Green Urbanism
GREEN URBANISM RELATED
TO ENERGY CONSUMPTION
Introduction
Green urbanism can be defined as an approach to make communities beneficial to humans and environment creating sustainable and liveable urban areas.
It is an interdisciplinary model of a city relying on the collaboration of different professional profiles and pursuing energy-efficient, emission – free and zero – waste urban design.
Description
Green urbanism can be described as a sustainable urban design creating eco-friendly and resource- efficient cities. It also aims at reducing energy, materials, waste and greenhouse gas emissions. Cities should be designed to work with nature which can help clean the city’s air and water. Green city leaders must take into account that cities should have plenty of sunlight, and greenspaces, and buildings must be designed well-oriented.
Some of the aspects to take into account:
- Climate and context, renewable energy for zero CO2 emissions, zero-waste city;
- Water saving, gardens and urban biodiversity, sustainable transport;
- Density and refurbishment of existing districts (green buildings and districts) using local and sustainable materials with less embodied energy;
- Organize healthy communities and mixed-use programmes to consume local food and have in this way short supply chains.
Cities cannot be seen only urban areas anymore, but indeed, each city must be considered as an alive ecosystem with different resources coming in and waste streams coming out.
Main Features
- City as an ecosystem
- Reduction of resource demand
- Waste reduction
- Friendly public spaces
- Mix use of transport
- 15-minute city
- Densification and intensification
Advantages and challenges
+ Compact city with mixed resources allows a 15 – minute city, in which citizens can reach all basic services just walking in their neighbourhood.
+ Connectivity, an interconnected street network improves public space for citizens, disperses traffic and encourages walking.
+ Buildings provide beauty, aesthetics, and comfort, mixing architecture technician principles with ecology and environment care, with more comfort for citizens.
+ The city evolves with more respect for natural systems and eco-friendly technologies like energy-efficiency to minimize effects on the environment.
+ The city is connected with surrounding farmland, encouraging land preservation and local food consumption.
+ Economy is improved due to the use of less resources and generation of less waste, with fewer costs in buying resources and in managing waste.
– Lack of interdisciplinary project teams and knowledge to apply it.
– Need of change of different city streams that are not easy to achieve.
Further Information
