Taking Stock of Built Environment Stock Studies: Progress and Prospects

Built
environment stocks (buildings and infrastructures) play multiple
roles in our socio-economic metabolism: they serve as the backbone
of modern societies and human well-being, drive the material cycles
throughout the economy, entail temporal and spatial lock-ins on energy
use and emissions, and represent an extensive reservoir of secondary
materials. This review aims at providing a comprehensive and critical
review of the state of the art, progress, and prospects of built environment
stocks research which has boomed in the past decades. We included
249 publications published from 1985 to 2018, conducted a bibliometric
analysis, and assessed the studies by key characteristics including
typology of stocks (status of stock and end-use category), type of
measurement (object and unit), spatial boundary and level of resolution,
and temporal scope. We also highlighted the strengths and weaknesses
of different estimation approaches. A comparability analysis of existing
studies shows a clearly higher level of stocks per capita and per
area in developed countries and cities, confirming the role of urbanization
and industrialization in built environment stock growth. However,
more spatially refined case studies (e.g., on developing cities and
nonresidential buildings) and standardization and improvement of methodology
(e.g., with geographic information system and architectural knowledge)
and data (e.g., on material intensity and lifetime) would be urgently
needed to reveal more robust conclusions on the patterns, drivers,
and implications of built environment stocks. Such advanced knowledge
on built environment stocks could foster societal and policy agendas
such as urban sustainability, circular economy, climate change, and
United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.