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A comprehensive review on green buildings research: bibliometric analysis during 1998–2018

• Environmental Concerns and Pollution control in the Context of Developing Countries
• Published: 16 February 2021
• Volume 28 , pages 46196–46214, ( 2021 )

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• Li Ying 1 , 2 ,
• Rong Yanyu   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-0722-8510 1 , 3 ,
• Umme Marium Ahmad 1 ,
• Wang Xiaotong 1 , 3 ,
• Zuo Jian 4 &
• Mao Guozhu 1 , 3  

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Buildings account for nearly 2/5ths of global energy expenditure. Due to this figure, the 90s witnessed the rise of green buildings (GBs) that were designed with the purpose of lowering the demand for energy, water, and materials resources while enhancing environmental protection efforts and human well-being over time. This paper examines recent studies and technologies related to the design, construction, and overall operation of GBs and determines potential future research directions in this area of study. This global review of green building development in the last two decades is conducted through bibliometric analysis on the Web of Science, via the Science Citation Index and Social Sciences Citation Index databases. Publication performance, countries’ characteristics, and identification of key areas of green building development and popular technologies were conducted via social network analysis, big data method, and S-curve predictions. A total of 5246 articles were evaluated on the basis of subject categories, journals’ performance, general publication outputs, and other publication characteristics. Further analysis was made on dominant issues through keyword co-occurrence, green building technologies by patent analysis, and S-curve predictions. The USA, China, and the UK are ranked the top three countries where the majority of publications come from. Australia and China had the closest relationship in the global network cooperation. Global trends of the top 5 countries showed different country characteristics. China had a steady and consistent growth in green building publications each year. The total publications on different cities had a high correlation with cities’ GDP by Baidu Search Index. Also, barriers and contradictions such as cost, occupant comfort, and energy consumption were discussed in developed and developing countries. Green buildings, sustainability, and energy efficiency were the top three hotspots identified through the whole research period by the cluster analysis. Additionally, green building energy technologies, including building structures, materials, and energy systems, were the most prevalent technologies of interest determined by the Derwent Innovations Index prediction analysis. This review reveals hotspots and emerging trends in green building research and development and suggests routes for future research. Bibliometric analysis, combined with other useful tools, can quantitatively measure research activities from the past and present, thus bridging the historical gap and predicting the future of green building development.

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Introduction

Rapid urban development has resulted in buildings becoming a massive consumer of energy (Yuan et al. 2013 ), liable for 39% of global energy expenditure and 68% of total electricity consumption in the USA (building). In recent years, green buildings (GBs) have become an alternative solution, rousing widespread attention. Also referred to as sustainable buildings, low energy buildings, and eco-buildings, GBs are designed to reduce the strain on environmental resources as well as curb negative effects on human health by efficiently using natural resources, reducing garbage, and ensuring the residents’ well-being through improved living conditions ( Agency USEP Indoor Air Quality ; Building, n.d ). As a strategy to improve the sustainability of the construction industry, GBs have been widely recognized by governments globally, as a necessary step towards a sustainable construction industry (Shen et al. 2017 ).

Zuo and Zhao ( 2014 ) reviewed the current research status and future development direction of GBs, focusing on connotation and research scope, the benefit-difference between GBs and traditional buildings, and various ways to achieve green building development. Zhao et al. ( 2019 ) presented a bibliometric report of studies on GBs between 2000 and 2016, identifying hot research topics and knowledge gaps. The verification of the true performance of sustainable buildings, the application of ICT, health and safety hazards in the development of green projects, and the corporate social responsibility were detected as future agenda. A scientometrics review of research papers on GB sources from 14 architectural journals between 1992 and 2018 was also presented (Wuni et al. 2019a ). The study reported that 44% of the world participated in research focusing on green building implementation; stakeholder management; attitude assessment; regulations and policies; energy efficiency assessment; sustainability performance assessment; green building certification, etc.

With the transmission of the COVID-19 virus, society is now aware of the importance of healthy buildings. In fact, in the past 20 years, the relationship between the built environment and health has aroused increasing research interest in the field of building science. Public spaces and dispersion of buildings in mixed-use neighborhoods are promoted. Furthermore, telecommuting has become a trend since the COVID-19 pandemic, making indoor air quality even more important in buildings, now (Fezi 2020 ).

The system for evaluating the sustainability of buildings has been established for nearly two decades. But, systems dedicated to identifying whether buildings are healthy have only recently appeared (McArthur and Powell 2020 ). People are paying more and more attention to health factors in the built environment. This is reflected in the substantial increase in related academic papers and the increase in health building certification systems such as WELE and Fitwel (McArthur and Powell 2020 ).

Taking the above into consideration, the aim of this study is to examine the stages of development of GBs worldwide and find the barriers and the hotpots in global trends. This study may be beneficial to foreign governments interested in promoting green building and research in their own nations.

Methodology

Overall description of research design.

Since it is difficult to investigate historical data and predict global trends of GBs, literature research was conducted to analyze their development. The number of published reports on a topic in a particular country may influence the level of industrial development in that certain area (Zhang et al. 2017 ). The bibliometric analysis allows for a quantitative assessment of the development and advancement of research related to GBs and where they are from. Furthermore, it has been shown that useful data has been gathered through bibliometrics and patent analysis (Daim et al. 2006 ).

In this report, the bibliometric method, social network analysis (SNA), CiteSpace, big data method, patent analysis, and S-curve analysis are used to assess data.

Bibliometrics analysis

Bibliometrics, a class of scientometrics, is a tool developed in 1969 for library and information science. It has since been adopted by other fields of study that require a quantitative assessment of academic articles to determine trends and predict future research scenarios by compiling output and type of publication, title, keyword, author, institution, and countries data (Ho 2008 ; Li et al. 2017 ).

Social network analysis

Social network analysis (SNA) is applied to studies by modeling network maps using mathematics and statistics (Mclinden 2013 ; Ye et al. 2013 ). In the SNA, nodes represent social actors, while connections between actors stand for their relationships (Zhang et al. 2017 ). Correlations between two actors are determined by their distance from each other. There is a variety of software for the visualization of SNA such as Gephi, Vosviewer, and Pajek. In this research, “Pajek” was used to model the sequence of and relationships between the objects in the map (Du et al. 2015 ).

CiteSpace is an open-source Java application that maps and analyzes trends in publication statistics gathered from the ISI-Thomson Reuters Scientific database and produces graphic representations of this data (Chen 2006 ; Li et al. 2017 ). Among its many functions, it can determine critical moments in the evolution of research in a particular field, find patterns and hotspots, locate areas of rapid growth, and breakdown the network into categorized clusters (Chen 2006 ).

Big data method

The big data method, with its 3V characters (volume, velocity, and variety), can give useful and accurate information. Enormous amounts of data, which could not be collected or computed manually through conventional methods, can now be collected through public data website. Based on large databases and machine learning, the big data method can be used to design, operate, and evaluate energy efficiency and other index combined with other technologies (Mehmood et al. 2019 ). The primary benefit of big data is that the data is gathered from entire populations as opposed to a small sample of people (Chen et al. 2018 ; Ho 2008 ). It has been widely used in many research areas. In this research, we use the “Baidu Index” to form a general idea of the trends in specific areas based on user interests. The popularity of the keywords could imply the user’s behavior, user’s demand, user’s portrait, etc. Thus, we can analyze the products or events to help with developing strategies. However, it must be noted that although big data can quantitatively represent human behavior, it cannot determine what motivates it. With the convergence of big data and technology, there are unprecedented applications in the field of green building for the improved indoor living environment and controlled energy consumption (Marinakis 2020 ).

• Patent analysis

Bibliometrics, combined with patent analysis, bridges gaps that may exist in historical data when predicting future technologies (Daim et al. 2006 ). It is a trusted form of technical analysis as it is supported by abundant sources and commercial awareness of patents (Guozhu et al. 2018 ; Yoon and Park 2004 ). Therefore, we used patent analysis from the Derwent patent database to conduct an initial analysis and forecast GB technologies.

There are a variety of methods to predict the future development prospects of a technology. Since many technologies are developed in accordance with the S-curve trend, researchers use the S-curve to observe and predict the future trend of technologies (Bengisu and Nekhili 2006 ; Du et al. 2019 ; Liu and Wang 2010 ). The evolution of technical systems generally goes through four stages: emerging, growth, maturity, and decay (saturation) (Ernst 1997 ). We use the logistics model (performed in Loglet Lab 4 software developed by Rockefeller University) to simulate the S-curve of GB-related patents to predict its future development space.

Data collection

The Web of Science (WOS) core collection database is made up of trustworthy and highly ranked journals. It is considered the leading data portal for publications in many fields (Pouris and Pouris 2011 ). Furthermore, the WOS has been cited as the main data source in many recent bibliometric reviews on buildings (Li et al. 2017 ).

Access to all publications used in this paper was attained through the Science Citation Index-Expanded and the Social Sciences Citation Index databases. Because there is no relevant data in WOS before 1998, our examination focuses on 1998 to 2018. With consideration of synonyms, we set a series of green building-related words (see Appendix ) in titles, abstracts, and keywords for bibliometric analysis. For example, sustainable, low energy, zero energy, and low carbon can be substituted for green; housing, construction, and architecture can be a substitute for building (Zuo and Zhao 2014 ).

Analytical procedure

The study was conducted in three stages; data extraction was the first step where all the GB-related words were screened in WOS. Afterwards, some initial analysis was done to get a complete idea of GB research. Then, we made a further analysis on countries’ characteristics, dominant issues, and detected technology hotspots via patent analysis (Fig. 1 ).

Analytical procedure of the article

Results and analysis

General results.

Of the 6140 publications searched in the database, 88.67% were articles, followed by reviews (6.80%), papers (3.72%), and others (such as editorial materials, news, book reviews). Most articles were written in English (96.78%), followed by German (1.77%), Spanish (0.91%), and other European languages. Therefore, we will only make a further analysis of the types of articles in English publications.

