Built Environment at Fifty: Perspectives, Landmarks, and Prospects

Built Environment is celebrating its Golden Anniversary in 2024, and to mark this occasion a special double issue of the journal is being published to reflect on the changes that have taken place. The editors have identified some of the key papers published over the decades which are reprinted here, together with a commentary on whether they have stood the test of time and their relevance today. Making the selection has not been easy – we could have chosen a very different set of papers.

This introduction is in three parts. First, we trace the history of the journal, from its genesis in the 1970s as a journal targeted at local practitioners working in the UK, to its current much wider brief. Today, with international contributions and audience of academics, policy makers, practitioners and consultants, each issue is devoted to a single theme and edited by an expert in that subject. We then discuss our understanding of the term ‘built environment’ and some of the themes that have emerged from that interpretation. To demonstrate the interdisciplinary nature of the journal and the move, over time, to an approach embracing social and environmental concerns and those of inclusion and equality, we have reproduced, with commentaries, papers devoted to seven themes which reflect the essence of the journal. Finally, we put on our ‘thinking hats’ to give a perspective on the future. It has been both fun and instructive putting this issue together as it has meant that we have had to delve into the past, think about the changing position of the journal, make difficult choices on the papers selected, and reflect on the contribution of Built Environment to urban planning.

History

As stated on the Wikipedia, Built Environment is a peer-reviewed academic journal focused on urban planning and related fields. It began in 1956 as Official Architecture and Planning and was published under that name until 1972. Between 1975 and 1978 it was known as Built Environment Quarterly and was then edited by David Pearce, conservation activist and one time Secretary of Secretary of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. Topics discussed in the journal include: ‘architecture, conservation, economic development, environmental planning, health, housing, regeneration, social issues, spatial planning, sustainability, urban design, and transport’.

As might be expected, the birth of the journal was not straightforward. It emerged from Official Architecture and Planning in 1972, when it was rebranded Built Environment and published monthly starting in April of that year with about seventy pages in each issue. The authors of the short papers read like a ‘who’s who’ of urban planning in the UK. This short-lived period ended in March 1975 (Volume 4) with the formation of the Society for the Built Environment, based at the Royal Institute of British Architects, ‘bringing together of the various environmental design professions’.

Built Environment Quarterly was then published by George Godwin Ltd at Catherine Street in London, with three issues in 1975, and a new format based on themes – Housing, Transport and Urban Renewal were the first three selected. Each consisted of about six short (about five pages) papers, followed by a series of topical features and a comments section. The volume numbers were reset at Volume 1 (1975) and this has provided the baseline for the next fifty years.

The publication pattern was set with about half of each quarterly issue devoted to papers on a particular theme, and the editors seemed able to find a way of soliciting short papers from well-known experts. But it appeared this was not a robust business plan, as it was dependent on maintaining a good flow of relevant and interesting (albeit short) papers. This placed a continuous pressure on the editors to deliver and may have contributed to the sale of the journal from the Builder Group to Kogan Page in 1978 and ‘Quarterly’ was removed from the title.

As can be seen from the announcement above, Peter Hall and Tom Hancock took over as Editors. But what the announcement failed to mention was the format changed slightly: the theme became the focus for each issue, and less space was allocated to practice and book reviews. There was also a new link with the Regional Studies Association, with a regular section on regional planning, practice and methodology – a link that ended in 1985. Another development not mentioned in the announcement was that Louis Hellman (https://www.louishellman.co.uk/) agreed to provide a cartoon for each issue ‘illustrating’ the issue’s theme. This he did brilliantly from Volume 4 no. 4 to Volume 39, no. 4, and we have reproduced several examples in this issue.

The final piece of this complicated history of Built Environment was the establishment of Alexandrine Press (https://www.alexandrinepress.co.uk) in 1979 and their acquisition of the journal from Kogan Page in 1980. This change was seamless as the same editorial team continued to manage the journal. Tom Hancock left in 1980 to build the Milton Keynes peace pagoda and pursue other interests. Peter continued as editor for forty years. In 1983 he was joined by Mike Breheny who was replaced in 1993 by David Banister. Two editors became three in 2013 when Stephen Marshall joined Peter and David. Following Peter’s death in 2014 David and Stephen continued as Editors until they were joined by Lucy Natarajan in 2019.

