This study presents a summary of green building research through a bibliometric approach. A total of 2980 articles published in 2000–2016 were reviewed and analyzed. The results indicated that green building research had been concentrated on the subject categories of engineering, environmental sciences & ecology, and construction & building technology, and the keywords ‘building envelope’ and ‘living wall’ obtained citation bursts in the recent years.

Cooperation between public and private sector has achieved a remarkable widespread, in the Italian context, over the last two decades. Nevertheless, the increasing difficulty in accessing the capital market and the rising cost of funding sources, both noticeable over the past few years, led to a slowdown of Public–Private Partnership (PPP) initiatives. Meanwhile, the community is expressing new needs to be satisfied, such as the conversion of brownfields, the recovery of housing stock dating back to former times, as well as the refurbishment of public offices or schools.

The white paper puts forward recommendations for the coordinated enhancement of policies, codes, and regulations. It lay out a framework for guidance for the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA), the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW), and the Review Committees of the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) for the National Building Code (NBC), to harmonise their actions for healthy affordable housing in urban areas.