Dear colleagues,
we have still a few places left in the working group "Defining
sustainability in the built environment" which is part of the Nordic
Environmental Social Science Conference in Trondheim, 9 - 11 June, 2015).
Here is the call (which has not yet been posted here):
>8>8>8>8>8>8>8>8>8>8>8>8>8>8>8>8>8>8>8>8>8>8>8>8>8>8>8>8>8>8>8
Governments all over the world have reacted to energy and climate
related challenges with ambitious policies aimed at reducing the built
environment’s environmental impact. With the general direction given in
influential national and transnational policy documents such as the
European directive on the energy performance of buildings (EPBD), what
it is exactly that should be done to make the built environment more
sustainable is currently explored by lawmakers, policy makers,
politicians, and researchers but also by the broad variety of
professionals involved in construction.
In the course of these efforts to transform policy goals into actual
buildings, streets, bridges, neighbourhoods, and cities, qualities like
being “sustainable”, “smart”, “resilient”, “efficient”, “neutral”,
“passive”, “active”, “zero”, “nearly zero”, “plus”, “outstanding”,
“platinum”, etc. are now ascribed to the built environment. These
characteristics each to varying degrees allow for a certain imprecision
but they are still based on clearly distinguishable philosophies,
priorities, concepts, definitions, and solutions. In addition to
influencing design and implementation processes, these different
approaches and their underlying assumptions profoundly shape the results
of sustainability assessments and evaluations of new or existing structures.
For this session we invite contributions that explore the wide range of
possible ways of defining, standardizing, categorizing, evaluating,
measuring and monitoring sustainability in the built environment. This
includes but is not limited to the discussion of the role of assessment
tools and methods used as well as analyses of negotiations and
controversies around how to achieve what kind of sustainability. We are
also interested in the role definitions like ‘nearly zero energy
buildings’ play in the governance of socio-technical change in the built
environment, how those standards and definitions are used to enrol and
position different stakeholders and actor groups and to which extent
they are drivers of change towards a more sustainable building sector.
Organisers:
Thomas Berker, Department for Interdicsiplinary Studies of Culture,
NTNU, Norway
Harald Rohracher, Department of Thematic Studies – Technology and Social
Change, Linköping university, Sweden
>8>8>8>8>8>8>8>8>8>8>8>8>8>8>8>8>8>8>8>8>8>8>8>8>8>8>8>8>8>8>8
(Extended) deadline for abstracts: 10 January 2015
http://ness2015.rural.no/
BESTS is a mailing list for researchers working at the intersection of STS and the built environment. It is a forum for discussion and a platform to circulate information about conferences, calls for papers, publications, jobs etc.
All list members are welcome to post simply by sending an email to bests[at]jiscmail.ac.uk from the email account with which they are subscribed.
To subscribe, send the command "SUBSCRIBE BESTS forename surname" to LISTSERV[at]jiscmail.ac.uk; to unsubscribe, send the command "UNSUBSCRIBE BESTS". Subscription management is also possible on www.jiscmail.ac.uk/bests.
To reach the list managers (Ralf Brand & Andy Karvonen) personally, write to BESTS-request[at]jiscmail.ac.uk.
|