Gradually over time, members of the Editorial Board and other experts took on the role of Guest Editor for each themed issue. This took some of the pressure off the Editors to select the authors for the papers, and to provide a continuous flow of papers on each topic. While the workload could be spread more widely, the Editors still have a key responsibility to identify both the theme for each issue and then to select the most suitable Guest Editor. The active support of the Editorial Board was important here. Help and guidance to the Guest Editors was important to maintain the quality of the papers, the range of topics covered, the increasingly global scope of the journal, and the necessity to publish quarterly.

Built Environment has maintained its pattern of publishing quarterly, but the size of each issue has been increased substantially. For the first thirty years, the annual page count has been between 300 and 350 pages, but this was expanded over the next decade to over 500 pages (+50 per cent). It now stands at about 700 pages (+40 per cent), meaning that the page count has doubled over the fifty years.

Built Environment: Interpretation and Themes

The built environment is one thing, how people dwell in it another.

Richard Sennett, 2018

The term ‘built environment’ is complex. It is inherently inter-disciplinary and encompasses a wide range of subjects, disciplines, and professions. This in turn leads to a diversity of academic treatment, from discursive social science writing to more quantitative and analytic approaches. In Built Environment, with its different theme for each issue, our aim is to address this diversity.

Further, the themed nature of the journal enables a breadth and depth of treatment of one topic in single issue, in both print and online. This is made possible with the help of our guest editors, who are specialized in a particular field – possibly a field or fields at the margins of or outside the traditional territory of the built environment per se (e.g. geography, economics, public policy).

Examples of typically inter-disciplinary issues include ‘Marketplaces as an Urban Development Strategy’ (Volume, 39, no. 2): a market is more than a building, more than a public space; it is also a land use and locus of economic activity, housed in a particular kind of physical setting. Another example is commuting, which is not just about travel, but also separation of land uses, about cities and suburbs, home and work (Changing Patterns of Commuting, Volume 45, no. 4); while ‘Homes that Work’ (Volume, 49, no. 3) is additionally concerned with the intimate spaces of home working, a fusion of architecture, society and culture.

Indeed, the themed approach allows us to include topics that are not normally regarded as within the built environment sphere, but intersect with it, such as violence (Volume, 40, no. 3), big data (Volume 42, no. 3), cognition (Volume 44, no. 2), arts (Volume 46, no. 2) or liveability (Volume 48, no. 3).

The last ten years have seen a renewed prerogative for a geographically diverse treatment, addressing the Global South as well as the Global North. This is seen explicitly in the cases such as ‘Public Space if the Global North and South’ (Volume 48, no. 2), and geographically focused issues such as ‘Arab Cities after “The Spring”’ (Volume 40, no. 1) and ‘Urban Land Grabs in Africa’ (Volume 44, no. 4), but also in themes that are ‘universal’ in applicability but that have a substantially representation from the Global South, such as ‘Homes that Work’ (Volume 49, no. 3) and ‘Planning for Equitable Urban and Regional Food Systems’ (Volume 43, no. 3).

In addition, issues of inclusion have also received increasing attention, through ‘Inclusive Design: Towards Social Equity in the Built Environment’ (Volume 44, no. 1), ‘Women-led Urbanism’ (Volume 49, no. 4), and participatory approaches to planning (Volume 45, nos. 1 and 2).

Looking ahead, we anticipate further attention to the types of themes above, with the likelihood of greater attention to major societal challenges such as climate change, technologies such as artificial intelligence, as well as the future of built environment education and professions.

Our Seven Chosen Themes

We have chosen seven themes we regard as emblematic of Built Environment over the last fifty years:

Sustainability and the Environment
Urban Design
Inclusion
The Compact City
Technology
Regional Perspectives
Transport

For five of these themes we reproduce two papers (one earlier and one later) while in case of Technology there is just one paper and for Sustainability and the Environment three papers. Each theme is introduced with a brief commentary.

To represent Sustainability and the Environment we have chosen Environmental Impact Analysis. This seemed particularly appropriate as it was the first issue edited by Peter Hall and Tom Hancock.

