scholarly journals The Sustainability of Living in a “Green” Urban District: An Emergy Perspective

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (14) ◽  
pp. 5661
Author(s):  
Daniel Bergquist ◽  
Daniela Garcia-Caro ◽  
Sofie Joosse ◽  
Madeleine Granvik ◽  
Felix Peniche
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Urban Policy ◽  
Urban Sustainability ◽  
Resource Consumption ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Urban District ◽  
Environmental Support ◽  
Emergy Synthesis ◽  
Policy And Planning

While urban areas hold great potential for contributing to sustainable development, there is a critical need to better understand and verify what measures improve urban sustainability. To achieve this, this project implements emergy synthesis to evaluate the environmental support to a building—called Smaragden—located in a certified “green” urban district in Uppsala, Sweden. Inputs to the building’s construction and maintenance phases are accounted for, as are flows supporting the residents’ everyday practices (i.e., urban life), on a yearly per capita basis. In this way, the relative importance of lifestyle issues versus the built environment is quantified and compared. Key focus areas are identified where efficiency and sustainability gains are most likely. The emergy synthesis detailed the top contributors to urban resource consumption and revealed that both the lifestyle and built environment in Smaragden are highly unsustainable, ranking poorly in terms of the emergy indices calculated, and, when considered from a global emergy perspective, overshooting resource consumption by more than 70 times. The paper therefore concludes that interdependencies of urban districts on systems at larger scales of society and environment need to be explicitly addressed and actively incorporated in urban policy and planning, and that design interventions are hence grounded in a systems perspective on urban sustainability.

Individualizing Civic Responsibility

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gordon C.C. Douglas
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Values ◽  
Service Provision ◽  
Urban Policy ◽  
Civic Responsibility ◽  
Local Service ◽  
Market Driven ◽  
Bus Stops ◽  
Street Furniture ◽  
Policy And Planning

Chapter 3 demonstrates that DIY urban designers are largely motivated by failings they perceive in urban policy and planning. Placing them in this context is essential for interpreting the phenomenon. While do-it-yourselfers respond to the problems they see in creative ways, their individualistic tactics of doing so introduce problems of their own. The chapter focuses on bus stops to consider the lack of sidewalk seating in many cities, the privatization of street furniture, and concerns with local service provision. In trying to correct problems they see, do-it-yourselfers always impart their own personal and cultural values, and some DIY alterations can be selfish and anti-social in impact. The chapter interrogates DIY urbanism in the context of the “neoliberalized” city, arguing that even as the practices aim to counter the ill effects of market-driven planning, they can also reinforce an individualistic, undemocratic logic in placemaking.

Resilience to climate change in Ghanaian cities and its implications for urban policy and planning

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry Mensah ◽  
Owusu Amponsah ◽  
Patrick Opoku ◽  
Divine Kwaku Ahadzie ◽  
Stephen Appiah Takyi
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Urban Policy ◽  
Policy And Planning

scholarly journals City intelligence for enhancing urban performance value: a conceptual study on data decomposition in smart cities

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 191-222
Author(s):  
Karima Kourtit
Keyword(s):  
Urban Planning ◽  
Urban Policy ◽  
Urban Governance ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Urban System ◽  
Current Data ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Data Decomposition ◽  
Blowing Up ◽  
Technology Age

AbstractThe contemporary ‘digital age’ prompts the need for a re-assessment of urban planning principles and practices. Against the background of current data-rich urban planning, this study seeks to address the question whether an appropriate methodological underpinning can be provided for smart city governance based on a data-driven planning perspective. It posits that the current digital technology age has a drastic impact on city strategies and calls for a multi-faceted perspective on future urban development, termed here the ‘XXQ-principle’ (which seeks to attain the highest possible level of quality for urban life). Heterogeneity in urban objectives and data embodied in the XXQ-principle can be systematically addressed by a process of data decomposition (based on a ‘cascade principle’), so that first, higher-level urban policy domains are equipped with the necessary (‘big’) data provisions, followed by lower-ranking urban governance levels. The conceptual decomposition principle can then be translated into a comprehensive hierarchical model architecture for urban intelligence based on the ‘flying disc’ model, including key performance indicators (KPIs). This new model maps out the socio-economic arena of a complex urban system according to the above cascade system. The design of this urban system architecture and the complex mutual connections between its subsystems is based on the ‘blowing-up’ principle that originates from a methodological deconstruction-reconstruction paradigm in the social sciences. The paper advocates the systematic application of this principle to enhance the performance of smart cities, called the XXQ performance value. This study is not empirical, although it is inspired by a wealth of previous empirical research. It aims to advance conceptual and methodological thinking on principles of smart urban planning.