The subject categories and their distribution

The SCI-E and SSCI database determined 155 subjects from the pool of 5246 articles reviewed, such as building technology, energy and fuels, civil engineering, environmental, material science, and thermodynamics, which suggests green building is a cross-disciplinary area of research. The top 3 research areas of green buildings are Construction & Building Technology (36.98%), Energy & Fuels (30.39%), and Engineering Civil (29.49%), which account for over half of the total categories.

The journals’ performance

The top 10 journals contained 38.8% of the 5246 publications, and the distribution of their publications is shown in Fig. 2 . Impact factors qualitatively indicate the standard of journals, the research papers they publish, and researchers associated with those papers (Huibin et al. 2015 ). Below, we used 2017 impact factors in Journal Citation Reports (JCR) to determine the journal standards.

The performance of top10 most productive journals

Publications on green building have appeared in a variety of titles, including energy, building, environment, materials, sustainability, indoor built environment, and thermal engineering. Energy and Buildings, with its impact factor 4.457, was the most productive journal apparently from 2009 to 2017. Sustainability (IF = 2.075) and Journal of Cleaner Production (IF = 5.651) rose to significance rapidly since 2015 and ranked top two journals in 2018.

Publication output

The total publication trends from 1998 to 2018 are shown in Fig. 3 , which shows a staggering increase across the 10 years. Since there was no relevant data before 1998, the starting year is 1998. Before 2004, the number of articles published per year fluctuated. The increasing rate reached 75% and 68% in 2004 and 2007, respectively, which are distinguished in Fig. 3 that leads us to believe that there are internal forces at work, such as appropriate policy creation and enforcement by concerned governments. There was a constant and steady growth in publications after 2007 in the worldwide view.

The number of articles published yearly, between 1998 and 2018

The characteristics of the countries

Global distribution and global network were analyzed to illustrate countries’ characteristics. Many tools such as ArcGIS, Bibexcel, Pajek, and Baidu index were used in this part (Fig. 4 ).

Analysis procedure of countries’ characteristics

Global distribution of publications

By extracting the authors’ addresses (Mao et al. 2015 ), the number of publications from each place was shown in Fig. 5 and Table 1 . Apparently, the USA was the most productive country accounting for 14.98% of all the publications. China (including Hong Kong and Taiwan) and the UK followed next by 13.29% and 8.27% separately. European countries such as Italy, Spain, and Germany also did a lot of work on green building development.

Global geographical distribution of the top 20 publications based on authors’ locations

Global research network

Global networks illustrate cooperation between countries through the analysis of social networks. Academic partnerships among the 10 most productive countries are shown in Fig. 6 . Collaboration is determined by the affiliation of the co-authors, and if a publication is a collaborative research, all countries or institutions will benefit from it (Bozeman et al. 2013 ). Every node denotes a country and their size indicates the amount of publications from that country. The lines linking the nodes denote relationships between countries and their thickness indicates the level of collaboration (Mao et al. 2015 ).

The top 10 most productive countries had close academic collaborative relationships

It was obvious that China and Australia had the strongest linking strength. Secondly, China and the USA, China, and the UK also had close cooperation with each other. Then, the USA with Canada and South Korea followed. The results indicated that cooperation in green building research was worldwide. At the same time, such partnerships could help countries increase individual productivity.

Global trend of publications

The time-trend analysis of academic inputs to green building from the most active countries is shown in Fig. 7 .

The publication trends of the top five countriesbetween 1998 and 2018 countries areshown in Fig 7 .

Before 2007, these countries showed little growth per year. However, they have had a different, growing trend since 2007. The USA had the greatest proportion of publications from 2007, which rose obviously each year, reaching its peak in 2016 then declined. The number of articles from China was at 13 in 2007, close to the USA. Afterwards, there was a steady growth in China. Not until 2013 did China have a quick rise from 41 publications to 171 in 2018. The UK and Italy had a similar growth trend before 2016 but declined in the last 2 years.

Further analysis on China, the USA, and the UK

Green building development in china, policy implementation in china.

Green building design started in China with the primary goal of energy conservation. In September 2004, the award of “national green building innovation” of the Ministry of Construction was launched, which kicked off the substantive development of GB in China. As we can see from Fig. 7 , there were few publications before 2004 in China. In 2004, there were only 4 publications on GB.

The Ministry of Construction, along with the Ministry of Science and Technology, in 2005, published “The Technical Guidelines for Green Buildings,” proposing the development of GBs (Zhang et al. 2018 ). In June 2006, China had implemented the first “Evaluation Standard for Green Building” (GB/T 50378-2006), which promoted the study of the green building field. In 2007, the demonstration of “100 projects of green building and 100 projects of low-energy building” was launched. In August 2007, the Ministry of Construction issued the “Green Building Assessment Technical Regulations (try out)” and the “Green Building Evaluation Management,” following Beijing, Tianjin, Chongqing, and Shanghai, more than 20 provinces and cities issued the local green building standards, which promoted GBs in large areas in China.

At the beginning of 2013, the State Council issued the “Green Building Action Plan,” so the governments at all levels continuously issued incentive policies for the development of green buildings (Ye et al. 2015 ). The number of certified green buildings has shown a blowout growth trend throughout the country, which implied that China had arrived at a new chapter of development.

In August 2016, the Evaluation Standard for Green Renovation of Existing Buildings was released, encouraging the rise of residential GB research. Retrofitting an existing building is often more cost-effective than building a new facility. Designing significant renovations and alterations to existing buildings, including sustainability measures, will reduce operating costs and environmental impacts and improve the building’s adaptability, durability, and resilience.

At the same time, a number of green ecological urban areas have emerged (Zhang et al. 2018 ). For instance, the Sino-Singapore Tianjin eco-city is a major collaborative project between the two governments. Located in the north of Tianjin Binhai New Area, the eco-city is characterized by salinization of land, lack of freshwater, and serious pollution, which can highlight the importance of eco-city construction. The construction of eco-cities has changed the way cities develop and has provided a demonstration of similar areas.

China has many emerging areas and old centers, so erecting new, energy efficiency buildings and refurbishing existing buildings are the best steps towards saving energy.

Baidu Search Index of “green building”

In order to know the difference in performance among cities in China, this study employs the big data method “Baidu Index” for a smart diagnosis and assessment on green building at finer levels. “Baidu Index” is not equal to the number of searches but is positively related to the number of searches, which is calculated by the statistical model. Based on the keyword search of “green building” in the Baidu Index from 2013 to 2018, the top 10 provinces or cities were identified (Fig. 8 ).

Baidu Search Index of green building in China 2013–2018 from high to low

The top 10 search index distributes the east part and middle part of China, most of which are the high GDP provinces (Fig. 9 ). Economically developed cities in China already have a relatively mature green building market. Many green building projects with local characteristics have been established (Zhang et al. 2018 ).

TP GDP & Search Index were highly related

We compared the city search index (2013–2018) with the total publications of different cities by the authors’ address and the GDP in 2018. The correlation coefficient between the TP and the search index was 0.9, which means the two variables are highly related. The correlation coefficient between the TP and GDP was 0.73, which also represented a strong relationship. We inferred that cities with higher GDP had more intention of implementation on green buildings. The stronger the local GDP, the more relevant the economic policies that can be implemented to stimulate the development of green buildings (Hong et al. 2017 ). Local economic status (Yang et al. 2018 ), property developer’s ability, and effective government financial incentives are the three most critical factors for green building implementation (Huang et al. 2018 ). However, Wang et al. ( 2017 ) compared the existing green building design standards and found that they rarely consider the regional economy. Aiming at cities at different economic development phases, the green building design standards for sustainable construction can effectively promote the implementation of green buildings. Liu et al. ( 2020 ) mainly discussed the impact of sustainable construction on GDP. According to the data, there is a strong correlation between the percentage of GDP increments in China and the amount of sustainable infrastructure (Liu et al. 2020 ). The construction of infrastructure can create jobs and improve people’s living standards, increasing GDP as a result (Liu et al. 2020 ).

Green building development in the USA and the UK

The sign that GBs were about to take-off occurred in 1993—the formation of the United States Green Building Council (USGBC), an independent agency. The promulgation of the Energy Policy Act 2005 in the USA was the key point in the development of GBs. The Energy Policy Act 2005 paid great attention to green building energy saving, which also inspired publications on GBs.

Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), a popular metric for sustainable buildings and homes (Jalaei and Jrade 2015 ), has become a thriving business model for green building development. It is a widely used measure of how buildings affect the environment.

Another phenomenon worth discussion, combined with Fig. 7 , the increasing rate peaked at 75% in 2004 and 68% in 2007 while the publications of the UK reached the peak in 2004 and 2007. The UK Green Building Council (UKGBC), a United Kingdom membership organization, created in 2007 with regard to the 2004 Sustainable Building Task Group Report: Better Buildings - Better Lives, intends to “radically transform,” all facets of current and future built environment in the UK. It is predicted that the establishment of the UKGBC promoted research on green buildings.

From the China, the USA, and the UK experience, it is predicted that the foundation of a GB council or the particular projects from the government will promote research in this area.

Barriers and contradicts of green building implement

On the other hand, it is obvious that the USA, the UK, and Italian publications have been declining since 2016. There might be some barriers and contradicts on the adoption of green buildings for developed countries. Some articles studied the different barriers to green building in developed and developing countries (Chan et al. 2018 ) (Table 2 ). Because the fraction of energy end-uses is different, the concerns for GBs in the USA, China, and the European Union are also different (Cao et al. 2016 ).

It is regarded that higher cost is the most deterring barrier to GB development across the globe (Nguyen et al. 2017 ). Other aspects such as lack of market demand and knowledge were also main considerations of green building implementation.

As for market demand, occupant satisfaction is an important factor. Numerous GB post-occupancy investigations on occupant satisfaction in various communities have been conducted.

Paul and Taylor ( 2008 ) surveyed personnel ratings of their work environment with regard to ambience, tranquility, lighting, sound, ventilation, heat, humidity, and overall satisfaction. Personnel working in GBs and traditional buildings did not differ in these assessments. Khoshbakht et al. ( 2018 ) identified two global contexts in spite of the inconclusiveness: in the west (mainly the USA and Britain), users experienced no significant differences in satisfaction between green and traditional buildings, whereas, in the east (mainly China and South Korea), GB user satisfaction is significantly higher than traditional building users.

