The Blue Smart Specialization Challenges Towards the

The ‘blue economy’ embraces more than five million jobs and the gross added value in the second decade of this century is surpassing EUR half a trillion a year. Now when this growth even accelerates in many more sub-sectors the process goes driven in two ways. On one side, a wave of smart specialization strategies at regional and urban level is under way, in many cases incorporating the restorative economy elements. On the other side, changes just happened even without the respective strategies in the blue economy structure and challenge the established sectors. The purpose of this chapter of the book is to identify the main challenges of the smart specialization strategies at urban and regional level incorporating the blue growth elements that are met towards the restorative economy frames. The methods used are a literature and key policy documents review and some secondary data analysis over performed by the European Commission contractor investigation with reference to a project performed in the sector. As a conclusion the recommendation for sectoral specialization of the coastal areas and its cities’ economy in accordance with the innovative potential for blue growth was outlined, with the understanding it might be fragile due to the unsustainable economic activities in the seas.

Restorative Design for Heritage Requalification: Selected Roman Works

The theme is the urban re-qualification, applied in particular to the architectural heritage and the public space. The goal is the ongoing challenge of outlining a new perspective aimed at “common good” and sustainability. The instrument chosen is the “environmental technological design,” understood as a cultural, scientific, and social position, that is, as a position on the role of architecture. The contribution reiterates the urgency of restoring the transformative power of the design mission to the project, too often reduced to a set of technical compilation procedures. In the best cases, a position that is lost in the complication of procedures, in the extension of time, in the waste of economic and human resources. A crisis of the project as “anticipation” of progressive scenarios, precisely in the most acute, ever more serious phase, of the urgency of the reorganization of urban systems, with a view to environmental, social and economic sustainability. Not a recent urgency, today only brought to light, dramatically, by the reality of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Among the solutions, the design experimental research, well beyond the objective of flexibility, up to the notion of “functional indifference,” understood not as shapeless neutrality, but as the maximum functionality of spatial, architectural and urban quality.

How Rating Systems Support Regenerative Change in the Built Environment

Urban development principles have evolved from sustainability, where the focus was on limiting the negative impact of urban environment, to restorative and regenerative sustainability, where positive impact is needed on global social and ecological systems. This recent paradigm shift requires the development of new tools for practitioners, like design methodologies, new technologies, and assessment methods.To measure the impact of sustainability on the built environment, several building-scale assessment tools exist. The question is how these widespread rating systems support restorative change in the built environment.The main question of the research is answered in three methodological steps. First, the goals of restorative sustainability are summarized from the available extensive literature, including the topics of Place, Energy, Water, Well-being, Carbon, Resources, Equity, Education, and Economics. Then different rating tools (Living Building Challenge, WELL, LEED, BREEAM, DGNB) are analysed how the considered issues and indicators in these rating tools are connected to restorative goals. Then these indicators are assessed how they serve that goal.The result of this study shows the main strengths and gaps in current wide-spread international rating tools regarding their support of restorative sustainability.

Textile as Material in Human Built Environment Interaction

As human population grows in number, the amount of (organic and non-organic) waste materials has grown rapidly year by year.Changes of consumption and lifestyle have generated a higher waste amount. Waste management has become a significant issue in today’s society. In 2014, the EU countries registered 2.494 million tons of generated waste, which was an increase in growth of 2.8% compared with data from 2008. Different renewable materials are ending up as waste, such as glass, paper, plastic, textile, which may be used in a recycling process. This chapter will discuss these challenges with the focus on one of these materials, textiles, as building materials.We also introduce the perspective of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) aspects, and especially Human-Built Environment Interaction which will give some specific focus on textiles used as recycled materials. The result of the critical literature review in the area of textiles as building material from an HCI point of view suggest a set of interaction design dimensions that can be considered and applied on the usage of textiles for built environments.

Gender Matters! Thermal Comfort and Individual Perception of Indoor Environmental Quality: A Literature Review

The use of technology in construction has allowed a significant increase in comfort and the construction of energy-efficient buildings. However, for indoor environmental comfort, there is no universal standard that fits all. The indoor climate is perceived individually and the requirements are subjectively shaped. In this paper, a literature review is carried out to describe particular aspects relevant to gender. The aim is to raise awareness of these aspects in order to advance equality orientation as an integral part of planning and energy-efficient building concepts. The findings show that thermal comfort is an essential parameter, and up to 3 °C of differences between women and men were found. This difference is most evident in offices where women show a better cognitive performance in a warmer environment, while men do better in colder temperatures. Gender was also found to be an influencing factor of satisfaction with humidity, acoustic conditions, visual comfort, privacy, air quality, health aspects, light preferences, and brightness perception. Moreover, sick-building syndrome is more common among women. In conclusion, the literature confirms that essential indoor environmental quality (IEQ) parameters vary significantly across men and women and should be taken more into account in the practice of building technology.

