Bridging Inclusion, Health, and Safety in the Built Environment: From Frameworks to Lived Outcomes

Abstract

The built environment is being asked to do more than it ever has. Climate pressure, demographic change, technological churn, and rising public expectations are converging on the same buildings, the same streets, and the same professional curricula. This editorial frames the present issue of ABC2: Journal of Architecture, Building, Construction, and Cities (2026–03) within that widening remit. The five papers gathered here move across very different terrain. Two address inclusion and accessibility in public and commercial space. Two address the design and education stages where downstream value is set. One examines the organisational reality of bringing immersive technology into construction safety. Read on their own, each is a careful study of one corner of the field. Read together, they tell a story about what holds the field back. Inclusion is not a checklist. Health is not an add-on. Industrialisation is not just manufacturing. Safety technology is not just technology. Each paper, in its own register, makes the point that progress depends on bridging technical capability with the people, institutions, and rules around it. This editorial draws out three cross-cutting themes that emerge across the five contributions. The first treats inclusivity and accessibility as relational, governance-bound conditions rather than fixed design outcomes. The second concerns the embedding of health, lifecycle, and integrative thinking into the education and early design stages. The third concerns the institutional, regulatory, and organisational readiness that determines whether innovation reaches the people it is meant to serve. The settings are global, the methods are plural, and the conclusion is shared. Built environment progress depends on bridging the gap between frameworks and lived outcomes, not on invention alone. The issue advances ABC2’s commitment to research that takes the social, technical, and institutional dimensions of the built environment seriously, and in equal measure.