The Architecture and Urban Identity

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2017

Journal of Planning Education and Research, 2006

The EPA (2001) concludes in Our Built and Natural Environments that the urban form directly affects habitat, ecosystems, endangered species, and water quality through land consumption, habitat fragmentation, and replacement of natural cover with impervious surfaces. In addition, urban form affects travel behavior, which, in turn, affects air quality; premature loss of farmland, wetlands, and open space; soil pollution and contamination; global climate; and noise (Cervero 1998, 43-48). Moreover, growing evidence from around the world indicates that, owing to our excessive use of fossil fuels, especially in affluent countries, greenhouse gas concentrations are accumulating at an alarming rate. Prospects for the future are dire indeed, unless we act collectively to alter our energy-dependent lifestyles. Urgent changes are needed not only in our behavior but also in the design of the built form. The emergence of "sustainable development" as a popular concept (see Jabareen 2004) has revived discussion about the form of cities. Undoubtedly, it has motivated and provoked scholars and practitioners in different disciplines to seek forms for human settlements that will meet the requirements of sustainability and enable built environments to function in a more constructive way than at present. The concept of sustainable development has given a major stimulus to the question of the contribution that certain urban forms might make to lower energy consumption and lower pollution levels (U.K. Department of the Environment [DoE] 1996; Breheny 1992a, 138). This challenge has induced scholars, planners, local and international NGOs, civil societies, and governments to propose supposedly new frameworks for the redesigning and restructuring of urban places to achieve sustainability. These approaches have been addressed on different spatial levels: (1) the regional and metropolitan levels,

Climate Change - Research and Technology for Adaptation and Mitigation, 2011

This book chapter first looks at the timeline of important publications on sustainable design that emerged from different schools of thought, and how gradually the notion of Green Urbanism evolved. It then identifies the intertwined principles for achieving Green Urbanism and gives guidance for topics of further research in the field. 1.1 Different schools of thought: From green city to green building Over the last thirty-five years or so, an international debate on eco-city theory has emerged and has developed as a relevant research field concerning the future of urbanism and the city itself. During that time, a number of architectural schools of thought have been implemented worldwide. One such school is Technical Utopianism (a technological idealism that relied on the quick `techno-fix', as expressed, for instance, in the work of Archigram). Other early writing on green urbanism was available from Ebenezer Howard, whose 1902 book was entitled `Garden City of Tomorrow', and whose political and social agenda has recently made a comeback. Much later, in 1969, Reyner Banham pioneered the idea that technology, human needs and environmental concerns should be considered an integral part of architecture. Probably no historian before him had so systematically explored the impact of environmental engineering and services on the design of buildings. (Howard, 1902; Banham, 1969) Some other early significant writing on green urbanism has come from Lewis Mumford and Jane Jacobs-although they didn't call it green urbanism. From `Silent Spring' (by Rachel Carson, 1962), to Victor Olgyay's `Design with Climate' (1963), to Reyner Banham's `Architecture of the Well-tempered Environment' (1969), to Ian McHarg's `Design with Nature' (1969), to the pivotal publications by authors reconnecting urbanism with the climatic condition (such as Koenigsberger, Drew and Fry, or Szokolay, in publications in the 1970s and 80s), to the remarkable `Brundtland Report' (Brundtland, 1987); the important contributions from Robert and Brenda Vale (`Green Architecture: Design for an Energyconscious Future', 1991), and the `Solar City Charter' (Herzog et al, 1995/2007), the field of sustainable city theories and climate-responsive urbanism has constantly been expanded. An important contribution came from Guenther Moewes with his book `Weder Huetten noch Palaeste' (1995), which is a programmatic manifesto for designing and constructing www.intechopen.com Climate Change-Research and Technology for Adaptation and Mitigation 244 longer-lasting buildings. More recent theories for `Compact Cities' and `Solar Cities' (Burton, 1997; Jenks and Burgess, 2000; Lehmann, 2005) encapsulate the visions based on the belief that urban revitalization and the future of the city can only be achieved through `recompacting' and using clearly formulated sustainable urban design principles. These principles for achieving green urbanism have to be clearly defined and adjusted to an era of rapid urbanization, especially in the Asia-Pacific Region. In the 21st century we are working in an entirely new context, for which we need new types of cities. As noted by Ulrich Beck, we have arrived in `a new era of uncertainty', where energy, water and food supply are critical. 'We live in a world of increasingly non-calculable uncertainty that we create with the same speed of its technological developments.' (Beck, 2000) In 1972, the Club of Rome formulated, in its study 'Limits of Growth', the negative effect of sprawl and over-consumption of resources. Today, we know that uncontrolled development is a damaging exercise, and that urban growth should occur in existing city areas rather than on greenfield sites. Portland (Oregon, USA) was well ahead of most other cities when, in the early 1980s, it introduced a legally binding 'growth boundary' to stop sprawl and the emptying-out of its downtown area. `Today, younger people don't desire to live in the endless suburbs anymore, but have started to re-orientate themselves back to the city core, mainly for lifestyle reasons.' (Fishman, 1987) However, as several recent studies of inner-city lifestyles reveal, an increase in consumption can be part of the inner-city renaissance, which often enlarges the ecological footprint of the urban dweller (e.g. research by the Universities of Vancouver and Sydney on the effect of higher population density and increase in lifestyle gadgets owned by urban dwellers). At the end of the 20th century,

