Sustainable Urban Projects Research Articles

How to design a city in five easy steps: exploring VivaCity2020’s process and tools for urban design decision making?

Urban designers and planners are increasingly being asked to create and maintain communities that are more socially, economically and environmentally sustainable. In the UK, numerous reports and policy documents have been published, outlining the relationship between sustainability and urban design. To achieve these high expectations, some decision makers have been exploring how buildings and open spaces develop from an idea to finished project and beyond. Knowing who is making decisions, what decision‐making tools are used and whether or not sustainability is considered can help those involved in the urban design process to understand the complexities and trade‐offs about incorporating sustainability into urban design projects. This paper begins by discussing our current understanding about the urban design process. Research conducted as part of the VivaCity2020 project is presented next, highlighting case studies from three major UK cities and what has been learned from understanding urban design processes in practice. The sets of processes are then compared, illustrating that decision makers, the tools and sustainability are not often consistently considered. To this end, a revised urban design process is shown together with a suite of tools, all of which decision makers can utilize and follow to create more sustainable urban design projects.

Conservation justice in metropolitan Cape Town: A study at the Macassar Dunes Conservation Area

Conservation justice, a concept analogous to environmental justice, suggests that local communities are entitled to receive fair treatment and meaningful involvement in the development and implementation of conservation policy. In this study, of an urban conservation project in Cape Town, South Africa, we contribute to the ongoing conversation about the importance of community-based conservation approaches. Conservationists must work to plan and implement projects in ways that are not only acceptable to stakeholders, but inspire local community involvement in achieving conservation goals. Given its location in the impoverished Cape Flats region of metropolitan Cape Town and its unique ecological and conservation value, the Macassar Dunes Conservation Area warrants a conservation justice approach. We conducted semi-structured interviews with members of interested and affected communities, then analyzed stakeholder perspectives on biodiversity protection, fencing, and informal housing. The results suggest that despite disparity among groups in needs and perspectives, conservation projects have potential to deliver tangible benefits to all stakeholder groups. A belief in conservation is universal across stakeholder lines, but contrasting needs and perspectives of the studied groups lead to conflicting views on important issues of implementation. An understanding of different stakeholder groups’ specific needs and interests is therefore essential for successful implementation of sustainable urban conservation projects.

Factors Affecting Urban Renewal in High-Density City: Case Study of Hong Kong

Hong Kong is well known for its high-density form of development. Such form of development is shaped either by new development or urban renewal, which is a major tactic nowadays adopted by the Hong Kong Government to improve the living condition of the public and the quality of the built environment. Urban renewal is the main focus of this study, which aims to highlight the deficiencies of current (re)development practices conducted in Hong Kong and explain how the major urban design considerations shortlisted from the literature can sustain local community in various aspects. Through a questionnaire survey and subsequent data analyses, the opinions of local design professionals and citizens were sought and evaluated, and critical design factors for enhancing sustainability of urban renewal projects were identified. It is expected that the findings of this paper can provide an insight to local developers, urban designers, and government officials on how to design sustainable urban renewal projects in the future.

A Visionary Urban Ecology Project in Hedebygade - 12 Sub-Projects

The renovation of the Hedebygade urban block started in 1994. With a total of 150 apartments, this project was the largest environmentally sustainable urban renovation project in Denmark or northern Europe. The total cost was €50 million (US$62 million). In addition, the Danish government provided funding for the restoration to be used as an ecological demonstration and experiment project, including 12 individual sub-projects highlighting different aspects of environmentally sustainable renovation.

Collaborative Decisionmaking for Sustainable Urban Renewal Projects: A Simulation – Gaming Approach

Differences in stakeholders' perceptions, lack of commitment, unused knowledge, and interfering, ineffective, measures are just some of the problems encountered in sustainable urban development projects. Collaborative decisionmaking approaches tackle these problems by creating a shared understanding of the problems faced and of ways to address them. The authors explore how the combined application of two techniques, a decision-support tool and a simulation game, can support decisionmaking for sustainable urban development. The techniques are applied in decision-making for real and in fictional sustainable urban renewal projects. Benefits and challenges of this combined approach are discussed based on experiences in seven applications. The main finding is that the use of the decision-support tool combined with the simulation–gaming procedure can support agenda setting and help create a shared understanding of problems and potential solutions in the field of sustainable urban renewal.

An Effective Project Management-Based Application Model for Sustainable Urban Renewal in Hong Kong

In this paper, we describe how a project management-based application model was designed to implement sustainable urban renewal projects in Hong Kong. The model was based on project organizational structure, team structure, attributes of team members, stakeholder management, communication, and information technology enablers. We conducted studies of other local and international urban renewal cases to verify and fine-tune the project management model identified in this paper. From our study, we conclude that the model used in Hong Kong can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of urban renewal project implementation. Our findings e also provide a foundation for applying the model at other locations, after taking into account the respective environments of these other locations.

ESTIMATION SYSTEM OF LIFE CYCLE ENVIRONMENTAL EMISSIONS FOR URBAN RENOVATION ALTERNATIVES

It is presumed that the estimation of the urban renovation by strategic urban environmental improvement policies on districts and cities that precedes the estimation of individual products and structures will be questioned, so that environmental emissions estimation methods to lead such policies and supporting tools will be needed. This paper supplies a basic scheme of estimation system for life cycle environmental emissions caused by different planning scenarios and environmental improvement methods on the urban renovation process as its prototype system for preliminary simulation analysis. The system of high utility for mainly urban planners is developed to enable simple estimation on urban renovation projects. It is composed of four basic sub-systems, and life cycle estimation processes consist of seven stages from material production to demolition. As life cycle estimation indexes, CO2 emissions and solid wastes, etc. that are most important as global andregional problems are taken up. The ultimate purpose of efforts in the future is to develop the system that be capable of making specific proposals for sustainable urban redevelopment projects and that can be applied to preparation of guidelines on urban environmental master plans and strategic environmental assessment, etc. inmunicipalities.