Artificial Planning Experience by Means of a Heuristic Cell-Space Model: Simulating International Migration in the Urban Process

1995 ◽  
Vol 27 (10) ◽  
pp. 1647-1665 ◽  
Author(s):  
J Portugali ◽  
I Benenson
Keyword(s):  
Urban Policy ◽  
Initial Conditions ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Town Planning ◽  
Space Model ◽  
Self Organized ◽  
A Cell ◽  
Policy And Planning ◽  
The City ◽  
Theory And Model

We suggest considering the city as a complex, open, and thus self-organized system, and describing it by means of a cell-space model. A central property of self-organizing systems is that they are not controllable—not by individuals, nor by economic, political, and planning institutions. The city, in this respect, is complex and untamable. Inability to recognize and accept this property is one of the reasons for the difficulties and problems of modernist town planning. The theory and model we present are built to describe the urban process as a historical one in which, given identical initial conditions, each simulation run is unique and never fully repeats itself. From the point of view of urban policy and planning, our heuristic model can guide decisionmakers by answering the following question: ‘given the initial conditions of an inflow of new immigrants (that is, from the ex-USSR), what possible urban scenarios can result, and what are their global structural properties?’.

Identifying Design Interventions in Cities for Urban Sustainability

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohit Arora ◽  
Felix Raspall ◽  
Arlindo Silva
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Research Methods ◽  
Urban Growth ◽  
Design Research ◽  
Urban Sustainability ◽  
Descriptive Study ◽  
Urban Systems ◽  
Demolition Waste ◽  
Material Reuse

Cities have been the focus of recent sustainability and climate change mitigation efforts primarily because of unprecedented urban growth and ever-increasing resources consumption. A worrying trend has been the ever-decreasing life of buildings in cities because of premature building obsolescence. Premature building obsolescence has been cited as the major driver of demolition waste which accounts for more than 40% of total waste generated annually. This waste stream poses a bigger challenge as the pressure on natural resources increases with urban growth. A traditional way of looking at the urban sustainability has been from the perspective of the environmental sciences and waste management methods. Analyzing urban areas with design science perspectives could provide novel insights to improve existing resource consumption patterns and transform sustainability growth in cities. This study focuses on the problem of demolition waste arising from the premature building obsolescence in cities. It applies a design research methodology framework for identifying existing problems associated with demolition waste and generating strategies to transform cities into more sustainable urban systems. In the problem clarification phase, a detailed literature review was supported with stakeholder’s interviews to identify the state-of-art for building demolition process and demolition waste. Research was further extended to descriptive study-I phase to carry out a demolition case study and generate support tools to enable transformation in the existing scenario for achieving a desired state. Singapore, a dense city state of South-East Asia has been taken as a case study in this research. Results show that applying design research methods could help open-up a new dimension to solve urban sustainability challenge for built environment. It highlights that material reuse could lead to significant improvement in the built environment sustainability but the challenge associated with realization of material reuse practice needs to be addressed. Descriptive study-I concludes with the strategies on creating a reuse market through entrepreneurial innovation and an alternative material supply chain of secondary materials for regional housing demand. These results highlight the role of design research methods for tackling complex systems level problems in cities.

scholarly journals Making a Building Smart with a Co-Created and Continuously Evolving Enjoyable Service Entity—Insights from a Collaborative Study

Smart Cities ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Maaria Nuutinen ◽  
Eija Kaasinen ◽  
Jaana Hyvärinen ◽  
Airi Mölsä ◽  
Sanni Siltanen
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Design Thinking ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Collaborative Study ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Smart Services ◽  
Smart Building ◽  
Quality Of Urban Life

Buildings shape cities as those cities grow from and nurture people living and working within the built environment. Thus, the conceptualization of smart building should be brought closer to the smart city initiatives that particularly target ensuring and enhancing the sustainability and quality of urban life. In this paper, we propose that a smart building should be interlinked with a smart city surrounding it; it should provide good experiences to its various occupants and it should be in an ongoing state of evolving as an ecosystem, wherein different stakeholders can join to co-produce, co-provide and co-consume services. Smart buildings require a versatile set of smart services based on digital solutions, solutions in the built environment and human activities. We conducted a multiphase collaborative study on new service opportunities guided by a Design Thinking approach. The approach brought people, technology, and business perspectives together and resulted in key service opportunities that have the potential to make the buildings smart and provide enjoyable experience to the occupants who support their living and working activities in smart cities. This paper provides the resulting practical implications as well as proposes future avenues for research.

scholarly journals UNDERSTANDING POSTMODERNISM: NORTHERN BLOCKS OF PODIL

2019 ◽  
pp. 9-26
Author(s):  
Oleksandr Anisimov
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Built Environment ◽  
Life Span ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Housing Estate ◽  
Late Modernism ◽  
Industrial Zone ◽  
Architectural Production ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Architectural Modernism