Open House International, 2016

2019

Currently, over half of the world’s population resides in cities. This urbanization trend is expected to continue and more than 80% of humanity is expected to live in cities by 2050.To secure the ongoing prosperity and wellbeing of our communities; we must ensure that our cities meet the needs of current and future generations. We must aim for economic growth to sustain and increase without compromising the natural environment or our quality of life. This is the basis of a sustainable future. Choices made today on building design, waste management, urban ecosystem management, transportation, water, energy and food systems – and how well these choices integrate across sectors – will have critical implications for the future of cities across the world. Think globally, act locally this slogan stands for a new comprehensive and integrative approach which is the essence of sustainable & resource efficient development. Using flow analysis to validate and quantify the spatial impact of mea...

e Sustainable Cities Thematic Group has only recently been established. The motivation for doing so was the fact that the AESOP conference tracks have, in the past, paid limited attention to sustainability, even though it is a key topic in many fields. For instance, at the Prague conference in 2015, there were no tracks directly related to sustainability or even resilience. Closest came the title of track 5: Legal Environment for Effective (Good) Governance and Efficient (Sustainable) Use of Land. Sustainability is here the afterthought to efficiency, while it should be the other way around. This is problematic because it is a crucial topic for planners. It is especially crucial for urban planners because cities are – at the same time – the cause of, the victim of, and the solution to issues such as climate change. As the world becomes ever more urbanized, the city has become the place where the problems of climate change have their greatest economic and social impact. For instance, damage from flooding is exponentially exacerbated by the density of population and economic activity. Every year there are more reports of flooding in both the global north (for example, the UK) and the global south (for example, Bangladesh), while at the same time large conurbations such as Los Angeles and Santiago have ever-worsening drought issues. Cities consume a lot of resources and are responsible for a large amount of CO2 emissions. Yet this also means that cities are crucial places to focus on when looking for sustainable development, and urban planning plays a big role in addressing these issues.

Journal of Green Building, 2007

In the essay entitled ‘Towards a Sustainable City Centre’ (published in JGB Summer 2006), the author reflected on principles how to best integrate ecologically sustainable development (ESD) into urban design. This second paper reports on his continuing research in the area of ‘Green Urbanism’.1 Among the most significant environmental challenges of our time are global climate change, excessive fossil fuel dependency and the growing demand for energy—all likely to be major challenges of the 21st century and one of the greatest problems facing humanity. In this context, urban design and the fundamental principles of how to shape our cities has barely featured in the greenhouse debate. Much of the debate in related areas has so far circled around ideas about active technology for ‘eco-buildings’. This is surprising, since almost half the energy consumed is used in cities and urban built-up areas, and given that avoiding mistakes in urban design at early stages could genuinely lead to m...