Sustainability Assessment of the Residential Land Use in Seven Boroughs of the Island of Montreal, Canada

Ricardo Vega-Azamar,Mathias Glaus,Rabindranarth Romero-López,Norma Oropeza-García,Robert Hausler

doi:10.3390/su7032454

Ricardo Vega-Azamar, Mathias Glaus + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/su7032454

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Abstract

High resource utilization in the residential sector, and the associated environmental impacts, are central issues in the growth of urban regions. Land-use urban planning is a primary instrument for the proper development of cities; an important point is the consideration of the urban form’s influence on resource utilization intensity. Emergy synthesis, an energy-based methodological approach that allows the quantification and integration of both natural and human-generated flows interacting in urban environments, was used to assess sustainability of the residential land use of seven boroughs on the Island of Montreal. Natural resources, food, water, acquired goods and services, electricity and fuels were the main flows considered in the analysis. Results suggest that income, household size and distance to downtown are the variables affecting resource utilization intensity more noticeably and that allocation of green area coverage is an important parameter for controlling land use intensity. With the procedure used for calculating resource use intensity in the seven boroughs, it is possible to generate a tool to support urban planning decision-making for assessing sustainable development scenarios. Future research should consider urban green space potential for accommodating local waste treatment systems, acting as a greenhouse gas emissions sink and promoting human health.

Highlights

IntroductionGiven that urban regions are among the main originators of local, regional and global scale environmental problems, many of which are directly or indirectly associated to poor planning [3], the proper development of cities is at the center of current concerns
U varied depending on the number of residents, household size, income, distance to downtown and mixing of house types, among other aspects
Residential land use of seven boroughs in Montreal was evaluated, stressing the “free” environmental work supporting long-term sustainability of the daily activities through the quantification and analysis of the material, energetic and economic flows and the calculation of indicators using the emergy synthesis method to examine their response with respect to the variation of urban planning parameters

Summary

Introduction

Given that urban regions are among the main originators of local, regional and global scale environmental problems, many of which are directly or indirectly associated to poor planning [3], the proper development of cities is at the center of current concerns. In countries like Canada, household water utilization accounts for around 30% of all the used water [6]. Domestic consumption from households is a major source of carbon emissions in urban areas [7]. Several works have found food, mobility of people, housing and energy-using products, among the main domestic related aspects affecting sustainability, accounting, aggregately, for almost 80% of the environmental impacts in industrialized nations [8]

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