Energy efficient neighborhood design under residential zoning regulations in Shanghai

Abstract

In the current pursuit of eco-city development in China, energy efficient residential neighborhood development becomes one of the focuses. While current codes and practices have been paying attention to green building design, building energy is influenced by not only building design, but also complex urban form at a larger spatial scale, which was not well discussed. At the same time, neighborhood design is always regulated by residential zoning codes, which restrict the density measures for economic considerations and layout to ensure safety, privacy, fire prevention and sunlight. What neighborhood design can achieve high energy performance under those regulations becomes a critical question for urban design practices. This study explores three questions: How density influences residential building energy efficiency? How different building heights affects building energy? And how different neighborhood layouts impact the building energy? Those questions are examined by computational simulation experiments on parametric design scenarios in the case study of a hypothetical neighborhood in Shanghai. The comparisons of the simulation results suggest that density and energy performance has a complex relation with a threshold density that has the best performance, and building height and energy use have a segmented relation with the same density due to elevator design codes. The energy performance ranges with the same FAR and with the same number of floors show the great impact of the building height and limited influence of neighborhood layout on building energy use. The simulation results also suggest the optimal design with best energy performance with different density settings. The findings can inform urban designers and policy makers on more energy efficient residential neighborhood design under current zoning regulations.