Dominant issues

The dominant issues on different stages.

Bibliometric data was imported to CiteSpace where a three-stage analysis was conducted based on development trends: 1998–2007 initial development; 2008–2015 quick development; 2016–2018 differentiation phase (Fig. 10 ).

Analysis procedure of dominant issues

CiteSpace was used for word frequency and co-word analysis. The basic principle of co-word analysis is to count a group of words appearing at the same time in a document and measure the close relationship between them by the number of co-occurrences. The top 50 levels of most cited or occurred items from each slice (1998 to 2007; 2008 to 2015; 2016 to 2018) per year were selected. After merging the similar words (singular or plural form), the final keyword knowledge maps were generated as follows.

Initial phase (1998–2007)

In the early stage (Fig. 11 ), “green building” and “sustainability” were the main two clusters. Economics and “environmental assessment method” both had high betweenness centrality of 0.34 which were identified as pivotal points. Purple rings denote pivotal points in the network. The relationships in GB were simple at the initial stage of development.

Co-word analysis from 1998–2007

Sustainable construction is further enabled with tools that can evaluate the entire life cycle, site preparation and management, materials and their reusability, and the reduction of resource and energy consumption. Environmental building assessment methods were incorporated to achieve sustainable development, especially at the initial project appraisal stage (Ding 2008 ). Green Building Challenge (GBC) is an exceptional international research, development, and dissemination effort for developing building environmental performance assessments, primarily to help researchers and practitioners in dealing with difficult obstacles in assessing performance (Todd et al. 2001 ).

Quick development (2008–2015)

In the rapid growing stage (Fig. 12 ), pivot nodes and cluster centers were more complicated. Besides “green building” and “sustainability,” “energy efficiency” was the third hotspot word. The emergence of new vocabulary in the keyword network indicated that the research had made progress during 2008 – 2015. Energy performance, energy consumption, natural ventilation, thermal comfort, renewable energy, and embodied energy were all energy related. Energy becomes the most attractive field in achieving sustainability and green building. Other aspects such as “life cycle assessment,” “LEED,” and “thermal comfort” became attractive to researchers.

Co-word analysis from 2008–2015

The life cycle assessment (LCA) is a popular technique for the analysis of the technical side of GBs. LCA was developed from environmental assessment and economic analysis which could be a useful method to evaluate building energy efficiency from production and use to end-use (Chwieduk 2003 ). Much attention has been paid to LCA because people began to focus more on the actual performance of the GBs. Essentially, LCA simplifies buildings into systems, monitoring, and calculating mass flow and energy consumption over different stages in their life cycle.

Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) was founded by the USGBC and began in the early twenty-first century (Doan et al. 2017 ). LEED is a not-for-profit project based on consumer demand and consensus that offers an impartial GB certification. LEED is the preferred building rating tool globally, with its shares growing rapidly. Meanwhile, UK’s Building Research Establishment Assessment Method (BREEAM) and Japan’s Comprehensive Assessment System for Building Environmental Efficiency (CASBEE) have been in use since the beginning of the twenty-first century, while New Zealand’s Green Star is still in its earlier stages. GBs around the world are made to suit regional climate concerns and need.

In practice, not all certified green buildings are necessarily performing well. Newsham et al. ( 2009 ) gathered energy-use information from 100 LEED-certified non-residential buildings. Results indicated that 28–35% of LEED structures actually consumed higher amounts of energy than the non-LEED structures. There was little connection in its actual energy consumption to its certification grade, meaning that further improvements are required for establishing a comprehensive GB rating metric to ensure consistent performance standards.

Thermal comfort was related to many aspects, such as materials, design scheme, monitoring system, and human behaviors. Materials have been a focus area for improving thermal comfort and reducing energy consumption. Wall (Schossig et al. 2005 ), floor (Ansuini et al. 2011 ), ceiling (Hu et al. 2018 ), window, and shading structures (Shen and Li 2016 ) were building envelopes which had been paid attention to over the years. Windows were important envelopes to improve thermal comfort. For existing and new buildings, rational use of windows and shading structures can enhance the ambient conditions of buildings (Mcleod et al. 2013 ). It was found that redesigning windows could reduce the air temperature by 2.5% (Elshafei et al. 2017 ), thus improving thermal comfort through passive features and reducing the use of active air conditioners (Perez-Fargallo et al. 2018 ). The monitoring of air conditioners’ performance could also prevent overheating of buildings (Ruellan and Park 2016 ).

Differentiation phase (2016–2018)

In the years from 2016 to 2018 (Fig. 13 ), “green building,” ”sustainability,” and “energy efficiency” were still the top three hotspots in GB research.

Co-word analysis from 2016–2018

Zero-energy building (ZEB) became a substitute for low energy building in this stage. ZEB was first introduced in 2000 (Cao et al. 2016 ) and was believed to be the solution to the potential ramifications of future energy consumption by buildings (Liu et al. 2019 ). The EU has been using ZEB standards in all of its new building development projects to date (Communuties 2002 ). The USA passed the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, aiming for zero net energy consumption of 1 out of every 2 commercial buildings that are yet to be built by 2040 and for all by 2050 (Sartori et al. 2012 ). Energy consumption became the most important factor in new building construction.

Renewable energy was a key element of sustainable development for mankind and nature (Zhang et al. 2013 ). Using renewable energy was an important feature of ZEBs (Cao et al. 2016 ; Pulselli et al. 2007 ). Renewable energy, in the form of solar, wind, geothermal, clean bioenergy, and marine can be used in GBs. Solar energy has been widely used in recent years while wind energy is used locally because of its randomness and unpredictable features. Geothermal energy is mainly utilized by ground source heat pump (GSHP), which has been lauded as a powerful energy system for buildings (Cao et al. 2016 ). Bioenergy has gained much popularity as an alternative source of energy around the globe because it is more stable and accessible than other forms of energy (Zhang et al. 2015 ). There is relatively little use of marine energy, yet this may potentially change depending on future technological developments (Ellabban et al. 2014 ).

Residential buildings receive more attention because people spend 90% of their time inside. Contrary to popular belief, the concentration of contaminants found indoors is more than the concentration outside, sometimes up to 10 times or even 100 times more (agency). The renovation of existing buildings can save energy, upgrade thermal comfort, and improve people’s living conditions.

Energy is a substantial and widely recognized cost of building operations that can be reduced through energy-saving and green building design. Nevertheless, a consensus has been reached by academics and those in building-related fields that GBs are significantly more energy efficient than traditional buildings if designed, constructed, and operated with meticulousness (Wuni et al. 2019b ). The drive to reduce energy consumption from buildings has acted as a catalyst in developing new technologies.

Compared with the article analysis, patents can better reflect the practical technological application to a certain extent. We extracted the information of green building energy-related patent records between 1998 and 2018 from the Derwent Innovations Index database. The development of a technique follows a path: precursor–invention–development–maturity. This is commonly known as an S-type growth (Mao et al. 2018 ). Two thousand six hundred thirty-eight patents were found which were classified into “Derwent Manual Code,” which is the most distinct feature just like “keywords” in the Derwent Innovations Index. Manual codes refer to specific inventions, technological innovations, and unique codes for their applications. According to the top 20 Derwent Manual Code which accounted for more than 80% of the total patents, we classified the hotspots patents into three fields for further S-curve analysis, which are “structure,” “material,” and “energy systems” (Table 3 ).

Sustainable structural design (SSD) has gained a lot of research attention from 2006 to 2016 (Pongiglione and Calderini 2016 ). The S-curve of structure* (Fig. 14 ) has just entered the later period of the growth stage, accounting for 50% of the total saturation in 2018. Due to its effectiveness and impact, SSD has overtime gained recognition and is now considered by experts to be a prominent tool in attaining sustainability goals (Pongiglione and Calderini 2016 ).

The S-curves of different Structure types from patents

Passive design is important in energy saving which is achieved by appropriately orientating buildings and carefully designing the building envelope. Building envelopes, which are key parts of the energy exchange between the building and the external environment, include walls, roofs, windows, and floors. The EU increased the efficiency of its heat-regulating systems by revamping building envelopes as a primary energy-saving task during 2006 to 2016 (Cao et al. 2016 ).

We analyzed the building envelope separately. According to the S-curve (Fig. 14 ), the number of patents related to GB envelops are in the growth stage. At present, building envelops such as walls, roofs, windows, and even doors have not reached 50% of the saturated quantity. Walls and roofs are two of the most important building envelops. The patent contents of walls mainly include wall materials and manufacturing methods, modular wall components, and wall coatings while technologies about roofs mainly focus on roof materials, the combination of roof and solar energy, and roof structures. Green roofs are relatively new sustainable construction systems because of its esthetic and environmental benefits (Wei et al. 2015 ).

The material resources used in the building industry consume massive quantities of natural and energy resources consumptions (Wang et al. 2018 ). The energy-saving building material is economical and environmentally friendly, has low coefficient heat conductivity, fast curing speed, high production efficacy, wide raw material source and flame, and wear resistance properties (Zhang et al. 2014 ). Honeycomb structures were used for insulating sustainable buildings. They are lightweight and conserve energy making them eco-friendly and ideal for construction (Miao et al. 2011 ).

According to the S-curve (Fig. 15 ), it can be seen that the number of patents on the GB “material” is in the growth stage. It is expected that the number of patents will reach 50% of the total saturation in 2022.

The S-curves of a different material from patents

Building material popularly used comprised of cement, concrete, gypsum, mortar compositions, and boards. Cement is widely used in building material because of its easy availability, strong hardness, excellent waterproof and fireproof performance, and low cost. The S-curve of cement is in the later period of the growth stage, which will reach 90% of the total saturation in 2028. Composite materials like Bamcrete (bamboo-concrete composite) and natural local materials like Rammed Earth had better thermal performance compared with energy-intensive materials like bricks and cement (Kandya and Mohan 2018 ). Novel bricks synthesized from fly ash and coal gangue have better advantages of energy saving in brick production phases compared with that of conventional types of bricks (Zhang et al. 2014 ). For other materials like gypsum or mortar, the numbers of patents are not enough for S-curve analysis. New-type green building materials offer an alternative way to realize energy-saving for sustainable constructions.

