Between Public Space and Private Living: Social Infrastructure Types as Enablers of Compact Housing    

CSBE news

Cities must reduce housing-related emissions while accommodating growing populations, yet for the housing sector efficiency improvements alone are insufficient to meet climate targets. Reducing private dwelling size is a high-impact solution, but it remains socially...

Housing Development Optimization: A Generalizable Framework with Case Studies for Toronto, Houston, and Perth

CSBE news

Pre-print: https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-9087554/latest Housing development planning demands methods that can balance its many potential environmental and economic impacts. Existing tools are custom-built for particular cities, and use data models that...

Material use and embodied GHG in renovation, retrofit, refurbishment, and adaptive reuse of existing buildings 

CSBE news

Pre-print: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6308998This paper examines material use, material intensity, and embodied greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions across five real refurbishment, renovation, and adaptive reuse projects in Canada and the U.S. The...

Carbonation-activated microstructural refinement in GUL-GGBFS blended mortars: shrinkage mitigation and strength enhancement

CSBE news

In line with Canadian low-carbon roadmaps, the cement and concrete sector need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to achieve net-zero targets by 2050. As clinker production is the primary source of cement-related CO2 emissions, reducing clinker content through...

Design Database Development and Comparative Performance Assessment of Connections in Cross-Laminated Timber Construction

CSBE news

The problem To grow housing without growing emissions, the AEC sector must rapidly scale lower-carbon, high-performance materials such as mass timber. Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) has become a leading panelized option for mid- to high-rise buildings as codes in Canada...

2025 Embodied GHG Symposium

CSBE news, Embodied GHG

On May 7, 2025, over 200 delegates gathered at the University of Toronto for the second Embodied GHG Symposium, co-hosted by Prof. Shoshanna Saxe, director of the Centre for the Sustainable Built Environment (CSBE) and the School of Cities. The symposium brought...

The Differences in how we build: Material use and intensity in small multi-units’ Buildings in Brazil, Canada, Greece, Nigeria and Switzerland

Building attribute, Carbon Emissions, Climate, CSBE news

Full article: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921344925004252?via%3DihubPre-print: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5247212 The growing global population is increasing the demand for housing at the same time as the ecological limits requires much more...

The climate limits of construction in over 1,000 cities

CSBE news, Urban sustainability

Pre-print (pre–peer review) version of the manuscript, available online: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5251970Rapid growth of urban construction threatens global climate targets. Cities have a lot of influence over what gets built and the associated greenhouse gas (GHG)...

Leveraging building permit data for large-scale embodied carbon and circularity assessment of residential building construction

CSBE news, Embodied GHG, Urban sustainability

Pre-print: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5248436 Most research on the environmental impact of buildings focuses on new construction, but growing interest in the circular economy has shown that renovating existing buildings can also be a valuable...

2025 Student Design Competition: Small housing for sustainability

CSBE news

Canada is simultaneously facing two disruptive 21st Century challenges 1) in light of a growing population, there is an increasing need for housing and supportive infrastructure and 2) the need to reduce consumption to achieve greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in line...