Environmental Assessment Tools: Toward an Interlinked Sustainable Design of Cities and Buildings. The Cases of Vado Ligure and Altare Municipalities (Italy)

Adriano Magliocco,Chiara Piccardo,Katia Perini

doi:10.5296/emsd.v6i1.10727

Adriano Magliocco, Chiara Piccardo + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.5296/emsd.v6i1.10727

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Abstract

The present paper aims at highlighting the connections between the environmental assessment of urban planning and building design activities at different scales. Environmental assessment is a multi-scale and inter/trans disciplinary process, which considers the city through an ecological approach. Environmental assessment includes different tools depending on the planning and design phase, with links and overlaps but also with contradictions. Four different evaluation fields are discussed - land use, water management, local resources, energy - also concerning the case of two Environmental Reports for Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) processes of municipal urban plans for two Italian municipalities, Vado Ligure and Altare. The analysis of case studies shows that SEA is not always an effective tool for strategic urban planning, as it includes similar assessment criteria to building scale ones, causing overlaps and contradictions.

Highlights

Environmental assessments can be used to evaluate the impacts of an artefact or a transformation process on a specific territory, compared to the principles of environmental sustainability institutionally identified (Bond et al 2012)
The present paper aims at highlighting the connections between the environmental assessment of urban planning and building design activities at different scales
Four different evaluation fields have been analyzed - land use, water management, local resources, energy - showing that different stages of evaluation are interdependent even if they develop on very different time frames

Summary

Introduction

Environmental assessments can be used to evaluate the impacts of an artefact or a transformation process on a specific territory, compared to the principles of environmental sustainability institutionally identified (Bond et al 2012) This concept, while retaining sectoral connotations, is common to several different fields. Environmental assessment is an interdisciplinary process, both in an epistemological and scientific view (Obermeister, 2017) It is an inter-scale process that can involve different disciplines operating at different scales (urban planning, technology, morphological design, etc.), as it will be shown in this paper. In regard to GB certification systems, the study focuses on two multicriteria-based tools, LEED and ITACA Protocol for residential buildings, which represents common schemes in Italy

Land use

Water Management

Renewable Energy Sources

Local Resources

Conclusions