URBAN DESIGN
RETHINKING URBAN DESIGN
As the majority of people worldwide now live in urban settings, the pending hazards of climate change prompt us to rethink design for the improvement of urban environments. This is imperative, as many cities are in coastal or low lying locations. Urban areas in low elevation coastal zones are growing faster than elsewhere. Low-elevation coastal zones are home to nearly two-thirds of urban areas having populations greater than 5 million. Coping with climate change in these rapidly growing coastal urban settlements will require a combination of strategies, including adaptation and mitigation measures such as migration and modification of existing urban space. Inadequate responses to protecting coastal urban areas could be devastating to the economies and infrastructure of 13 percent of the world's urban population.
Karen C. Seto et. al reported "a worldwide observed increase in urban land area of 58,000 km from 1970 to 2000. India, China, and Africa have experienced the highest rates of urban land expansion, and the largest change in total urban extent has occurred in North America. Across all regions and for all three decades, urban land expansion rates are higher than or equal to urban population growth rates, suggesting that urban growth is becoming more expansive than compact. ...Our results show that by 2030, global urban land cover will increase between 430,000 km and 12,568,000 km , with an estimate of 1,527,000 km more likely. ... Urbanization results in changes in land-cover, hydrological systems, biogeochemistry, climate, and biodiversity [2]. Worldwide, urban expansion is one of the primary drivers of habitat loss, and species extinction [3]. In many developing countries, urban expansion is taking place on prime agricultural land [4]. ... Variations in urban expansion rates point to differences in national and regional socio-economic environments and political conditions. This is particularly evident in the case of China, where annual rates of urban land expansion vary from 13.3% for coastal areas to 3.9% for the western regions. On the other hand, the range of urban growth rates in North America is more evenly distributed, from 3.9% to 2.2%." [UD-5]
Mitigation of climate change can be incorporated in urban design even as climate is global in scale—it involves the reduction of carbon emissions that are linked to rising and harmful global temperatures. Estimates range from a little over one-half to two-thirds of global energy consumption, and about 50% to 80% of global greenhouse gas emissions, are directly and indirectly tied to urban economies.[UD-2] Because cities concentrate people, buildings and infrastructure, they are vulnerable to a range of climate risks.
Another primary consideration is adaptation. Planning and design can address adaptation to the harmful effects of climate change such as sea level increases, droughts, as more destructive storms and heat waves.
A basic consideration, under climate change duress, is migration to new communities versus adapting existing communities. In light of the immediacy of addressing climate change, quicker solutions may prove more expedient and necessary than simply building new cities, although adapting old and building new are both necessary.
Comprehensive, or strategic, planning refers to the long-term vision or goal that guides local policy on a range of topics such as urban development, transportation, housing, economic development, social inclusion, and the environment.
The comprehensive plan ensures that policies designed in these different areas all support the overarching goals the city aims to achieve. It also ensures that all areas of urban policy work together, so that no contradictions arise. For a city to be resilient to climate change, it should integrate adaptation principles at the comprehensive plan level, as this ensures that all policies that derive from the plan will promote adaptation. To do this, it is necessary to identify the climate-change-related hazards that the city is vulnerable to and ensure that each area of local policy considers them.
Adaptation
CNU co-founder Plater-Zyberk describes four phases of community adaptation in an On the Park Bench webinar: fortify and defend; accommodate; retreat; and clean-up.
Accommodate. Cities may accommodate some impacts of climate change through a number of urban design measures. One of the simplest is to plant trees, which reduce episodes of extreme heat. The cooling impact of a single healthy tree through evaporation and shade “is equivalent to ten room-size air conditioners operating 24 hours a day,” according to the US Department of Agriculture. Similarly, light colored roofs and asphalt reduce the impacts of summer heat waves in cities, explains Doug Kelbaugh in The Urban Fix.