Investigating, Implementing and Funding Regenerative Urban Design in a Post-COVID-19 Pandemic Built Environment: A Reading Through Selected UN Sustainable Development Goals and the European Green Deal

Before the world was impacted by COVID-19, progress towards the 2030 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) was already uneven, and a more focused attention was needed in most SDGs’ target areas. The pandemic abruptly disrupted plans and efforts towards urban transition, in some cases reverting decades of progress. The concept of resilience changed in 2020 and having to face severe health issues combined with increased socio-economic challenges in a climate change scenario, cities must urgently explore on how best to combine environmental goals with economic recovery and social justice, modifying on-going plans and initiatives, while re-arranging priorities. Acknowledging the impact that the pandemic will produce, for the years to come, on processes and initiatives towards a regenerative economy, this contribution describes most recent strategies aimed at urban transition in Europe, and critically discusses available options with respect to implementation and funding, within the framework of selected UN SDGs. Our conclusions challenge the ability of our modern society to put in practice the needed urgent actions, and call for a paradigm shift to prepare Europe to deal with climate disruptions, activate transition to a healthy and prosperous future within the planetary boundaries, and scale up solutions that will trigger transformations for the benefit of people and the environment.

3D Printing Technology Within a Regenerative Construction Framework

Abstract3D printing (3DP) is considered as a promising technology in construction industry due to a number of advantages that among others include fast and accurate construction, as well as elimination of formworks and material waste. Although 3DP technology is at an early stage of adoption in construction industry, its positive contribution towards a more sustainable construction approach is well acknowledged. Nevertheless, various constraints prevent its further establishment that include among others lack of knowledge among construction actors, premature investigation regarding techniques and material properties, as well as limited work on design optimization, cost, and environmental impact performance analysis. This chapter aims to contribute towards this direction by analysing the 3DP cost and environmental impact of a number of brick units, forming walls with different geometrical complexity. Results show that while walls’ complexity is increased, there are no significant changes in cost, global warming and primary energy consumption. In contrast, through the application of traditional construction processes, the result values would have been increased proportionally to the degree of complexity. This proves the potential of applying the 3DP technique to the construction of any structure at no extra cost and without increasing the environmental impact. Also, it provides an indication of its potential to be included within a regenerative construction framework.

Water Runoff and Catchment Improvement by Nature-Based Solution (NBS) Promotion in Private Household Gardens: An Agent-Based Model

Nature-based solutions (NBS) such as rainwater gardens and permeable paving can be deployed as an alternative to conventional urban gardens to improve cities’ resilience against increasing rainfall. This study describes the application of an agent-based model (ABM) to assess the role of private gardens toward the enhancement of water management by households. The ABM simulates the process of switching from “gray” (i.e., paved) to green gardens, taking into account the effect of “soft” (garden networks and gardening workshops) and “hard” (monetary) incentives. The ABM is supported by a water balance model to consider the effect of rainfall on soil water retention. Four different cities in Europe were analyzed: Szeged (Hungary), Alcalá de Henares (Spain), Metropolitan city of Milan (Italy), and Çankaya Municipality (Turkey). The results demonstrate that greening private gardens can generate impact on water run-off and catchment in cities in the order of 5–10%, reaching picks up to 20% in certain cases. While the proposed model is not devoid of limitations, the results provide useful insights in the ways different instruments (e.g., municipal subsidies and knowledge support) could assist with the greening of private gardens for NBS promotion to respond to cities’ water management challenges.

Axiomatic Design in Regenerative Urban Climate Adaptation

This chapter invokes the urban design community to provide transparency in design decision-making by discussing the role of design specifications and the production of evidence in enabling scrutiny and accountability of design proposals in relation to fulfilling sustainability goals and fighting climate change. It claims that original and verifiable regenerative design solutions emerge from clear design specifications supported by evidence, rather than normative sustainability alone. Evidence is understood as going beyond targets and extended to design specifications which are constantly tested in terms of flexibility and robustness, positively contributing to the ecosystem they are inserted in, once further decomposed towards a more detailed design proposal. Principles from Axiomatic Design are proposed as an approach to develop design specifications for regenerative climate adaptive urban design. This work attempts to illustrate the use of this method to practitioners through an example in which human-centric needs, values and aspirations are transformed into joint urban air pollution and outdoor bioclimatic comfort design requirements to be fulfilled by greenery, a regenerative design parameter common to both knowledge domains at the pedestrian layer of the urban environment.

, Tourism and the UN Sustainable Development : The Case of Croatia

The chapter analyses the quality of managing cultural heritage sites in Croatia, particularly those inscribed to the UNESCO World Heritage List, which are under growing pressure of overtourism. The analysis was performed by using qualitative and quantitative data on visitors of the UNESCO heritage and the most important impacts of tourism on destination areas, compared to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) focused on tourism and heritage. The study investigates the state of safeguarding, protecting and valorizing cultural heritage in relevant documents and in practice, focusing on Dubrovnik as a case study area. The analysis revealed the insufficient plans for managing UNESCO World Heritage Sites in relevant documents and in the field, as well as lack of monitoring of tourism impacts. The selected cases in Croatia confirmed that the most common way for heritage valorization is within the framework of tourism (McKercher and du Cros, Cultural tourism. The partnership between tourism and cultural heritage management, Routledge, New York/London, 2009), where heritage is most often associated with sustainable tourism. However, desirable regenerative tourism, that repairs the harm that has already been done, is still far from the present situation and it will require much effort in its planning, designing tools for its implementation and its management to achieve it in the near future.