The investigation of practice on green residential buildings in Shenzhen, China

Construction industry throughout the world has been one of the biggest contributors to the energy consumption and CO2 emission, while the world is facing serious energy resources shortage. Sustainable development of construction has been seen in the past years to reduce the negative impacts on the environment but at the same time to assure the function of buildings was properly delivered. Current literature showed that majority of studies focused on the commercial and public green buildings, while for the residential buildings, research was mainly focused in developed countries such as Great Britain, America and Australia. There were generally few studies on the specific high-rise residential buildings which are common in the big cities with high-density population in the developing countries. This paper will investigate the practice of green buildings for residents in Shenzhen, China, which is one of the six Tier 1 cities with urban population of more than 10 million and GDP of more than USD 24,000 per head. The study will investigate the attitude of potential customers and the satisfaction of existing customers towards them, and will identify the opportunities and challenges of green residential construction in Shenzhen from the point of view of developers and managers. The results will show some inside views of green residential buildings from driving forces (consumers), and provide additional suggestion for the developers and local governmental agency in the future development.