There has always been a well-grounded critique of cost benefit analysis (CBA) for project assessment, as it necessitates making monetary valuations of the costs and benefits so that alternatives can be ranked. Environmental Impact Analysis (EIA) was developed to measure a much wider range of costs and benefits, using mainly non-monetary valuations. Built Environment has devoted three issues to this topic, and those papers selected reflect the basic methodology, progress made (over the intervening fifteen years), and the transition to strategic environmental assessment (in Japan). Analysis has made substantial progress from the classic Leopold Matrix (Leopold et al., 1971) to a much wider range of approaches monitoring, valuation, and participation (Glasson and Therivel, 2019). EIA has come of age, and it is now an essential part of project assessment, including the wider issues related to policies and programmes (Sadler and Verheem, 1996).

Urban Design has been a periodic theme in Built Environment. Two issues have explicitly addressed Urban Design (Theory and Practice in Urban Design, Volume 22, no. 4 and Urban Design Strategies in Practice, Volume 25, no. 4); other issues have significant urban design content (e.g. New Urbanism, Volume 29, no. 3; Urban Morphology and Design, Volume 37, no. 4). For this issue, we chose a pair of papers that focus on the more specialized sub-theme of Streets: Jan Gehl’s paper ‘The residential street environment’ (Volume 6, no. 1, 1980) and Vicinius Netto et al.’s paper asking ‘Does Architecture Matter to Urban Vitality?’ (Volume 48, no. 3, 2022).

The theme of Inclusion is expansive with issues touching on inclusive urban design and spaces and ways to greater equity, as well as the violence of exclusive practices and spaces. This theme is represented by papers from 1990 and 2023 that show the evolution of premises of diversity through studies of gendered lived experience of environments. That line was reprised to question institutions and practices in ‘Women and the Environment’ (Volume, 22, no. 1, 1996) and more recently ‘Women-led Urbanism’ (Volume 49, no. 4, 2023). Issues from other years focus on other social groups including children, with studies of younger people’s relationship with built space (Playgrounds in the Built Environment, Volume 25, no. 1, 1999; Children, Young People, and Built Environments, Volume 33, no.4, 2007).

In the 1990s the Compact City became a central concern in Europe as part of the sustainability debate as it was an issue where the EU could make a real contribution. Compactness and mixed use became symbolic of that process, which seemed viable in the smaller historic cities, typical of Europe, but not so appropriate for rapidly urbanizing global cities. Two issues of Built Environment have been devoted to the compact city (Volume 18, no. 4, 1992 and Volume 3, no. 1, 2010), and the papers selected here represent the original thinking and concerns, even at that time, on the advantages of compactness, and the situation later where the concepts have been applied in a megacity in the developing world [LN1] (Mumbai). The original optimism has been tempered with the reality of the megacity, suggesting that new thinking is now needed to understand the complex structures of global cities, not just in terms of their physical form, but also their rationality, inclusiveness, and opportunity (Breheny, 1992; Jacobs, 1961; Jenks et al., 2008).

For Technology we chose one aspect, Cyberspace, and reflect a single piece: Ken Friedman’s seminal paper ‘Building cyberspace: information, place and policy’ (Volume 24, nos.2/3, 1998) which was published roughly halfway through Built Environment’s fifty-year history.

Regions attract a distinctive perspective on built environments, and this theme has enormous relevance to international thinking on design and planning for sustainability. The papers from 2002 (Volume 28, no. 3, Islam and Built  Form: Studies Regional Diversity) and 2014 (Delta Urbanism: New Challenges for Planning and Design in Urbanized Deltas) reproduced here represent some of the research that used a Regional Perspective to explain how humans re-shape the world. Multiple issues, too many to list, have employed a regional perspective to delve into changing urbanisms, cultures, and ‘spatial development’ work of particular regions. These explorations provide a wealth of evidence on the shape of regions, for instance of those that shrank (Understanding Shrinkage in European Regions, Volume 38, no. 2, 2012) and those that expanded upwards (High-Rise Urbanism in Contemporary Europe, Volume 43, no. 4, 2017) and outwards (Burton and Gill, Volume, 41, no. 4, 2015) over the years.