Energy system

The energy system mainly included a heating system and ventilation system according to the patent analysis. So, we analyzed solar power systems and air conditioning systems separately. Heat* included heat collecting panels and a fluid heating system.

The results indicated that heat*-, solar-, and ventilation-related technologies were in the growth stage which would reach 50% of the total saturation in 2022 (Fig. 16 ). Photovoltaic technology is of great importance in solar energy application (Khan and Arsalan 2016 ).

The S-curves of energy systems from patents

On the contrary, air conditioning technologies had entered into the mature stage after a decade of development. It is worth mentioning that the design of the fresh air system of buildings after the COVID-19 outbreak is much more important. With people spending the majority of their time inside (Liu et al. 2019 ), volatile organic compounds, formaldehyde, and carbon dioxide received the most attention worldwide (Wei et al. 2015 ). Due to health problems like sick building syndrome, and more recently since the COVID-19 outbreak, the supply of fresh air can drastically ameliorate indoor air quality (IAQ) (Liu et al. 2019 ). Regulating emissions from materials, enhanced ventilation, and monitoring air indoors are the main methods used in GBs for maintaining IAQ (Wei et al. 2015 ). Air circulation frequency and improved air filtration can reduce the risk of spreading certain diseases, while controlling the airflow between rooms can also prevent cross-infections. Poor indoor air quality and ventilation provide ideal conditions for the breeding and spreading of viruses by air (Chen et al. 2019 ). A diverse range of air filters coupled with a fresh air supply system should be studied. A crucial step forward is to create a cost-effective, energy-efficient, intelligent fresh air supply system (Liu et al. 2017 ) to monitor, filter outdoor PM2.5 (Chen et al. 2017 ), and saving building energy (Liu and Liu 2005 ). Earth-air heat exchanger system (EAHE) is a novel technology that supplies fresh air using underground soil heat (Chen et al. 2019 ).

A total of 5246 journal articles in English from the SCI and SSCI databases published in 1998–2018 were reviewed and analyzed. The study revealed that the literature on green buildings has grown rapidly over the past 20 years. The findings and results are summarized:

Data analysis revealed that GB research is distributed across various subject categories. Energy and Buildings, Building and Environment, Journal of Cleaner Production, and Sustainability were the top journals to publish papers on green buildings.

Global distribution was done to see the green building study worldwide, showing that the USA, China, and the UK ranked the top three countries, accounting for 14.98%, 13.29%, and 8.27% of all the publications respectively. Australia and China had the closest relationship on green building research cooperation worldwide.

Further analysis was made on countries’ characteristics, dominant issues through keyword co-occurrence, green building technology by patent analysis, and S-curve prediction. Global trends of the top 5 countries showed different characteristics. China had a steady and consistent growth in publications each year while the USA, the UK, and Italy were on a decline from 2016. The big data method was used to see the city performance in China, finding that the total publications had a high correlation with the city’s GDP and Baidu Search Index. Policies were regarded as the stimulation for green building development, either in China or the UK. Also, barriers and contradictions such as cost, occupants’ comfort, and energy consumption were discussed about the developed and developing countries.

Cluster and content analysis via CiteSpace identified popular and trending research topics at different stages of development; the top three hotspots were green buildings, sustainability, and energy efficiency throughout the whole research period. Energy efficiency has shifted from low to zero energy buildings or even beyond it in recent years. Energy efficiency was the most important drive to achieve green buildings while LCA and LEED were the two potential ways to evaluate building performance. Thermal comfort and natural ventilation of residential buildings became a topic of interest to the public.

Then, we combined the keywords with “energy” to make further patent analysis in Derwent Innovations Index. “Structure,” “material,” and “energy systems” were three of the most important types of green building technologies. According to S-curve analysis, most of the technologies of energy-saving buildings were on the fast-growing trend, and even though there were conflicts and doubts in different countries on GB adoption, it is still a promising field.

Future directions

An establishment of professional institutes or a series of policies and regulations on green building promulgated by government departments will promote research development (as described in the “Further Analysis on China, the USA, and the UK” section). Thus, a policy enacted by a formal department is of great importance in this particular field.

Passive design is important in energy saving which is ensured by strategically positioning buildings and precisely engineering the building envelope, i.e., roof, walls, windows, and floors. A quality, the passive-design house is crucial to achieving sustained thermal comfort, low-carbon footprint, and a reduced gas bill. The new insulation material is a promising field for reducing building heat loss and energy consumed. Healthy residential buildings have become a focus of future development due to people’s pursuit of a healthy life. A fresh air supply system is important for better indoor air quality and reduces the risk of transmission of several diseases. A 2020 study showed the COVID-19 virus remains viable for only 4 hours on copper compared to 24 h on cardboard. So, antiviral materials will be further studied for healthy buildings (Fezi 2020 ).

With the quick development of big data method and intelligent algorithms, artificial intelligence (AI) green buildings will be a trend. The core purpose of AI buildings is to achieve optimal operating conditions through the accurate analysis of data, collected by sensors built into green buildings. “Smart buildings” and “Connected Buildings” of the future, fitted with meters and sensors, can collect and share massive amounts of information regarding energy use, water use, indoor air quality, etc. Analyzing this data can determine relationships and patterns, and optimize the operation of buildings to save energy without compromising the quality of the indoor environment (Lazarova-Molnar and Mohamed 2019 ).

The major components of green buildings, such as building envelope, windows, and skylines, should be adjustable and versatile in order to get full use of AI. A digital control system can give self-awareness to buildings, adjusting room temperature, indoor air quality, and air cooling/heating conditions to control power consumption, and make it sustainable (Mehmood et al. 2019 ).

Concerns do exist, for example, occupant privacy, data security, robustness of design, and modeling of the AI building (Maasoumy and Sangiovanni-Vincentelli 2016 ). However, with increased data sources and highly adaptable infrastructure, AI green buildings are the future.

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Ying Li conceived the frame of the paper and wrote the manuscript. Yanyu Rong made the data figures and participated in writing the manuscript. Umme Marium Ahmad helped with revising the language. Xiaotong Wang consulted related literature for the manuscript. Jian Zuo contributed significantly to provide the keywords list. Guozhu Mao helped with constructive suggestions.

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Topic: (“bioclimatic architect*” or “bioclimatic build*” or “bioclimatic construct*” or “bioclimatic hous*” or “eco-architect*” or “eco-build*” or “eco-home*” or “eco-hous*” or “eco-friendly build*” or “ecological architect*” or “ecological build*” or “ecological hous*” or “energy efficient architect*” or “energy efficient build*” or “energy efficient construct*” or “energy efficient home*” or “energy efficient hous*” or “energy efficient struct*” or “energy saving architect*” or “energy saving build*” or “energy saving construct*” or “energy saving home*” or “energy saving hous*” or “energy saving struct*” or “green architect*” or “green build*” or “green construct*” or “green home*” or “low carbon architect*” or “low carbon build*” or “low carbon construct*” or “low carbon home*” or “low carbon hous*” or “low energy architect*” or “low energy build*” or “low energy construct*” or “low energy home*” or “low energy hous*” or “sustainable architect*” or “sustainable build*” or “sustainable construct*” or “sustainable home*” or “sustainable hous*” or “zero energy build*” or “zero energy home*” or “zero energy hous*” or “net zero energy build*” or “net zero energy home*” or “net zero energy hous*” or “zero-carbon build*” or “zero-carbon home*” or “zero-carbon hous*” or “carbon neutral build*” or “carbon neutral construct*” or “carbon neutral hous*” or “high performance architect*” or “high performance build*” or “high performance construct*” or “high performance home*” or “high performance hous*”)

Time span: 1998-2018。 Index: SCI-EXPANDED, SSCI。

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Li, Y., Rong, Y., Ahmad, U.M. et al. A comprehensive review on green buildings research: bibliometric analysis during 1998–2018. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28 , 46196–46214 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-12739-7

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Currently, the public has a strong sense of the need for environment protection and the use of sustainable, or “green,” design in buildings and other civil structures. Since green design elements and technologies are different from traditional design, they probably have impacts on the building environment, such as vibration, lighting, noise, temperature, relative humidity, and overall comfort. Determining these impacts of green design on building environments is the primary objective of this study. The Zero Energy Research (ZOE) laboratory, located at the University of North Texas Discovery Park, is analyzed as a case study. Because the ZOE lab is a … continued below

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Currently, the public has a strong sense of the need for environment protection and the use of sustainable, or “green,” design in buildings and other civil structures. Since green design elements and technologies are different from traditional design, they probably have impacts on the building environment, such as vibration, lighting, noise, temperature, relative humidity, and overall comfort. Determining these impacts of green design on building environments is the primary objective of this study. The Zero Energy Research (ZOE) laboratory, located at the University of North Texas Discovery Park, is analyzed as a case study. Because the ZOE lab is a building that combines various green design elements and energy efficient technologies, such as solar panels, a geothermal heating system, and wind turbines, it provides an ideal case to study. Through field measurements and a questionnaire survey of regular occupants of the ZOE lab, this thesis analyzed and reported: 1) whether green design elements changed the building’s ability to meet common building environmental standards, 2) whether green design elements assisted in Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) scoring, and 3) whether green design elements decreased the subjective comfort level of the occupants.

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Green Occupants for Green Buildings, PhD Thesis

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A Review on Sustainable Building (Green Building)

9 Pages Posted: 17 May 2017 Last revised: 5 Jun 2017

Behnam Neyestani

De La Salle University, Civil Engineering

Date Written: 2017

Nowadays, the world faces many challenges and problems from climate change and global warming. Many scientific studies reported that different industries have huge roles to generate this condition. Specially, the construction industry has the most responsibility about these challenges on the earth. Doubtlessly, the utilization of inappropriate technologies, appliances, and materials in buildings have threatened the environment and human health today. So, there is a significant question, what is the appropriate way to solve these problems in construction industry? The engineers and technologists have realized the environmental problems are from using some technologies and materials in construction industry since over the past few decades. Scientists suggested the best way to overcome the aforementioned threats is to consider “sustainable” or “green” design for buildings. So, the main intention of sustainable building is to shift from harm to harmless technologies and materials in buildings. Thus, one of the main purposes of this study is to explore generally regarding sustainable technologies, standards, and materials, which help the buildings reduce consuming energy and resources, in order to generate the positive influences on people, nature, and society. Accordingly, “sustainable” buildings can be more friendly with environment and human, and use key resources, such as, energy, water, and materials more optimal than the conventional buildings. Furthermore, the study was to address the benefits of developing sustainability in buildings on different perspectives, based on the review and points out future directions of study.

