{"id":1639,"date":"2011-09-25T20:43:50","date_gmt":"2011-09-25T20:43:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/?p=1639"},"modified":"2011-09-25T20:43:50","modified_gmt":"2011-09-25T20:43:50","slug":"how-to-build-an-eco-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/?p=1639","title":{"rendered":"How to build an eco-city"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The eco-city design \u2018Hanging Gardens\u2019 for the Erasmusveld quarter in The Hague. (Design: Arjan van Timmeren\/2T atelier)<\/p><\/div>\n

During Green Building Week, a team of TU lecturers has launched a brand new book on eco-cities. The book is to help future designers and engineers to green up the urban environment.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Love them or loathe them, cities are here to stay. In 2007 half of the world\u2019s population lived in cities and by 2050 the UN expects seventy percent of all people will be urbanites. The UN Habitat programme foresees the rise of mega- and hypercities with over twenty million inhabitants. One could regard cities as ecological monsters consuming water, energy and materials in huge amounts (forty percent of all materials extracted is used in buildings and structures), and releasing polluted water, greenhouse gases and piles of waste in return.<\/p>\n

But then again, cities are also the centres of our economy and generate new economic activities, such as shops, offices and services.
\n\u2018In this book we aim to avoid thinking of cities in terms of good or bad,\u2019 writes editor and assistant professor Dr Ellen van Bueren (TPM). \u2018Cities are there, and most of them are growing. This is something that we should take as a starting point for our attempts to make them sustainable\u2026. The urban environment holds various keys to a more sustainable planet.\u2019 As examples, she mentions high-density buildings to reduce land use, reusing building materials, making buildings energy-efficient or even energy producing, and providing buildings with green roofs. There is a wealth of opportunities at hand.<\/p>\n

The large tome (429 pages) is the outcome of a collective effort of 16 authors from three faculties (Architecture; Civil Engineering and Geosciences; Technology, Policy and Management) and the research institute OTB. Titled \u2018Sustainable Urban Environments\u2019, the publication has been written as a textbook for the module \u2018Sustainable Urban Environments & Infrastructures\u2019 in the MSc programme Industrial Ecology (TU Delft in cooperation with Leiden University).<\/p>\n

\u201cMost similar books just cover energy, water or sanitation topics,\u201d says Van Bueren. \u201cOther books give an overview of best practices, but these tend to be fairly soon outdated.\u201d So, the authors chose a different tack \u2013 the systemic approach. \u201cWhat are the problems you want to address, how do you choose your system boundaries (what to include and what not) and which solutions are there on offer?\u201d says Van Bueren. She is well aware that the urban dynamics is such that future professionals will constantly be confronted by new solutions and new challenges. This new book should help to prepare them.<\/p>\n

Ellen van Bueren et.al., \u2018Sustainable Urban Environments \u2013 an ecosystem approach\u2019, Springer Verlag, 2012. The book was presented at the first Delft Environment Initiative Lecture, last Wednesday at BK-city.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During Green Building Week, a team of TU lecturers has launched a brand new book on eco-cities. The book is to help future designers and engineers to green up the urban environment. Love them or loathe them, cities are here to stay. In 2007 half of the world\u2019s population lived in cities and by 2050 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6],"tags":[46,89,142,448],"class_list":["post-1639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-delta","tag-architecture","tag-cities","tag-ecology","tag-urban-development"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1639\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}