Finally, Transport has always been prominent in the themes explored by Built Environment, often seen as a problem issue in urban planning, but more recently as a solution to improving quality of life and the urban environment. The early views were primarily concern with ‘civilizing’ the car, as it was realized that cities would have to adapt to the car or vice versa (Buchanan, 1963). Since then, the wheel has turned through interest in traffic management, demand management and pricing. But even then, the car continued to dominate, and city planners then promoted high quality public transport, and this provides the theme for our first transport paper, building on the Swiss Cities model (Kaufmann, 2004). Over the most recent past, with new debates on climate change, sustainability, accessibility and the rights of citizens over the ownership of city space, the debate has become richer with the advent of cleaner, rented, low speed personal transport. Our second transport paper examines the potential looking at North America (Shaheen et al., 2021).

Prospective – The Next Fifty years

To complete the picture given in this Golden Anniversary celebration, we give a perspective on the future direction for the journal and for journal publishing more generally. The most important urban planning issue is the growth in human population and the consequent impact on the environment and consumption. This population growth will not be distributed evenly across the globe: most growth will take place in Africa, and to a lesser extent in South America and South East Asia. That population will be increasingly living in cities and become ‘urban’, working in the service and technology sectors. Such a future seems clear, but the implications are less transparent with huge uncertainties. For Built Environment this means that the scope for new themes becomes vast, as population growth has substantial direct and indirect impacts on urban areas and their hinterlands.

Cities will become larger with the megacity and the megacity region, leading to complex structures and linear cities along public transport axes or in rings linked by high-speed rail – this is already happening in China and Brazil. City regions may develop more amorphously without strong planning interventions. But it not just city form and our understanding of the advantages of different ‘city types’, but also the value of open and green spaces, the functions of those cities, and the value of face-to-face contact – it could be argued that if cities cease to be places where people get together and socialise, then do they have any value? If the future is one of remote working, and online recreation and shopping, then the city population can be dispersed. An essential element here, and one that has not been addressed by Built Environment, is the importance of migration to the city and the wider trends of international migration. The city is often seen as being attractive, offering well-paid jobs and a higher standard of living. There are strong pull factors and historic associations play a part, but equally people are pushed from rural areas and from overseas whether from man-made or natural disasters or in search of a better life. Conversely, remote working enabling people to live and work in villages and the rural hinterland could blur the sense of self-containment of both cities and peripheral settlements, so that the concept of ‘town–country’ becomes a hybrid of the two in distinct locations rather than an intermediate blend of two.

Related to these issues are the huge inequalities between and within nations, cities, and smaller urban areas, not just in terms of income levels but also of perceived opportunities. In general, those living in cities are better off, they are better educated, and they have better access to health and other public services. They are also more engaged in and knowledgeable of the rapid changes in technology in all its forms, and they are also better connected and have a higher quality infrastructure (transport, energy and water). This image of the city makes them attractive, but cities are also places of huge inequality that include maldistribution of the same factors mentioned above, together with the added disadvantages of poor quality but expensive housing, high levels of pollution, loss of community, and high levels of crime. These issues will provide a rich source of material for Built Environment and some of them need to be revisited to determine whether city life is improving for all, both in established historical cities and in the controlled and uncontrolled expansion of megacities globally.

Cities are growing and the inequalities are becoming more apparent. But cities are also dependent on the global environment due to their enormous ‘footprints’. Cities need feeding and they need (clean) energy, green spaces, and water. But they produce huge amounts of waste (and pollution) – they are centres of consumption. That consumption is best illustrated by these needs plus the ubiquitous availability of internet connectivity.

City demand for all three of these essentials is increasing exponentially, yet the necessary investment in providing them is not keeping pace. At the same time, the expansive trends are problematic and alternative planning responses will be highly significant. These topics are all suitable themes for future issues of Built Environment.

The global climate crisis also has both direct and indirect impacts on the city. As sea levels rise, many coastal cities become vulnerable to flooding, and this together with the increasing frequency and severity of weather events have increased the costs of mitigation and adaptation. Cities also act as ‘heat islands’ with the built form absorbing heat, making them warmer than the surrounding areas, and they have levels of pollution that exceed the WHO safe limits. Higher temperatures and pollution have health implications for the elderly and the young, and they increase the numbers of premature deaths, as well as overall levels of sickness and disease. Cities were unhealthy places to live 150 years ago, and they may increasingly become so again in the next fifty years. This underscores the importance of research around potential spaces and technologies for future living environments.

In the coming years we can expect increased attention to nature-based solutions, ecosystem services, and biophilia, which could also lead to new relationships between the natural and built environments, as concepts of ‘nature’ and different species cohabiting with humans are taken into consideration.