Keywords: Sustainability, Sustainable (Green) Building, Green Technologies/Materials, LEED

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Behnam Neyestani (Contact Author)

De la salle university, civil engineering ( email ).

2401 Taft Avenue Manila Philippines

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Resources of urban green spaces and sustainable development.

1. Introduction

2. an overview of published articles, conflicts of interest, list of contributions.

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Share and Cite

Aram, F. Resources of Urban Green Spaces and Sustainable Development. Resources 2024 , 13 , 10. https://doi.org/10.3390/resources13010010

Aram F. Resources of Urban Green Spaces and Sustainable Development. Resources . 2024; 13(1):10. https://doi.org/10.3390/resources13010010

Aram, Farshid. 2024. "Resources of Urban Green Spaces and Sustainable Development" Resources 13, no. 1: 10. https://doi.org/10.3390/resources13010010

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• DOI:   10.5353/th_b5334241

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postgraduate thesis : Developing green building policy in Hong Kong

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• Published: 04 August 2024

Optimizing green and gray infrastructure planning for sustainable urban development

• Janneke van Oorschot   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-7376-6950 1 ,
• Mike Slootweg 1 ,
• Roy P. Remme   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0799-2319 1 ,
• Benjamin Sprecher 2 &
• Ester van der Voet 1  

npj Urban Sustainability volume  4 , Article number:  41 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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Ecosystem services

• Environmental impact

The anticipated increase in urban population of 2.5 billion people by 2050 poses significant environmental challenges. While the various environmental impacts of urbanisation have been studied individually, integrated approaches are rare. This study introduces a spatially explicit model to assess urbanization’s effects on ecosystem services (green infrastructure availability, cooling, stormwater retention) and the environmental impact of building construction (material demand, greenhouse gas emissions, land use). Applied to the Netherlands from 2018 to 2050, our results show that integrating green infrastructure development with building construction could increase green areas by up to 5% and stabilize or increase ecosystem service provisioning. Dense building construction with green infrastructure development is generally more beneficial across the Netherlands, reducing resource use and enhancing ecosystem services. Conversely, sparse construction with green infrastructure is more advantageous for newly built areas. These findings offer insights into the environmental consequences of urbanization, guiding sustainable urban planning practices.

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Introduction.

The United Nations projects a growth of the urban population of 2.5 billion people between 2018 and 2050, which will concurrently result in a significant expansion in urban land cover 1 , 2 . The transformation of natural landscapes to urban land impacts both the local and the global environment. Understanding these effects is crucial for fostering sustainable urbanization strategies in the future. At the local level, urban development results in the replacement of green infrastructure (i.e., trees, shrubs and grasses), with gray infrastructure, (i.e., roads and buildings). Green infrastructure can be defined as “a strategically planned network of natural and semi-natural areas with other environmental features designed and managed to deliver a wide range of ecosystem services” 3 . Ecosystem services are the direct and indirect contributions of ecosystems to human wellbeing 4 . These services encompass a wide array of benefits, including the provision of essential resources like food and freshwater, the regulation and preservation of the environment through functions such as managing stormwater, enhancing soil quality, reducing noise levels, and regulating air temperatures 5 , 6 , 7 . Additionally, green infrastructure provides cultural benefits, serving as spaces for recreational activities and leisure 8 . Transformation of green into gray surfaces increases urban vulnerability to health and climate-related threats such as flooding and urban heat 9 , 10 .

The increasing demand for new buildings and infrastructure, driven by urbanization, impacts the environment not just at the local level, but at the global level as well. In 2019, the manufacturing of building materials, such as steel and cement, accounted for 11% of energy and process-related CO 2 emissions 11 . Continuous growth of the building stock could result in an increase of building material related emissions from 3.5 to 4.6 Gt CO 2 eq yr −1 between 2020–2060 12 . Therefore, the consequences of urban transformation extend far beyond city boundaries, emphasizing the need for sustainable urban development practices.

A wide range of factors affect the local urban climate and resilience to climate change, with ecosystem services playing a crucial role 13 , 14 . The provisioning of ecosystem services depends on the type, size, and arrangement of green infrastructure, and is also influenced by the local climate, non-ecological elements, such as buildings and roads, and socioeconomic variables 6 , 15 , 16 . For instance, the services provided by the same configuration, size, and type of green infrastructure can differ when the climate and landscape changes 16 . Therefore, conducting location-specific assessments of ecosystem services in high spatial resolution is important to capture the factors that influence their provisioning within a given area.

A considerable amount of research has focused on understanding how urbanization impacts green infrastructure and the provision of ecosystem services. Some studies have explored the impact of urbanization on the expansion of urban land 2 , 17 or the availability of green infrastructure 18 , 19 . Studies have also shown the negative impact of urban growth and urban densification on biodiversity and the provisioning of ecosystem services 20 , 21 , 22 and trade-offs between spatial configuration of urbanization and ecosystem service supply 23 , 24 . Investigations into the implementation of green infrastructure strategies have revealed their potential to improve ecosystem service provisioning, while also highlighting the synergies and trade-offs among these services 9 , 25 . These studies highlight the complex interplay of factors shaping urban environments and the critical role of green infrastructure in fostering sustainable cities.

Urban planning choices also affect the impact related to building construction. Dense building construction reduces material use and greenhouse gas emissions compared to sparsely constructed areas 26 . Dense urban regions often prioritize multi-family housing, which typically consist of smaller dwelling units and are therefore more resource-efficient compared to single-family houses. Dense building construction is also associated with more efficient energy usage during building operation 27 . On the other hand, building densification often result in higher material turnover due to building replacements 26 and, in the case of high-rise construction, buildings also tend to be more material-intensive due to the need for additional structural components 28 . Therefore, the location and characteristics of buildings play a critical role in shaping the global environmental impacts.

In addition to spatial planning choices, circular economy strategies in the building sector are critical for reducing environmental impacts. These strategies encompass a variety of practices, including building lifetime extension, the use of alternative construction materials, such as biobased or lightweight material, alternative energy sources, increased material efficiency, designing for reusability and recyclability, minimizing dwelling floor space, and enhancing recycling processes 12 , 26 , 29 . Implementing these strategies can lead to a halving in the material related GHG-emissions compared to a Baseline 12 , 26 . However, some strategies show trade-offs, such the substantial land-use impact associated with the construction of wooden building 26 .

Several studies on the impact of urbanization on building materials have been conducted. Historical assessments of the global level extraction of construction minerals as well as projections for the future have been published by the International Resource Panel, showing a threefold increase during 1970-2015, and an additional doubling until 2050 30 . Spatially explicit studies show more detail: high-resolution building maps enable the assessment of materials incorporated within them, offering insights into opportunities for sustainable resource use 26 , 31 . Historical building stock maps have been employed to scrutinize urban growth patterns and associated material stock dynamics over time 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 . Maps of the existing building stock also serve as a foundation for modeling future dynamics to identify more sustainable solutions for building construction 26 , 29 .

While existing studies provide valuable insights into specific sustainability aspects of urban development, an integrated approach that provides insights into both the local and the global impacts of urbanization is still lacking. This is crucial because urban development impacts both green and gray infrastructure; analyzing these impacts together provides an opportunity to reduce the impact related to construction of buildings, while simultaneously reducing losses or improving availability of ecosystem services. To bridge this gap, this paper aims to address the following question: How can green and gray infrastructure planning be optimized for sustainable urban development? We take the Netherlands as a case-study, a country notable for its high population density and unique environmental challenges. While focused on the Netherlands, we provide insights and approaches that are transferable to other urban environments to enhance their understanding and implementation of sustainable urban development approaches. Addressing this question is important in light of international urbanization trends anticipated towards 2050 1 , 36 , which have resulted in several initiatives and policies. These include the European Urban Initiative, which focuses on creating innovative solutions to urban sustainability 37 ; the European Nature Restoration Law, targeting no net loss of green spaces and aiming for their increase by 2050 38 ; and the ambition of the European Green Deal towards achieving net-zero emissions by the same year 39 . Our research also aligns global commitments, such as the United Nations’ goals for sustainable urban futures, highlighting the broader relevance of our work 1 . The Dutch commitment to achieving circularity and climate neutrality by 2050 exemplifies these broader efforts 40 .

Figure 1 presents the methodolgical framework. Our analysis begins with spatially explicit strategies for building construction and demolition from 2018 to 2050, as outlined by the Dutch Environmental Assessment Agency 41 . These strategies are based on regional population growth projections and preferred locations for building construction. We focus primarily on two contrasting approaches: the Dense strategy, which concentrates construction within present urban areas, and the Sparse strategy, which promotes development in low-density areas such as agricultural and industrial sites (Table 1 ). Our analysis examines the implications of these strategies on the building material impact, land-use change and ecosystem service provision. Firstly, we analyze the effects of urbanization on the non-local aspects: the demand for primary building materials, the greenhouse gas emissions, and the embodied land use associated with the extraction and production of construction materials (Fig. 1a ). Our approach incorporates three construction methods: conventional, circular, and biobased. These methods are applied within the frameworks of the Dense and Sparse urbanization strategies. Secondly, we assess how these urbanization strategies affect local land use change and its impacts on local ecosystem service supply (Fig. 1b ): local green infrastructure availability, air temperature regulation, and stormwater retention capacity (Table 2 ). These services are critical for enhancing urban quality of life and improving resilience against environmental and socio-economic challenges 42 . In our land-use and ecosystem service analysis, we integrate the Dense and Sparse strategies with two distinct land-use approaches: Green, emphasizing extensive greening around buildings, and Gray, characterized by minimal green infrastructure development. In the final step, we identify the most effective combination of building and land-use strategies for each sustainability indicator, highlighting key synergies and trade-offs (Fig. 1c ). Spanning the period from 2018 to 2050, and building upon the work of van Oorschot et al. (2023) 26 , our research integrates a diverse array of sustainability indicators in support of sustainable urban development. In the tables below (Tables 1 and 2 ), urbanization strategies, land-use approaches and construction material choices are summarized, as well as the sustainability indicators on which these are assessed.

a Presents the approach for resource use calculation, b Presents the approach for land use and land cover (LULC) change and ecosystem service calculation, c Presents a comparison of the sustainability indicators and urbanization strategies.