New risks emerge in urban areas, such as food security, flooding, water scarcity, and heat islands. Food, water, and energy (FWE) are indispensable lifeline resources for cities that are emphasized as pressing concerns in the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations Green roofs are an innovative strategy for urban vertical space utilization that could enhance the land use efficiency in high-density cities, and show clear links to all three components of the FWE nexus. Green roofs perform well in the aspects of food (by rooftop farming), water (rainwater harvesting, waterlogging prevention, and water quality improvement), and energy (temperature modulation, thus energy saving), guarding against the challenges of FWE nexus.[UD-3]
Dealing with Urban Design for climate change isn't quite as simple as mitigation, adaptation, and accommodation would seem to suggest. It's not just doing a few simple things. Yet, the cumulative benefits of many relatively simple solutions will prove very helpful. Such solutions as green roofs and four season farming (see below) are amongst those solutions. Other tactics like designing with children as a priority are much more difficult, but may have the greatest impact as they focus on a common interest for which communities can unite and get past the gridlocking divisions such as wealthy vs. poor, or educated vs. uneducated. See URBAN DESIGN 101
Four Season Farming in Cold Climate
Snowy winters don't necessarily mean no garden vegetable harvest in January. In fact, a straightforward consideration
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for urban designers is to bring certain vegetable gardens into the plan, perhaps roof top or in park settings. This type of gardening has multifold benefits such as community involvement, year round harvest, local production with little transportation cost and attendant GHG emissions. All kinds of cooler-weather crops can be cultivated in the winter: arugula, beet greens, broccoli, carrots, chard, kale, kohlrabi, leeks, radishes, spinach, and turnips.
One simple garden type is a "cold house" where
translucent plastic can be stretched over simple pipe frames to form a hoop-shaped shelter. The microclimate created by the hoop house is enough to insulate crops and help them survive when outdoor temperatures are below freezing. Within this house, a second frame structure can be built and covered with breathable micro-mesh to add a further insulative cover holding in warmth, yet sacrificing about 20% of the daylight.
Green roofs and four-season gardens are only examples of many possible positive environmental considerations that can be included in urban planning.
To refresh, urban environments represent a high percentage of emissions of gases, waste, resources use. Yet, they are places where great changes can be made to accomplish the urgent challenge in adapting to current and projected rates of climate change. For example, cities are responsible for a great part of our energy expenses and harmful greenhouse gases. According to UN-Habitat, cities consume 78% of the world’s energy and produce more than 60% of greenhouse gas emissions and 68% of the world population is projected to live in urban areas by 2050 [UD-5]. But they are also the places where great efficiencies can potentially be made in terms of sustainability, through careful management of urban development and optimized resource use efficiency [UD-6].
Research has shown that a fruitful approach to urban sustainability is to describe indicators that measure the effectiveness of current processes of urban infrastructures, analyze areas in need of improvement and measure the effect of any actions taken. A 2020 article entitled "Indicators Framework for Sustainable Urban Design"[UD-4] presents a proposed structure of 14 categories and 48 indicators, easily applicable in urban areas, that tries to fulfill basic aspects to obtain a general diagnosis of the sustainable nature of the urban environment. The proposed framework (whether it is an existing one or a new one) would fundamentally enable smart cities to strengthen their strategic planning efforts and measure their progress towards a more sustainable progress and reaching the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), among others.
The 14 categories of the Framework are: Energy, Waste, Water, Pollution; Mobility & Transport, Plan & Design, Site & Land; Social aspects, Governance Management, City Planning & Innovation, Transparency; Economy’s Local Aspect, Labor and Finances. The list of 48 basic indicators tries to fulfill all due aspects to obtain a general diagnosis of the sustainable nature of the urban environment, which can serve as support to detect the strongest and weakest areas in terms of their sustainability of the urban environment. Subsequently, other more specific existing tools such as those mentioned above could be applied to measure and improve said specific aspects.
Fig.1 Proposed structures for areas, categories and subcategories.
