Abstract
In recent decades, the concept of resource efficient cities has emerged as an urban planning paradigm that seeks to achieve sustainable urban environments. This focus is upon compact urban environments that optimise energy, water and waste systems to create cities that help solve climate change and other resource-based sustainability issues. In parallel, there has been a long-standing tradition of ecological approaches to the design of cities that can be traced from Howard, Geddes, McHarg and Lyle. Rather than resource efficiency, the ecological approach has focused upon the retention and repair of natural landscape features and the creation of green infrastructure (GI) to manage urban water, soil and plants in a more ecologically sensitive way. There is some conflict with the resource efficient cities and ecological cities paradigms, as one is pro-density, while the other is anti-density. This article focusses upon how to integrate the two paradigms through new biophilic urbanism (BU) tools that allow the integration of nature into dense urban areas, to supplement more traditional GI tools in less dense areas. We suggest that the theory of urban fabrics can aid with regard to which tools to use where, for the integration of GI and BU into different parts of the city to achieve <em>both</em> resource efficient and ecological outcomes, that optimise energy water and waste systems, <em>and</em> increase urban nature.
Highlights
The numerous benefits of urban nature, such as ecosystem services, increased biodiversity, health and economic benefits are well established in the literature (Brink et al, 2016; Hansen et al, 2015; Mcdonald, Beatley, & Elmqvist, 2018; MEA, 2005)
We argue that green infrastructure (GI)/biophilic urbanism (BU) responses should respond to the underlying opportunities presented by each urban fabric to create a new breed of garden cities for the 21st century
This space need not be limited to the ground, rather like a forested ecosystem, it can be on vertical surfaces and on different layers that are created by different urban fabrics
Summary
The numerous benefits of urban nature, such as ecosystem services (e.g., urban cooling, flood mitigation), increased biodiversity, health and economic benefits are well established in the literature (Brink et al, 2016; Hansen et al, 2015; Mcdonald, Beatley, & Elmqvist, 2018; MEA, 2005). In dense urban areas where undeveloped land can be found, justifying its preservation for urban nature may be difficult to argue because pressure is high for other uses, e.g., affordable housing, parking or local job creation through commercial buildings This is made harder when the global and local agenda for dealing with major issues like climate change is seen to need increases in density, not decreases (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC], 2018; Newman, Beatley, & Boyer, 2017; United Nations, 2017). The article suggests that there is a fundamental issue about urban density that leads to their conflict It seeks to resolve this conflict and show how ecological cities and resource efficient cities can be better integrated to create more complete solutions to 21st century urban problems through the adoption of the two tools of green infrastructure (GI) and biophilic urbanism (BU). This article represents a first step to integrate several concepts in the hope to show that planners should consider urban nature within designated open space, gardens or residual land, but that the possibility exists to retrofit urban nature into established and dense urban areas
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