Building materials

In this section, we present the results of the use of construction materials over the period 2018-2050, related to the three non-local indicators: use of primary construction materials, cradle-to-gate CO 2 -emissions, and embodied land use. Figure 2 shows the results.

Impact of building construction in the Netherlands between 2018 and 2050 on primary material demand, global warming potential and embodied land use, broken down by material.

The global warming potential associated with building materials totals between 68 and 127 megaton (Mt) CO 2 -equivalent in the period 2018-2050, dependent on the urbanization strategy and choice of building materials. Annually, this can be translated into an average of 2-4 Mt/year, relatively low compared to the impact related to space heating, which encompassed 24.7 Mt CO 2 -equivalent in 2018 alone 43 . However, as buildings are expected to greatly reduce operational energy due to the energy transition, addressing emissions from materials becomes increasingly important. Biobased construction stands out with the lowest demand for primary materials and the lowest embodied greenhouse gas emissions, largely as a result of replacing concrete structures with wooden ones. However, biobased construction exhibits a notably high embodied land use impact related to wood production, reaching over 16000 km 2 for strategy Sparse and Biobased, equivalent to 40% of the Netherlands’ surface area. This embodied land use significantly exceeds that of conventional buildings and circular building strategies, which range between 4000 and 7000 km 2 . Overall, the circular construction appears to be the most favorable choice, resulting in lower primary material use as well as lower CO 2 -emissions, without the trade-off to embodied land use.

From a building material perspective, prioritizing denser building practices over sparse ones is the more sustainable choice (Fig. 2 ). While densification leads to increased building replacements, consequently raising the demand for materials, the structures created in denser environments are generally smaller, favoring multi-family dwellings over single-family houses. Together with the greater potential for secondary material use, this results in a reduced environmental impact compared to sparse building construction. The results do not change between strategy Green and Gray, because the surrounding area of the building has no effect on the material related impacts (Table 3 ).

Figure 3a shows that at the national level, the construction locations are not that different in strategies Dense and Sparse. In both strategies, building activities are concentrated within more urbanized municipalities in the central-western part of the Netherlands. This mirrors the demographic forecasts outlined by the Dutch Environmental Assessment Agency 44 . However, differences between the two maps are also apparent. A significant number of municipalities, particularly in the central part of the Netherlands, demonstrate a higher material demand under the Sparse strategy compared to the Dense strategy.

a Total material demand (kg/m 2 ) per municipality between 2018 and 2050 for strategy Dense and Sparse (Conventional building strategy). b Green infrastructure change (m 2 /km 2 ) per municipality between 2018 and 2050.

Land use & land cover (LULC) change

Our findings show that buildings present a relatively small portion of the total transformed land area and therefore highlight the potential for concurrent growth in green infrastructure alongside the expansion of building area for strategy Green (Fig. 4 ). Among the strategies considered, the Sparse-Green combination emerges as the most effective in expanding the area of green infrastructure, with an increase of 5% compared to 2018 (3% for Dense-Green). The higher value for Sparse stems from a lower building density, resulting in a larger area of transformed land (Fig. 3b ). In the absence of green infrastructure integration (strategy Gray), green infrastructure declines by 2% in strategy Dense and by almost 1% in strategy Sparse. However, the Sparse approach significantly reduces agricultural land, creating a trade-off between urban development and agricultural areas.

The values for 2018 present the original LULC composition of the transformed areas, and the values for 2050 present the new LULC composition of the transformed areas.

In both Dense and Sparse strategies construction predominantly occurs in the central-West of the Netherlands, which seems to correlate with the largest changes in green infrastructure area (Fig. 3b ). Nonetheless, variations in the spatial patterns of material demand and land use and land cover (LULC) change are visible as well. This is because changes in green infrastructure are influenced not only by the total area being transformed, but also by the original LULC. For example, municipalities where a relatively small area of largely gray infrastructure is transformed into a combination of gray and green infrastructure may show a larger increase in green infrastructure than municipalities where a large area of predominantly green areas are transformed into a mix of green and gray infrastructure. Similarly, while most municipalities experience a decline in green infrastructure in the Gray strategy, some municipalities still show an increase in green infrastructure due to the transformation of non-residential areas like agricultural or industrial land into built-up areas with a small amount of green infrastructure. The maps reveal a trade-off between material impacts and green infrastructure availability: while the Sparse-Green strategy leads to more substantial increases in green infrastructure, the Dense strategy is more advantageous in terms of building material requirements.

A lack of green infrastructure integration in building construction is associated with a reduction in ecosystem service supply. For Gray strategies, newly constructed areas experience more than a 5% decline in the availability of green infrastructure (within a 1 km 2 area around dwellings) and stormwater retention capacity, with air temperature increasing slightly over 1%, compared to the average of 2018. For green infrastructure availability, the impact is most pronounced in the Sparse building strategy, where the dominance of gray infrastructure and agricultural land leads to a substantial 42% decrease. Both Dense-Gray and Sparse-Gray show reductions in stormwater retention capacity of almost 50%. In contrast, when evaluating the total building stock (i.e., existing plus newly constructed buildings), the decreases are generally less severe, under 5% for most services except for green infrastructure availability, which show a 7% and 5% reduction in strategy Dense and Sparse, respectively. Conversely, the integration of green infrastructure with building construction leads to a net increase or stabilization of ecosystem service supply when compared to 2018 (Table 3 ). For the entire building stock, the changes are smaller than 5% for air temperature and stormwater retention, but exceed the 5% for green infrastructure availability, indicating a significant impact.

Compared to the average of 2018, strategy Sparse-Green leads to a significant almost 60% increase in green infrastructure availability, for newly constructed areas. Strategy Dense-Green shows a lower, yet substantial, improvement of nearly 40% compared to the 2018 average. When considering the entire building stock projected for 2050, the Sparse-Green approach still leads with a roughly 10% increase in green infrastructure, closely followed by the Dense-Green strategy at 8%. In absolute terms, the Green strategies reveal a rise from an average of 0.303 km 2 (within a 1 km 2 around dwellings) in 2018 to between 0.328 km 2 and 0.332 km2.

The choice of the most effective urbanization strategy for urban cooling varies depending on the scale of analysis. Focusing on newly constructed areas between 2018 and 2050, the Sparse-Green approach is the preferred strategy. This method slightly reduces air temperature by 0.4%, corresponding to 0.12  o C on hot summer days, while the Dense-Green strategy results in a small increase of 0.5%. The rise in temperature for Dense-Green can be attributed to the partial replacement of urban green infrastructure with gray infrastructure. In contrast, the Sparse-Green strategy converts a significant portion of agricultural land into green infrastructure, leading to an overall decrease in temperature. The results change when analyzing the entire building stock. In this broader context, the Dense strategy emerges as more effective, showing a marginal decrease in air temperature by 0.01%. This greater efficiency is because the Dense-Green strategy introduces green infrastructure in areas where temperatures are relatively high, thereby having a more substantial effect in cooling than the Sparse-Green strategy. It is important to highlight that these temperature changes are marginal, a point that will be expanded upon in the discussion section.

In the context of stormwater retention, our analysis reveals that dense urban construction, when integrated with green infrastructure, exhibits a slightly higher retention capacity compared to sparse building constructions. The Dense-Green strategy shows more than 20% increase in stormwater retention for new constructions, compared to an slightly less than 20% increase observed under the Sparse-Green strategy. When considering the entire building stock, the Dense-Green strategy yields a 2.1% increase in stormwater retention, slightly surpassing the 1.9% increase achieved by the Sparse-Green strategy. The slightly lower improvement rates associated with the Sparse strategy can be attributed to the transformation of a considerable portion of agricultural land. This land inherently possesses effective stormwater retention capabilities, which diminishes the relative impact of the strategy. Moreover, the Dense strategy is characterized by a higher proportion of apartment constructions compared to the Sparse strategy. These building types use space more efficiently than row- or detached houses, allowing for the creation of substantial areas for green infrastructure development.

In summary, trade-offs exist in spatial planning decisions for the studied ecosystem services, and these trade-offs can vary depending on the scope of analysis. Overall, strategy Dense-Green is potentially the best choice as it strategically integrates green infrastructure in high-demand areas, ultimately benefiting a larger population.

Local assessment of ecosystem services

Figure 5 shows how the change in LULC, green infrastructure availability, air temperature, and stormwater retention capacity between 2018 to 2050 work out at the local level, showing an example in the area of Leiden. The figure highlights differences between the strategies Dense-Green and Sparse-Green. In strategy Dense, the primary focus is on the conversion of built-up urban areas within the city of Leiden. In contrast, strategy Sparse primarily targets the transformation of agricultural land on the outskirts of Leiden.

a LULC composition in 2050 (see Supplementary Methods 2 for details on LULC classes), b change in green infrastructure availability (m 2 ) within 1 km 2 , c change in air temperature ( o C) and d change in stormwater retention capacity (%) for strategies Dense + Green and Sparse + Green, for the area of Leiden. Blue indicates an increase, yellow indicates no change, and orange indicates a decline in ecosystem service supply compared to 2018.

Both strategies demonstrate substantial increases in green infrastructure availability (Fig. 5b ), with a more pronounced increase in strategy Sparse, due to the conversion of mainly agricultural land into partially green infrastructure. Within the Dense strategy, some construction activities are undertaken in areas that already have a considerable share of green, resulting in a smaller increase in green infrastructure availability compared to Sparse. In strategy Sparse, a small part in the south-west of Leiden shows a reduction in green infrastructure availability due to the transformation of green space into a partially built-up area.

