Housing aims to provide society with comfortable, healthy living spaces and its built form ultimately shapes the built environment. Consequently, its design, operation, and interactions with infrastructure systems are a powerful determinant of environmental, economic, and social impacts. This paper highlights the importance of assessing housing built forms by answering ten critical research questions. Throughout this paper, we refer to housing built form as the physical properties (e.g., residential density, floor area ratio) of residential buildings and their interactions with adjoining properties (e.g., setback, shading). In Q1 and Q2, we summarize the planning policies that led to current built forms associated with housing and their sustainability impacts, with specific focus on North America and some countries in Australasia. Q3 describes the adverse sustainability impacts of detached single-family houses, while Q4 examines future economic, demographic, and climatic changes that will warrant rethinking housing built form. Q5 summarizes the methods to assess the environmental, economic, and social impacts of housing built form. In Q6 and Q7, we discuss various system boundaries and functional units that are considered for housing life cycle assessment. Q8 and Q9 describe the temporal uncertainty and contextual circumstances underlying housing projects that need to be considered in life cycle assessments. Lastly, Q10 provides a summary of future policy directions to promote housing with lower environmental impact. This paper supports decision-making around meeting housing targets without compromising the environment.

中文翻译：

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房屋建筑形式对环境影响的十个问题

住房旨在为社会提供舒适、健康的居住空间，其建筑形式最终塑造建筑环境。因此，其设计、运行以及与基础设施系统的相互作用是环境、经济和社会影响的重要决定因素。本文通过回答十个关键研究问题，强调了评估住房建筑形式的重要性。在本文中，我们将住房建筑形式称为住宅建筑的物理属性（例如，住宅密度、建筑面积比）及其与相邻属性的相互作用（例如，退缩、遮阳）。在第一季度和第二季度，我们总结了导致当前与住房相关的建筑形式及其可持续性影响的规划政策，特别关注北美和澳大利亚的一些国家。第三季度描述了独立式单户住宅对可持续性的不利影响，而第四季度则研究了未来的经济、人口和气候变化，这些变化将需要重新思考住房的建造形式。 Q5 总结了评估住房建筑形式的环境、经济和社会影响的方法。在 Q6 和 Q7 中，我们讨论了住房生命周期评估所考虑的各种系统边界和功能单元。 Q8 和 Q9 描述了在生命周期评估中需要考虑的住房项目的时间不确定性和背景情况。最后，Q10 总结了促进环境影响较小的住房的未来政策方向。本文支持在不损害环境的情况下实现住房目标的决策。