Reevaluation of Soviet heritage is a contested topic nowadays. At this moment debates are happening about the attempts to conserve the projects of High Modernism in the USSR of the 1970s and 1980s or even to designate them as heritage. In this article, however, the author attempts to reveal another dimension: postmodern architecture within the life span of the Soviet Union. The case discussed in the article is a housing estate “4blocks” located on the edge of the industrial zone in the Podil district in Kyiv, Ukraine. Podil area was spared from being rebuilt according to the modernist planning proposal in 1968. Afterwards, the district became a testing ground for experimental projects, part and parcel of which is the “4blocks” housing. One can perceive this project being a watershed between different periods of late modernism and postmodernism because of the specific architectural approach and the influence this project exerted on the following architectural production. In the article, the unique conditions which allowed the team of architects to work with unprecedented freedom are discussed. In what way did architects reflect on and use international influences in their projects? How did they work with the local peculiarities of landscape, materials, built environment and archaeology? The article also touches upon the topic of the change in approaches toward the historic urban areas in the late USSR. To highlight the parallels between local and international contexts and reflect on the resulting project the author uses the then-contemporary poststructuralist philosophy. Similarities of the concepts put forward by the philosophy in its critique of architectural Modernism and those used by the authors in “4blocks” is striking. One can conclude that Ukrainian Soviet architecture evolved into a variety of different styles in the mid-1980-s, and this project can be considered a vivid example of one of such styles, so-called postmodernism.            

scholarly journals The Model’s Limitations. What ‘Urban Sustainability’ for Port-au-Prince? European Urban Projects Put to the Test by the Haitian City

2014 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 41-56
Author(s):  
Marie Redon
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Urban Planning ◽  
Urban Policy ◽  
Urban Sustainability ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Sustainable City ◽  
Temporal Discontinuity ◽  
City Model ◽  
Systemic Functioning

In 2010, the capital of Haiti was devastated by an earthquake that seemed to provide the opportunity for the country, as well as foreign donors, to put Port-au-Prince on the track of an ordered, planned urban policy, in line with its multi-risk context. Prior to the earthquake, the lack of a legal framework for urban planning was called into question. In its wake, speeches making the capital the emblem of a new ‘sustainable’ start have flourished. The European Union, the main donor of funds for Haiti, has embarked on a programme of support for reconstruction, but with what results three years later? The paper proposes to approach the limitations of the ‘sustainable city’ model, conditioned by spatiotemporal continuity. The systemic functioning underlying urban sustainability clashes with the context of Port-au-Prince, where spatial division and temporal discontinuity are determinant. In spite of itself, aid and its operation by projects, seems to enforce urban fragmentation and dissonance.

Post-war tourism as an urban reconstruction strategy case study: Khorramshahr

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seyed Mehdi Mirisaee ◽  
Yahaya Ahmad
Keyword(s):  
Mixed Method ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Urban Policy ◽  
Urban Tourism ◽  
Probability Method ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
The Core ◽  
Core Components ◽  
Post War

Purpose Tourism development has been perceived as a promoter of city restoration and can also affect the post-war city reconstruction. Questions on how to reconstruct ruined buildings and urban areas through a post-war tourism-oriented approach based on the expectations of residents and tourists profound answers. The purpose of this paper is to adopt the sequential mixed method (qualitative and quantitative) with purposive sampling which is a non-probability method to investigate tourism-oriented approaches in the reconstruction of buildings and landmarks as the core components of urban tourism. Design/methodology/approach The study adopted the sequential mixed method (qualitative and quantitative) to investigate tourism-oriented approaches in the reconstruction of buildings and landmarks as the core components of urban tourism. Findings The findings of the study point that the preferred strategy for the reconstruction of damaged symbolic building is the preservation of the war effects in regard maintaining the buildings’ history to be considered by urban policy makers, urban designers, and authorities. Research limitations/implications The constraint was associated with the time-consuming nature of this type of research. Original documents of the research context and all the interview data were in the Persian language, making the translating process a time-consuming matter. Furthermore, data collection in the area located near the Iran-Iraq border (500 meters) presented a number of security caveats as limitations. Originality/value The research found a majority of tourists and the residents preferred tourism zone where the combination of post-war and natural attraction across riverside area. In other word, most considerable post-war attractions are those that combined with the appeal of the other tourism potentials like eco-leisure tourism. The preferred strategy for the reconstruction of damaged building reconstruction as post-war tourism attractions is the preservation of the war effects in regard maintaining the buildings history rather than reconstruction as the most likely to pre-war conditions with less attention paid to the war effects.

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