URBAN SUSTAINABILITY

on 27/04/2020 at 7:50 pm

Urban sustainability and urban design towards good city design. Urban Design process should incorporate larger awareness of sustainable elements and processes. This research considers how strategies in the city design overseas can have practical applications in the Australian context, with an emphasis on economical use of space and preservation of natural resources.

Pictures used are from Mike Matas Ted presentation of the new book by<a href=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-zPUJGYafU”> Al Gore “Our Choice”</a>

Towards good city design

Environmental urbanism is a well-known and long-forgotten technique of combination of past experiences and natural environmental characteristics of each location and its micro-climate.

The study points to a number of practical examples of understanding climatic influencers such as wind, undulated terrain, physical structures, properties of building materials, and many more. The tangible benefits of such design are manipulating natural resources to service human needs.

Relevant application of environmental knowledge and evolved practical experience could offer a greater quality of life for its inhabitants.

Such strategies have been found only randomly appearing in few copies of European buildings here in Australia. However, it is the view of this research that previous attempts have been hamstrung from the outset by both poor kinds of research, rushed population increase, and the absence of an effective holistic approach.

Conclusion

The research addresses these obstacles directly, and in doing so proposes a ‘second chance’ for the importing of urban sustainability strategies used overseas. Asking for legislative change necessary to facilitate it, it offers an agenda that learns from mistakes of the past in order to present an optimistic vision for the future.

URBAN SUSTAINABILITY

For centuries houses have been designed and built by trial and error with new designs improving on previous ones perpetually.

From times of building ancient cities and before good design books were printed, the developer will import a talented tradesman – an artist who knew “the secret”.

After those triumphant times of grand designs and glorious structures in the very intensive growth and progress of civilization, the last few centuries, worldwide, housing went through a very complex changing process.

First built human settlements were in the full correspondence with nature, which was the primary condition for their sustainable existence. Small villages, as the dominant type of human settlements, centuries and centuries after, where built in the accordance with the dominant characteristics of their natural surroundings.

Even the big towns of the ancient period such as Athens, Alexandria, Rome, settlements of Incas and Mayan civilization, were built in accordance with the environmental awareness well known in those times.

Last few centuries, the industrial revolution and population growth produced a new type of settlements in the hurry which were less and less corresponding with their ecological surroundings. This trend is still ongoing worldwide, although contemporary science, architecture and town planning theories make serious efforts to promote a sustainable type of housing and dwelling.

“If building green houses is good, then building green housing developments is even better. When you combine sustainable design with densely planned neighborhoods, you get future-friendly city living. Considering the breakneck speed of urban growth around the world, dense, green housing complexes may be the only way to shelter everyone without compromising the planet.

Green building gets cheaper as builders scale up their developments, one thousand units complex has a marginal cost increase above traditional construction and five thousand unit complex can incur no additional unit cost at all.

What these numbers are telling us is that united builders will achieve a much higher star rating of their homes and fast track their permit process if they work together on volume developments.

The situation in Australia, and particularly in few biggest cities like Melbourne and Sydney is even today extremely critical.

The existing historical heritage of housing in the first circle around the central areas, built on small land parcels more than a hundred years ago, with small, one-story houses is in the ecological context are a very bad example.

Settlements built in the second half of last centuries have somewhat better urban arrangements but unfortunately not well executed in correspondence with today’s well known ecological parameters.

The beginning of our effort is to remind ourselves which ecological parameters are dominant for the creation of new settlements today.

The primary ecological and climate influencers, in order of least applied in Australia, are:

Geo thermal properties
Spatial configuration and orientation
Micro climate and unique wind rose- wind pattern
Electromagnetism and bio energy
Seasonal temperature amplitude
Vegetation, surface water and local bio climate
Global sprawl building density and proximity
Building density as direct influencer of mental health and community awareness
Solar aspects and insolation

In accordance with their effects on the single house or whole settlement, we must adjust our town planning, urban design and architectural knowledge to plan, and build our new developments as ecologically sustainable complexes or organisms, that should perform to much higher standards of living and health.