Toward a Resource-Efficient Built Environment A Literature Review and Conceptual Model

Amid continued growth in the building stock, the pursuit of sustainable buildings is dominated by a focus on carbon neutrality and green, often overlooking resource consumption and its contribution to greenhouse gas emissions and planetary degradation. Accordingly, this article seeks to highlight the importance of a resource-efficient built environment, which enables required functions to be delivered with less assets, and to put forward an approach toward this objective. In this regard, the circular economy (CE) concept seeks to extract more value from resources by using them for as long as possible, thereby increasing economic prosperity and employment while reducing waste, greenhouse emissions, and pollution. Thus far, application of CE principles has largely concentrated on the industrial sector, such as through industrial symbiosis and its extension to urban symbiosis/metabolism. Their application to cities and, in particular, the built environment has been limited and the body of literature is relatively undeveloped. Insight is offered into how this field of research might be developed and applied to enable a more resource-efficient, low-carbon built environment with socioeconomic benefits. It reviews literature on the CE and industrial ecology, their application to industrial and urban contexts, and the gaps pertaining to the building sector. A proposition for extending research and its application to the built environment is then put forward, encapsulated in a conceptual model. This is seen as an important first step in influencing policy makers and repositioning resource efficiency firmly on the sustainable and carbon neutral building agenda.