Abstract
A main challenge for the design and building of green and smart cities is the redevelopment of existing built environments. This research investigates the usefulness of urban district sustainability evaluation systems in informing and guiding urban redevelopment projects. The German DGNB Urban District (DGNB UD) sustainability assessment and certification system has been chosen among others due to its comprehensive method to evaluate eight awarded projects from the “Re-structuring Seunsangga Citywalk International Competition” organized for Seoul’s downtown redevelopment. The results have been compared with the sustainability assessment of the district status quo and the competition call text, noticing a generic enhancement of sustainability. However, sustainability categories and criteria were not addressed sufficiently by any project in order to meet the integrated and holistic certification requirements of DGNB UD. The findings from this research emphasize the need for integrated assessment and measurements of urban sustainability, beyond projects’ self-promotion emphasizing greening or single sustainability facets. The research findings particularly exemplify how awarded project proposals might still be stuck in a specific, limited framework of sustainability. This paper concludes that balanced sustainability could be achieved by utilization of comprehensive assessment and evaluation systems in the preparation and assessment of plans.
Highlights
The recent global urbanization process is threatening planetary environmental sustainability, and posing serious challenges to the way in which urban development is conceived [1]
This research investigated the degree to which the sustainability categories and criteria of the DGNB Urban District (DGNB UD) have been addressed in the international competition “Re-structuring Seunsangga Citywalk”, which aimed for the urban renewal of one of the most neglected but productive neighborhoods in the historical city center of Seoul
The results of this research illustrate that neither the call for competition (CC) text, nor any of the award projects, would be eligible for certification according to the DGNB UD certification system
Summary
The recent global urbanization process is threatening planetary environmental sustainability, and posing serious challenges to the way in which urban development is conceived [1]. If on one hand the “how to” build more sustainable cities has been an exercise for planners and architects in the last decades [4], on the other hand the call of (unsustainable) urban metabolisms decoupling [5] is putting pressure on people to re-frame and retrofit the already existing built environment, rather than focusing on new construction This is an issue that older (in terms of urban development) continents face, like Europe and the USA, whereas the debate about how to retrofit old infrastructures [6,7] seems to leave Asia—where the most dramatic urban growth is taking place [8]—outside. Infrastructure retrofitting and urban renewal and redevelopment is an emerging issue within Asian cities, as demonstrated by the problematic interplay between the old and the new within these growing cities [9]
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