City planning in line with addressing global challenges is imperative and complex. Hence, designs incorporating the Framework elements will tend to be more effective in meeting the demands of addressing climate change. To illustrate the considerations of the Framework, let's look at one category -- Social Aspects. Two of the subcategories thereto are Housing and Public Spaces Quality: these two first sub-categories have been a concern historically and taken into account in City Planning many decades ago. Initially, the sole purpose of social housing was to overcome the need for shelter for socially vulnerable citizens. However, studies have shown that the low level of quality, which used to be common in this type of housing, had a negative impact both socially and environmentally which makes it important to consider these aspects in the planning approach to social housing. Another subcategory is equally important -- Health and Wellbeing, with indicators: Access to basic services; Encouraging a healthy lifestyle; and, Ensuring healthy outdoor spaces and healthy atmosphere in indoor spaces.
"Accessibility to public greenspaces and open spaces of quality has been recommended as an indicator for public health [UD-7]. The availability of these kind of spaces has proven to be beneficial not only for the environment but for citizen’s wellness [UD-8]. However, the concept of wellness and wellbeing is a growing concern that has been intensified in the past years, provoking a growing interest in processes that create places that promote wellbeing, resulting in the appearance of new assessment tools and certifications that focus on this sustainability aspect, like WELL [UD-9] certification. City livability is also closely related to the concept of urban wellbeing and to other environmental aspects mentioned before like urban pollution [UD-10]."
Table 1. Net-Zero Carbon Cities in Historical Context [UD-11]
Climate change is not the first driver of initiatives to improve urban environments, enhance wellness, address social justice and beautify the city. For example, evidence of the separation of water and wastewater drainage can be found in ancient cities around 6500 B.C. Examples of more recent initiatives are shown in Table 1. It is the urgent need for climate change mediation and adaptation that elevates the need to collectively and simultaneously address a multiplex of urban issues -- actions to reach Net Zero by 2030. Urbanization presents opportunities for efficient resource use and mitigating climate change. Compact urban development coupled with high residential and employment densities can reduce energy consumption, vehicle miles traveled, and carbon dioxide emissions. Increasing urban albedo could offset greenhouse gas emissions.
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Our Planet Doesn't Care about Fictional Stories
Yuval Noah Harai said that we are driven by fiction stories. Stories that we’ve invented. Stories that just exist because we all agree that they exist. Stories like money, religions, nations, borders, the economic system. The same is true about architecture.
Architecture was always driven by fictional stories. We built the pyramids for Gods, castles for Kings, palaces for Queens, now we are building to make a profit in an economic system. We all care about those stories, but our planet doesn’t. If we are not able to connect ourselves to our objective reality, then I do not see any chance that we are able to solve the problems of our time.
--- Chris Precht, Architect
Chris Precht grew up in the mountains of Austria. He and his wife started an architecture studio in Beijing. After 3 years they relocated Studio Precht to the mountains of Austria. From there they work on projects that are mainly international. Chris and Fei Precht set up roots in the Austrian countryside in order to seek more harmony and stability in their lives. In the city there is much more hustling. You feel that you have to always be places, so you are surrounded by distractions. "It was like a hamster in a wheel - always running." In the mountains, there are few distractions. "In the countryside, success for me means something different. I don't need to be the most famous architect or the most known architect or richest architect, or whatever. I want to be a happy architect. So we achieved that now." Chris feels he can regenerate his life within moments while working on architecture, which he truly loves and is passionate about, but he feels it's not the most important thing in life. So, you value things a little bit differently, putting a little bit of a different hierarchy into place living and working in the mountains outside of the city.
In order to regenerate our cities, Chris feels that we must be able to regenerate ourselves, to be able to show up, and to deliver as much energy and creativity as we can towards whatever it is we wish to create.
Since Studio Precht’s return to the mountains, their projects have taken shape through inspiration drawn from their newfound way of life that inherently counters that. They live off the grid. They grow their own food. They try to live as self-sufficient as possible. And they aim to translate that into their projects, bringing that kind of connection back into the city. As Chris puts it, "We try to find a way to somehow combine in this project on the one hand, architecture, and the other—agriculture.
