Does the rapid development of Chinaʹs urban residential buildings matter for the environment?

The exponential development of the urban real estate sector has become one of the main forces behind the development of Chinaʹs urban economy. The massive development of urban buildings, however, aggregates domestic environmental pressures. This study develops a four-quadrant matrix to elaborate the direct and indirect impacts on the construction and operation of urban residential buildings and applies a hybrid life cycle assessment (LCA) method to quantify the overall impacts. The results show that the total energy consumption, water consumption, chemical oxygen demand (COD), ammonia nitrogen (NH3–N), sulphur dioxide (SO2), and nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions of the overall life span of the urban residential buildings accounted for 5.4%, 5.6%, 3.0%, 3.5%, 3.9%, and 4.0%, respectively, of the national total in 2010. The indirect productive impacts accounted for 76.2% of the energy consumption, 86.4% of the water consumption, and 81.6% of the air pollution emission in 2010. With respect to the potential mitigation alternatives in the next five years, a scenario analysis suggests that a moderate slow-down of the construction of new buildings should be the highest priority, and promoting the application of greener housing materials and more advanced construction techniques should also be desired.