We can also expect advances in technology to bring further innovations driving change in the built environment, building on recent trends, from transport technologies (e.g. alternative fuels; drones) and operations (e.g. mobility as a service) through the exploitation of artificial intelligence and ‘urban science’ to social media (both as a behavioural setting and use as a research resource). As ever, the connectedness of these things is more difficult to predict than the individual advances; while fifty years ago one might have predicted advanced computation or ‘flying cars’, it would have been less easy to predict the use of a pocket-sized computer (smart phone) to gain real-time public transport information or order a cab from on board a delayed train, or to use data from social media postings to gain insights into the differential perception of place in the built environment.

Indeed, the next fifty years could even see the establishment of new off-world human-built environments, whether in space or on the Moon or Mars. Such developments could pioneer new kinds of building format, settlement unit and structure – underground and/or enclosed urbanism – according to the environments, their socio-political structure, and construction technology. The prospect of 3D printing of buildings could be synergistic with the creation of built environments in hostile environments where remote construction minimizing human labour is the priority.

There is no shortage of critical topics for future issues of Built Environment, some of which are mentioned here, but others will naturally emerge over time. The difficulty may be in identifying relatively self-contained, yet interesting themes that can be addressed with a set of internationally sourced papers. The complexity and interconnectedness of global topics related to urban policy and planning issues provide difficult but interesting opportunities.

And that complexity and interconnectedness feature in our first issue for 2025 devoted to Postgrowth Planning. Edited by Dan Durrant, Yvonne Rydin and Marjan Marjanovic, the issue will address the implications of a built environment where economic growth is no longer the desirable aim of planning, where resources are limited, and where their allocation cannot be driven purely by financial returns on investment. The contributors come from the range of disciplines involved in constructing, designing, managing, and governing the built environment and the issue will be published in late January/early February, a little earlier than our usual schedule.

REFERENCES

• Andres, L. and Natarajan, L. (2024) Towards Women-Led Urbanism. Built Environment, 49(4).
• Appert, M., Drozdz, M. and Harris, A., (2017) High-Rise Urbanism in Contemporary Europe, Built Environment, 43(4).
• Bontje, M. and Musterd, S. (2012). Understanding Shrinkage in European Regions. Built Environment, 38(2).
• Brand, J. (1996) Sustainable Development: The International, National and Local Context for Women. Built Environment, 22(1).
• Breheny, M. (ed.) (1992) Sustainable Development and Urban Form, London: Pion.
• Buchanan, C. (1963) Traffic in Towns, London: HMSO.
• Burton, P. and Gill, J. (2015) Suburban Spaces, Suburban Cultures. Built Environment, 41(4).
• Friedman, K. (1998) Building cyberspace: Information, place and policy. Built Environment, 24(3/4), pp. 83–103.
• Gehl, J. (1980) The residential street environment. Built Environment, 6(1), pp. 51–61.
• Glasson, J and Therivel, R (2019) Introduction to Environmental Impact Assessment, 5th ed. London: Routledge.
• Jacobs, J (1961) The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Vintage.
• Jenks, M, Kozak, D and Takkonon, P (eds) (2008) World Cities and Urban Form: Fragmented, Polycentric, Sustainable? London: Routledge.
• Kaufmann, V. (2004) Social and political segregation of urban transportation: the merits and limitations of the Swiss cities model. Built Environment, 30(2), pp. 146–152.
• Kraftl, P., Horton, J. and Tucker F. (2014) Children, Young People and Built Environments, Built Environment, 33(4).
• McKendrick, J.H. (1999) Playgrounds in the Built Environment, Built Environment, 25(1).
• Netto, V. M., Saboya, R. and Vargas, J. C. (2022) Does architecture matter to urban vitality? Buildings and the social life of streets and neighbourhoods. Built Environment, 48(3), pp. 317–340.
• Reeves D. (1996) Women and the Environment, Built Environment, 22(1).
• Sadler, B and Verheem, R (1996) Strategic Environmental Assessment. The Hague: Dutch Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment.
• Shaheen, S., Cohen, A. and Broader, J. (2021) What’s the ‘big’ deal with shared micromobility? Evolution, curb policy, and potential developments in North America, Built Environment, 47(4), pp. 499–514.