Abstract
The urban environment offers a large solar potential that remains untapped due to administrative (heritage constrains) and social barriers (architectural integration), as well as specific challenges like the limited rooftop’s structural resistance, the competing uses of surfaces, e.g., and inter-building effects (mutual shading, multiple reflections). The premise of this Research Topic is that the neighborhood is the appropriate scale for overcoming these barriers and facilitating the deployment of solar energy in modern cities. This Research Topic was proposed in the context of the IEA SHC Task 63 “Solar Neighborhood Planning”, which focuses on the design of neighborhoods with high solar accessibility for on-site energy production and daylighting. Also, this Research Topic is in line with the HELIOS project, funded by the Research Council of Norway, which aims to develop a digital platform to support to key players in urban energy planning to achieve the solar neighborhood standards, thus boosting the solar energy in the Nordic built environment.