Not every urban designer must head for the mountains. Yet, designers who work with nature in their designs will likely be more effective in designing for climate change. Chris thinks cities need to be part of the food production of the future. In the next 30 years, more food will be consumed in the last 10,000 years combined and 80% will be consumed in cities. So that means if you want to grow our food closer to its consumption, cities need to be part of that. It actually makes sense to grow food on our buildings. We can think of buildings of the future differently, we can think of it as an ecosystem by itself, of organic loops within the building. Food waste can be transported to the basement, there it decomposes and turns into nutritious soil to reuse in order to grow vegetables. This kind of production of food gets back into our city centers and it's back to our minds."
"We reconnect with our food and it’s no mystery anymore— just how this food lands on our table. We also create spaces that really reconnect to all of our senses. We create spaces that we want to touch because we use haptic materials, we can listen to because birds and bees are nesting into our buildings, and we can smell, taste and eat parts of our buildings. So really [creating] buildings that connect to all of our senses. It creates different city centers. City centers are not defined by banks or corporations but by health and vitality." "... there is a problem at the moment—[with] what we build and how we build it. So how we build it you know because architecture is very closely connected to the economic system. A lot of developers and investors are going to make a profit, so how buildings are built - sometimes with very cheap materials with a very high ecological footprint.
The building industry is the most polluting industry on [the] globe."
This international style of concrete frames with curtain-wall
facades is common in every city. "It creates a problem that when everything looks the same, no one is really inspired by it. When people are not inspired by buildings, then they don't care for buildings. They don’t care for buildings, then they don't maintain the buildings. So I think that means that a building needs to be reconstructed after 20 years, instead of 50 years, if they would maintain it. And, I think that’s a challenge for architects—how can we build buildings that people really care about. I think that brings back a lot of this...how can we create sensible buildings, buildings that really connect to your emotions, to your feelings, and to your senses: with materials that are haptic, that you want to touch, buildings where the birds and bees are inside and you can listen to the building. Or bringing gardens into the buildings, so you can taste, you can smell, and you can eat part of your buildings. Buildings that really connect to all of the senses.
"I was really inspired was when I was in Bali. And I saw the work of Hapuku. Laurel Hardy, she was leading a puku team, they are creating wonderful bamboo buildings. You really can see, you know, what you can produce out of bamboo as an imperfect material. It’s fascinating, it’s much different buildings then you would see anywhere else. When you take a local material and you have craftsmen in place who can deal with this material. And then you have people who have really have a vision and creativity then you can create much [more] diverse buildings than what you see today in the city. So we also work a lot with bamboo. We also just finished a hotel in Ecuador which is four stories and made out of bamboo. And it’s a fascinating material to work with.
I mean it always depends what you grow and how you manage your forests. It’s the same thing to our forests. So if bamboo becomes a building material, in the larger scale, not just for some lovely projects, somewhere. If bamboo really enters our city, then of course we need to grow much more bamboo. Bamboo grows much faster than trees, so you can use bamboo within 7 years of growing. Bamboo can grow 1.4 meters per day. From this perspective you know it is a very great material to work with. But so is, for example, woods, but as an architect, you always need to know where to use which material, where and which location it fits better."
"A lot of this [the city] is missing of course in the countryside you know when it comes to art, the opportunities you have, the people you meet, but I think that is also very refreshing. It also offers some time in the countryside that you're bored. When was the last time you have been really bored? Now we have our phones with us all the time, so there is no reason anymore to be bored. But, you know, in the countryside they're still sometimes boredom, and I really enjoy that.
For example, in China, they want to bring the smart city towards the countryside, to bring all this quality from the city to the people in the countryside so they don’t need to move to the city. But I think in our terms maybe, in the West we may need to think in a different way - how can we bring the quality of the countryside to the cities? You know, all of this fresh air, nature, all of this regeneration that you have in the countryside, how can this become part of the city? Because the cities will change."