In strategy Dense, the change in air temperature shows a similar pattern to that of green infrastructure availability (Fig. 5c ), with the most pronounced reduction in the urbanized areas of Leiden. The largest reduction in air temperature within Leiden is observed under the Dense strategy, achieving a maximum decrease of 0.21°C. Conversely, the Sparse strategy leads to a temperature increase across a broad area, despite integrating green infrastructure into construction projects. This increase is primarily due to the conversion of cooler agricultural lands and green spaces into partial gray infrastructure. However, within the Sparse strategy, certain urbanized areas, especially those with transformed industrial zones in Leiden, do exhibit a cooling effects. These localized temperature contrast with the aggregated data for the entire Netherlands, highlighting the importance of multi-scale analysis in understanding the impacts of urban development strategies.

Furthermore, our study reveals significant variability in stormwater retention capacity across the area. To improve interpretation of the results, we aggregated the data to a resolution of 100 × 100 meters (Fig. 5d ). The aggregated findings align with the overall trends observed nationwide. Under the Dense strategy, there is a clear increase in stormwater retention capacity, reaching a maximum increase of 58% compared to 2018. In strategy Sparse, the transformation of largely agricultural land and green infrastructure into partially gray infrastructure results in a reduction in stormwater retention capacity, with a maximum decrease of 15.9%.

Exploring strategies for sustainable urban development is essential to develop an urban environment that is as sustainable as possible. This study examined the impact of urbanization, emphasizing the global environmental effects of the use of building materials, and the impact on land-use change and ecosystem services locally, to understand how to optimize urban development for sustainability.

Our findings suggest that dense urban development is preferred from a building material perspective due to the construction of smaller dwelling units and higher potential for reuse and recycling. Dense urban development is also likely to be more energy-efficient, as high population densities typically correlate with lower per capita energy consumption 27 . When coupled with green infrastructure development, dense urban development can also lead to an increase in ecosystem service supply in areas where demand is high. While these arguments favor dense urban developments, green infrastructure development in densely populated areas could pose challenges due to high demand for services associated with gray infrastructure, such as housing, commercial purposes and transportation, resulting in competition for land-use. Additionally, underground infrastructure, like pipes and cables, can complicate green infrastructure implementation, particularly for trees 45 . Therefore we recognize that, in addition to green infrastructure development at ground-level, alternative ways to implement green infrastructure in urban areas, such as green roofs and facades, need to be investigated as well.

Sparse building construction has faced criticism for promoting urban sprawl, thereby diminishing natural habitats and biodiversity, and increase greenhouse-gas emissions and costs related to transportation, water and energy infrastructure 46 , 47 . Our analysis indicated that sparse building construction primarily results in a trade-off between agricultural land and built-up areas, while protected nature was excluded from the analysis. It must be emphasized that these conclusions are valid for the Netherlands, where natural areas are scarce, small and well protected, and non-cultured land is absent. In such a situation, sparse urban development could positively impact ecosystem service provisioning and biodiversity, when coupled with the development of green infrastructure. However, to sustain food production (another crucial ecosystem service), sparse urban development could inadvertently lead to the transformation of other areas, which may be rich in biodiversity, into agricultural land. These arguments again promote dense urban development. Clearly, there are trade-offs between dense and sparse urban developments in terms of building materials, energy use, land-use, ecosystem services, and biodiversity. Considering these trade-offs is crucial for sustainable urban development.

We assessed green infrastructure availability as the total green infrastructure within a 1 km² area around dwellings. This method differs from the conventional per capita analysis of green space availability and serves as a broad indicator of ecosystem service provision, while the per capita indicator typically focuses on recreational services 21 . Our findings revealed a significant increase in total green infrastructure availability for strategies Green, suggesting enhanced ecosystem service supply. Through translating our findings into per capita terms, we can draw comparisons with existing literature for recreational service provisioning. By 2050, a decrease in green infrastructure availability from 34 m² per capita to 20 m² per capita was observed for the Green strategies, stemming from increased population densities. These values are within the wide spectrum of green space availability in European cities, ranging from 2.5 to 200 m² per capita 48 , 49 . In a recent study, Liu et al. 21 reported that in the Paris region, only 48% of the 10 m² per capita policy target within a 500-meter radius is achieved, highlighting disparities with insufficient green infrastructure in densely populated regions contrasted with excess in less populated ones 21 . Our results largely align with this pattern, demonstrating low green infrastructure availability in urban areas (frequently below 1 m² per capita within a 1 km 2 area around dwellings), in contrast to areas outside urban centers, where the availability often exceeds 10 m² per capita. In some rural areas however, our results show low per capita values because of the large share of agricultural land that is not considered to be accessible green space. The large variability in GI availability, and thus the availability of ecosystem services, underscores the need for a standardized metric for green infrastructure availability to support urban sustainability.

Our strategies showed a potential increase in the stormwater retaining capacity up to 2% compared to 2018. Locally, the increase in stormwater retention can be far larger than 2%, resulting in a strongly reduced portion of stormwater that runs off the surface, along with associated nutrients and pollutants. The average of 2% is significant, given that over 600 km² of land surface area is being transformed, offering a substantial potential to reduce stormwater treatment and drainage needs. For comparison, a study on green infrastructure strategies for Amsterdam demonstrated a potential annual reduction of 1.4 million cubic meters of stormwater treatment volume, decreasing treatment costs by 1.1 million euros per year 25 . In our strategies the total area of created green infrastructure could be up to 200 times higher than in aforementioned study.

Air temperature changes were small in our results, with an average decrease of 0.02 °C across the total building stock and a local maximum reduction of 0.42 °C. These results are consistent with similar studies on greening strategies 25 , 50 . The small temperature impact can be attributed to the relatively small land use and land cover changes in relation to the overall land area of the Netherlands, combined with a considerable air mixing distance of 500 meters. In absolute terms, densely built areas showed temperatures up to 2 °C higher than rural areas. Recent studies show that urban heat is strongly affected by building density 20 , 51 , indicating a preference for low-density urban development for better temperature regulation. Nonetheless, dense urban regions, which have a greater demand for cooling, could derive more benefit from green infrastructure implementation. Our findings reveal that integrating green infrastructure with new building construction is not enough to achieve substantial cooling, suggesting that additional greening measures are required, either through the integration of green infrastructure in buildings, or through reducing building densities.

Across the assessed building strategies, the biobased strategy showed the lowest greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, biobased constructions significantly impact embodied land use due to the requirements for wood cultivation. The Netherlands’ heavy reliance on wood imports raises concerns about the sustainability of biobased construction. Local upscaling of wood production is challenging as well, due to limited available land and competition with housing, agriculture, and nature conservation 52 . Mishra et al. 53 suggest that a worldwide increase in wooden buildings, up to 90% of new constructions from 2020 to 2100, is feasible if agricultural land productivity is doubled 53 . This intensification would allow more land for plantation forestry. However, achieving this requires strong global governance and careful planning. From an overall environmental impact perspective, opting for the circular building strategy results in the least trade-offs. This preference becomes more evident when extending the analysis beyond 2050, a period during which buildings constructed between 2018 and 2050 will be deconstructed. Circular designs facilitate material recycling and component reuse, making them an attractive option for the long-term sustainability of the built environment.

In the past, urbanization patterns have shown a great diversity across regions and cities 54 . With ongoing urbanization, we face an opportunity to steer urban development towards sustainability. We demonstrated how this process can be supported by quantifying the impact of urbanization strategies on various sustainability indicators. These indicators relate to decision making and planning at different levels. At the local scale, maps showing relative changes in ecosystem service supply can be used by urban planners to develop or evaluate their plans, identify trade-offs in ecosystem service provisioning, and prioritize sustainability aspects. On a larger scale, the aggregated impact results, as presented in Table 3 , facilitate comparison of decision making options on different sustainability aspects. Greening strategies and strategies for building construction are typically handled by different authorities 55 , 56 . Our study emphasizes the need for an integrated planning approach that combines these efforts. Planning strategies at the local level also need to align with higher-level policies, for instance related to areas restricted from urbanization 57 . Climate related policies, including the environmental performance of buildings, are typically addressed at the (inter)national level 58 . At the national level, the insights from our study provide guidance for policymakers to formulate strategies to enhance the sustainability of building practices, for instance related to building locations, material use and recycling practices.

This study investigated sustainable urbanization strategies within the context of the Netherlands, yet our findings hold a broader relevance. Our findings underscore the importance of an integrated approach to urban development that emphasizes sustainability in both green and gray infrastructure. This approach aligns with sustainability goals set by international entities like the European Union and the United Nations, underscoring its relevance across different countries and policy levels 1 , 38 , 39 . The feasibility of implementing our method in other areas, especially in rapidly urbanizing regions like the Global South, is contingent upon data availability. Although urban ecosystem services in these regions have been quantified using open-source data such as remote sensing data and models such as InVEST 59 , 60 , data on construction materials in these regions remain scarce 61 , 62 . Furthermore, the high-resolution spatial data required for modeling building construction and demolition activities used in this study is probably not universally accessible. A potential solution to this is remote sensing based land-cover data, which is increasingly available in high resolution (e.g. Sentinel-2 and Landsat). This kind of data can be implemented into open-source LULC change models, such as the wallpapering method used in this study 63 , to model the dynamics of urban infrastructure over time. Although these data sources do not offer the same level of detail as those used in this study, they provide a potential foundation for analyzing sustainable urbanization strategies across diverse global contexts.

Directions for future research

We included a wide spectrum of sustainability indicators. This scope can still be broadened to encompass additional indicators, related to building materials (e.g. eutrophication, particulate matter formation, etc.) and additional ecosystem services. For instance, soil-related services, carbon storage, noise reduction, air pollution removal, and positive health impacts present other important urban ecosystem services for which quantification approaches have been conceptualized or developed 7 , 64 , 65 , 66 . This would add to a more comprehensive overview of sustainability implications, but also adds to decision-making complexity. To support decision-making and address trade-offs inherent in considering a wide array of sustainability factors, multi-criteria analysis (MCA) can still be applied. MCA involves normalizing and assigning weight to various sustainability factors. These weights can be based on the perceived importance of each factor as determined by stakeholders 13 .

