the principles of health and medicine, it does not consider group characteristics or gender differences.
This study aims to apply the theory of planned behavior to healthy building design and supplement the important role of gender and group characteristics in behavioral guidance based on architectural strategies and user behaviors to improve the relevant building evaluation system.
This study adopted a questionnaire survey and structural equation model. Four WELL-certified healthy office buildings in Nanshan District, Shenzhen, were selected for the survey. Based on the theory of planned behavior, structural equation models for men and women were established, compared, and analyzed. The factors affecting the health behaviors of the two groups and the actual effectiveness of various building optimization strategies were discussed, and an optimization direction for gender differences was proposed.
The findings indicated differences between male and female staff in their individual characteristics and implementation of health behaviors. Management strategies, subjective design strategies in assistance and guidance, and objective design strategies in spatial planning can promote the health behaviors of the two groups. However, the design strategies of result feedback and detail optimization only appeared to have a significant positive effect on female staff, whereas the intelligent automation design strategies only had an obvious intervention effect on men's health behaviors.
This study found that the theory of planned behavior in the field of social psychology could be applied to relevant research on architectural design and emphasized the influence of gender. It can not only provide the optimization direction for the evaluation standards of relevant healthy buildings but also promote the implementation of health behaviors in office groups and provide new ideas for promoting the development of healthy buildings.
Ceiling fans have been promoted as an alternative cooling technique to save energy, while their adoptions in the residential sector have yet to be investigated. This study analysed the adoption of ...ceiling fans in residential buildings and compared their energy-saving potential with that of air-conditioning in Building Sustainability Index (BASIX) certificated single (n = 268,558) in New South Wales, Australia, from 2011 to 2019. Four climate zones were classified according to heating and cooling hours via k-means, based on which predictive models for the relationship between cooling technologies and energy-saving levels were established via machine learning. Dwellers in the hot zone of New South Wales would be more likely to adopt ceiling fans. In the living rooms, dwellers could adopt ceiling fans alone, while in bedrooms, dwellers could adopt air-conditioning in addition to ceiling fans. This study provides empirical evidence on the adoption of ceiling fans in green buildings and helps to map out the low carbon solutions using alternative cooling in the residential sector.
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