"Our generation of architects is not driven anymore by styles, forms, or intellectual theories. Our generation has much bigger problems than that - climate change, global warming, pollution, urbanization or A.I." [UD-12]
Footnotes
[UD-1] Stockton Tree Foundation (2015) How Urban Trees Improve our Environment. http://stocktontrees.org/tree_science.htm
[UD-2] Seto, K.C.; Dhakal, S. Human settlements, infrastructure, and spatial planning, Chapter 12. In Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change: Contribution of Working Group III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; Pachauri, R.K., Meyer, L.A., Eds.; Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: Geneva, Switzerland, 2014; pp. 935–936. ISBN 9781107415416. Available online (accessed on 21 October 2022).
[UD-3] Meng, Fanxin & Yuan, Qiuling & Bellezoni, Rodrigo & Puppim de Oliveira, Jose & Hu, Yuanchao & Jing, Rui & Liu, Gengyuan & Yang, Zhifeng & Seto, Karen. (2022). A method to analyze the food-water-energy nexus for data-sparse cities: A comparison of green roofs in São José dos Campos, Brazil and Johannesburg, South Africa. 10.21203/rs.3.rs-1964078/v1.
[UD-4] López Chao, A.; Casares Gallego, A.; Lopez-Chao, V.; Alvarellos, A. Indicators Framework for Sustainable Urban Design. Atmosphere 2020, 11, 1143. https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos11111143
[UD-5] Seto, K.C.; Fragkias, M.; Güneralp, B.; Reilly, M.K. A Meta-Analysis of Global Urban Land Expansion. PLoS ONE 2011, 6, e23777.
1.Foley JA, DeFries R, Asner GP, Barford C, Bonan G, et al. (2005) Global consequences of land use. Science 309: 570–574.
2.Grimm NB, Faeth SH, Golubiewski NE, Redman CL, Wu JG, et al. (2008) Global change and the ecology of cities. Science 319: 756–760.
3.Hahs AK, McDonnell MJ, McCarthy MA, Vesk PA, Corlett RT, et al. (2009) A global synthesis of plant extinction rates in urban areas. Ecology Letters 12: 1165–1173.
4.Seto KC, Kaufmann RK, Woodcock CE (2000) Landsat reveals China's farmland reserves, but they're vanishing fast. Nature 406: 121–121.
[UD-6] United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. World Urbanization Prospects: The 2018 Revision; United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division: New York, NY, USA, 2016
[UD-7] Annerstedt van den Bosch, M.; Mudu, P.; Uscila, V.; Barrdahl, M.; Kulinkina, A.; Staatsen, B.; Swart, W.; Kruize, H.; Zurlyte, I.; Egorov, A.I. Development of an urban green space indicator and the public health rationale. Scand. J. Public Health 2016, 44, 159–167.
[UD-8] Lee, A.C.K.; Maheswaran, R. The health benefits of urban green spaces: A review of the evidence. J. Public Health 2011, 33, 212–222.
[UD-9] WELL Certification focuses on people's health and wellness, while LEED is a certification that focuses on environmental impact and sustainability. Both certifications' requirements involve healthy, sustainable construction practices and ongoing building operations after a building is turned over
[UD-10] del Mar Martínez-Bravo, M.; Martínez-del-Río, J.; Antolín-López, R. Trade-offs among urban sustainability, pollution and livability in European cities. J. Clean. Prod. 2019, 224, 651–660.
[UD-11] Karen C. Seto; Galina Churkina; Angel Hsu; Meredith Keller; Peter W.G. Newman; Bo Qin,5 and Anu Ramaswami. From Low- to Net-Zero Carbon Cities: The Next Global Agenda. Annu. Rev. Environ. Resour. 2021. 46:377–415
[UD-12] https://www.resite.org/stories/design-and-the-city-new-generation-of-architects-chris-precht
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