The interplay between building dimensioning and green infrastructure planning could be further investigated. For instance, building dimensioning has an effect on both land use composition and building materials. Several studies show higher GHG emissions associated with large and tall buildings compared to low-rise structures 28 , 67 , 68 . Building dimensioning also affects the local temperature, with taller buildings generally increasing urban heat 51 . Low-rise buildings leave less space for integration of green infrastructure in the building’s surroundings. Green infrastructure could also be integrated into the building through green roofs and facades. The interplay between building dimensioning, public and private greenery, and its relation to material consumption presents an interesting direction for future research.

To conclude, our study offers an in-depth analysis of the environmental impacts of urban development, emphasizing the integration of green and gray infrastructure and how they affect building construction related impacts and ecosystem services. Despite the projected growth of the Dutch building stock, our study illustrates the possibility of simultaneously expanding green infrastructure by up to 5%, and maintaining or improving the supply of ecosystem services compared to 2018 levels. Our findings also highlight the potential to reduce environmental impacts through the use of circular design practices. The analysis reveals trade-offs between dense and sparse urban development in terms of environmental impact and the provision of ecosystem services, underlining their importance in determining sustainable urban development strategies. We also recognize the different scales of impacts of ecosystem services and construction materials, underscoring the importance for a multi-scale analysis. Though focused on the Netherlands, our approach has broader applicability, offering a strategy to simultaneously reduce the environmental impact of urban development while improving ecosystem services provisioning.

Our study included several stages, each aimed at the optimization potential of sustainable urban development. Using a spatially explicit model, we combined scenarios for building construction and demolition with material intensities to derive material stock and flow dynamics. The model also combines the building construction and demolition data with land use and land cover (LULC) scenarios to assess changes in LULC, which formed the basis for ecosystem service analysis. With the insights gained from the model, we explored strategies to refine building construction practices, aiming to optimize material use and improve ecosystem services simultaneously. The method is explained in more detail below, and model details are available in Supplementary Methods 1 .

Building material impact

We combined spatial modeling with material flow analysis to assess the material stock dynamics in the Dutch building sector. Material flow analysis is a widely used method to quantify material stocks and flows, their dynamics over time, and their circularity 69 , 70 , 71 . We calculated material stock and flow dynamics through translating the building maps, provided in number of dwellings constructed or demolished and footprint (m 2 ) for non-residential buildings, to useful floor area (m 2 ), specific per building typology, and multiplying these values with their respective material intensity (kg/m 2 ). We assessed GHG emissions related to material production on the basis of the life cycle inventory database EcoInvent version 3.6 72 and supplemented the dataset where needed with values from scientific literature 26 . The starting point of our analysis was spatial data of the Dutch building stock in 2018 73 and spatially explicit strategies for building construction and demolition from 2018 to 2050 41 . The strategies were constructed based on regional population growth projections and preferred locations for building construction, with a focus on two distinct strategies: Dense and Sparse. In the Dense strategy, building construction prioritizes urban areas, while the Rural strategy emphasizes construction in areas with low population densities like agricultural and industrial sites. These strategies were presented at a 100 by 100-meter resolution, quantified in terms of dwelling units constructed or demolished and square meters of non-residential building footprint.

Three building material strategies were assessed (Table 2 ): Conventional, which uses traditional materials such as a concrete and steel structure; Circular, employing circular design principles, such as a detachable steel frame and mechanically detachable bricks; and Biobased, using timber frame constructions, wooden facades, cross-laminated timber floors and biobased insulation and roofing. We refer to Supplementary Methods 1 for the material intensities. For each strategy, we calculated the primary material demand and embodied greenhouse-gas emissions related to the construction materials and the embodied land use related to production of wood, using the model developed by van Oorschot et al. 26 . Because land occupation (m 2 year) was significantly higher for wood than for other materials (van Oorschot et al., 26 ), we calculated the total area of land (m 2 ) required for wood production. With the model we assessed primary and secondary material use through material flow analysis and life cycle impact assessment.

LULC change

Secondly, we analyzed how building construction impacts changes in LULC. We compiled a LULC map by combining a detailed land use map of the Netherlands, the Registration Large-Scale Topography 74 , with coverage maps (land cover) of trees, shrubs and grasses 75 , 76 , 77 . We did not consider agricultural land as green infrastructure due to its heterogeneous composition and, aside from food provision, limited capacity for providing ecosystem services. The resulting map presents detailed information on land use and green infrastructure coverage on a 10 by 10 m resolution. We made a distinction between 22 LULC classes (Supplementary Methods 2 ).

To analyze LULC changes between 2018 and 2050, we translated construction strategies into building footprints and linked them with LULC strategies using the “wallpapering model” (WP) developed by Lonsdorf and colleagues 63 . For the LULC strategies (see details below), we identified suitable compositions on the original LULC map, clipped the designated area to a rectangular “tile”, replicated the tile in a grid to create a “wallpaper” and switched the LULC within every cell that shows construction activities between 2018 and 2050. We classified building footprints into three groups based on their share within each 100 × 100 m gridcell: less than 10%, 10-40% and greater than 40%. This classification limited the number of tiles to three per LULC strategy.

Our analysis involved two LULC strategies: Green and Gray (Supplementary Methods 2 ). The Gray strategy is characterized by less than 5% low vegetation (grass and shrubs) per cell (100 × 100 meters) and Green, is characterized by more than 30% continuous green space consisting of grass, shrubs, and trees, of which at least 10% trees. The Green strategy is based upon the rule of thumb for having at least 30% urban forest in cities and the recommendation of the Nature Restoration Law to have at least 10% tree cover in urban environments 78 , 79 . We assumed that LULC transformation corresponds to the 100 × 100 m gridcell size used for building construction and demolition data. Given that building construction inherently involves alterations to the immediate surroundings, our findings provide reasonably accurate estimations. The modeling details are described in greater detail in the Supplementary Methods 2 .

The LULC maps served as the basis for analyzing LULC changes in the Netherlands and the capacity of green infrastructure to deliver ecosystem services. Modeling details can be found in Supplementary Methods 3 . We quantified the overall extent of green infrastructure across the Netherlands projected for 2050, along with its availability for residents. Furthermore, we evaluated the effectiveness of green infrastructure in mitigating urban heat and retaining stormwater. For the latter two, we employed the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST) model. InVEST is an open-source software developed by the Natural Capital Project and Stanford University for mapping and valuing ecosystem services 80 . InVEST combines LULC data with additional information to provide output values for ecosystem services in biophysical and/or economic units.

Green infrastructure plays a vital role in enhancing both physical and mental well-being 65 , 66 . The availability of green infrastructure refers to the measurement of green spaces within a specific distance, often within residential neighborhoods, primarily aimed at assessing the extent of accessible green areas 21 . Here, we calculated the total green infrastructure availability within 1 km 2 area surrounding dwellings as a broad indicator of ecosystem service provision.

Many cities experiencing heat waves are focusing on urban heat mitigation. Vegetation plays a crucial role in reducing the urban heat island (UHI) effect by offering shade, altering the city’s thermal properties, and providing cooling through evapotranspiration 81 . This has positive effects on citizens’ health, lowering mortality and morbidity rates, enhancing comfort and productivity, and reducing the need for air conditioning 82 . Here, we employed the InVEST model to calculate urban cooling. The urban cooling model calculates, among other indicators, changes in air temperature based on various factors, including shade, evapotranspiration, albedo, and proximity to cooling islands like parks. The changes in air temperature present an indication for the cooling provided by vegetation.

Climate change leads to more intense droughts and rain events 83 . Large impervious covers in urban areas increase the risks of flooding in these areas due to loss of infiltration capacity, and decrease interception and evaporation by green infrastructure 64 . The InVEST stormwater runoff retention model provides information on runoff retention. Runoff retention involves holding stormwater by permeable land to avoid polluting rivers and oceans. The model estimates surface runoff, the portion of stormwater not retained. The Stormwater Retention model focuses on services over an annual timeframe rather than individual storm events and flooding. We employed this model to calculate changes in stormwater retention capacity for the various urbanization strategies.

We assessed changes in ecosystem service capacity between 2018 and 2050 on two scale levels: firstly, for areas that are being transformed for building construction, and secondly, for the entire building stock and its surroundings (100 by 100 m grid cells). In addition to the national-scale analysis, we assessed ecosystem locally, which is crucial because the provision of the analyzed ecosystem services exhibits limited spatial reach. Locally, the impacts of LULC changes exhibit greater variability 9 . We take a 36 km 2 area in and around Leiden as a case-study area, encompassing both a densely built urban area and some of its surrounding area which is characterized largely by agricultural land.

Data availability

The data that supports the findings of this study are available in the supplementary information of this article, with exception of the spatial building and construction scenario data, which is only available from the authors upon request and with permission of the data owners (The Dutch Environmental Assessment Agency).

Code availability

The code used in this research is accessible and can be found on the provided GitHub repository: https://github.com/JannekevanOorschot/Optimization_sustainable_urbanization .

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML), Leiden University. We would like to thank Chris Nootenboom for providing and assisting us with the Wallpapering method. Additionally, we thank the Dutch Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL) for providing the essential scenario data for our research.

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Janneke van Oorschot, Mike Slootweg, Roy P. Remme & Ester van der Voet

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Design of the research: J.v.O., R.R., M.S., E.v.d.V., B.S.; Performance of the research: J.v.O., M.S., R.R., E.v.d.V., B.S.; Data collection and analysis: J.v.O., M.S.; Writing of manuscript: J.v.O., R.R., E.v.d.V., B.S.; Supervision: E.v.d.V..

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van Oorschot, J., Slootweg, M., Remme, R.P. et al. Optimizing green and gray infrastructure planning for sustainable urban development. npj Urban Sustain 4 , 41 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42949-024-00178-5

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1038/s42949-024-00178-5

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