Urban Morphology, Environmental Performances, and Energy Use:Neighborhood transformation in Rio de Janeiro via IMM

Abstract

Nowadays the environmental ramifications of urban development have become crystal clear. Subsequently, the main headline is how one should implement practical methods to tackle urban growth and environmental issues simultaneously. How should one integrate urbanization and the issue of saving natural resources? How design strategies could contribute to climate mitigation and emission reduction? Is urban morphology correlated with these issues? And eventually, how can the urban transformation be performed, retrofitted and monitored in order to achieve a more sustainable result? A strictly sectorial approach could result in neglecting mutual dependencies of these demands. Conversely, an integrated approach can help to sharpen a better comprehension of the different performances of different urban assessment. IMM®, Integrated Modification Methodology, is a multi-stage, iterative process, applied to urban complex systems, for improving the metabolism of the city as well as its energy performance. The method has been depicted through prior publications by the authors; hence, the current paper solely focuses on one stage of the multi-stage IMM method. Due to the fact that the majority of predicted urban growth will occur in megacities of developing countries, totalling 5% of the earth population, the article presents a case study Janeiro using the IMM method to propose urban improvements on the megacity of Rio de Janeiro.