Rapid urbanization and the scale of new buildings constructed in Malaysia demonstrate an urgent need for change in policy and mode of operation. National energy demand increased by 54% since 1994, which subsequently amplified carbon emissions growth by 221% (per head of population), dubbed highest in the world. Malaysia ranked 66 in the 2009 Human Development Index (HDI); and 54 on the Environm...

Gasoline prices influence where households decide to locate by changing the cost of commuting. Consequently, the substantial increase in gas prices since 2003 may have reduced the demand for housing in areas far from employment centers, leading to a decrease in the price and/or quantity of housing in those locations relative to locations closer to jobs. Using annual panel data on ZIP codes and ...

In the early stages of a large-scale housing project, many interior design alternatives remain to be confirmed after a rough review of the costs. The project participants move on to the later stages of budgeting and construction without the exact information on the interior costs, and several occasions may arise when costs increase or time delays occur, driven by interior design specification c...

Current existing UK housing stock is responsible for 27% of UK CO2 emission. Refurbishing this housing stock can contribute to the 80% CO2 reduction by 2050 as a UK government target. However, there are barriers to refurbish a house due to high initial cost and lack of knowledge and skills in construction sector. To accomplish the CO2 reduction target, BIM should be utilized because BIM is capa...

U.S. metropolitan neighborhoods have become increasingly segregated by income over the past thirty years. The metropolitan areas with the largest rises in income segregation include a number of distressed cities in industrial decline, as well as a subset of rapidly growing metropolitan areas. I propose a simple model based on the notion that rising income inequality creates market pressure (or ...

The low-income housing tax credit (LIHTC) is the largest project-based housing subsidy in the United States. Within the program, private developers receive a subsidy in exchange for constructing apartment units that rent for a predetermined affordable rate. Because the subsidy requires apartment buildings to charge a lower rental rate, the opportunity cost of developing subsidized housing in a ...

Prescriptive planning models for affordable and subsidized housing policy design that have a local focus and which are intended to reflect aspects of current and/or best practices require detailed estimates of various structural parameters. These estimates should ideally reflect observations of actual housing units, households and development projects. We examine here three classes of structura...

Rapid increase in construction activities has resulted in shortage of conventional construction materials.In the present scenario, the high cost of conventional building materials is a major factor affecting housing delivery in the world.This has necessitated research into alternative materials of construction.The effective housing techniques deal with reduction in cost of construction as well ...

Over the past decade, housing costs have risen faster than incomes. The need for affordable rental housing has well outpaced the number of available units as well as funding allocations at the federal level. Local regulation and land use policies that increase the cost of subsidized, mixed-income housing construction and preservation have contributed to the affordability problem. To meet the af...