Recents concern about the impact of global warming upon the world’s climates and increased pollutiion and despoilation of natural habitats have introduced the concept of environmental and ecological sustainability as a criterion against which to judge all human activity. Sustainable design and urban and regional planning is the philosophy of designing and planning the human-built environment to comply with principles of economic, social and ecological sustainability. Originally first articulated as a criterion for urban design and planning back in the 1970’s by Richard Hopper (then Hawaii’s State Environmental Planning Coordinator) both in an article published in the magazine of the American Planning Association and as part of an effort he led to develop a “Quality Growth Policy for the State of Hawaii,” sustainability is no longer a concept limited to the field of biology. Instead, as Hopper articulated back in the 1970’s all natural and man-made systems have an inherent carrying-capacity that can either be: (1) used as a limit for growth; (2) ignored and exceeded with the consequence of thus degrading the system; or (3) expanded through new technologies and method of design and planning. As such, applying the concepts of sustainability and carrying-capacity to the design of our man-made built environment helps to protect the quality of both our man-made and natural environment.

One of the first principles of sustainable design and urban planning is to recognize that we are all connected, and what one of us does affects us all. As such, sustainable design and urban planning is about creating sustainable “communities.” This means that we need to be concerned not only with the direct and obvious negative environmental impacts that can be traced to our individual actions, but that we also need to address the collective and cumulative impacts of our societal activities. That is where urban and regional design and planning comes in. Urban and regional design and planning is how we as a community or society can work cooperatively to build sustainable communities. Urban and regional design and planning consists of three components: (1) research to identify problems; (2) brain-storming through design charettes and other means to develop alternatives; and (3) public participation to reach consensus on proposed means of implementation. Urban and regional design and planning, however, does not replace the political process in making the ultimate decision on implementation actions such as revised zoning, public infrastructure funding, etc. What urban and regional design and planning does is to help promote informed decision-making and a long-range vision to guide development. In this context, what sustainable design and urban planning does is to include sustainability is a criterion to help guide development decisions.

Sustainable design and urban planning is guided by several principles borrowed from biology or the natural environment. These include the concepts of: (1) connectedness; (2) renewability; (3) efficiency; (4) minimization of externalities or negative impacts; and (5) carrying-capacity. Urban planners and designers that are interested in achieving sustainable development and communities use a variety of new urban design and planning principles and techniques to help achieve these concepts or goals of sustainability. These include smart growth strategies, new urbanism designs, sustainable urban infrastructure, new green building codes and designs, and new strategies to bring the natural environment back into our urban man-made environment. Following is a discussion of some of these techniques, beginning with new technological and building-design techniques and ending with sustainable land-use management techniques.

WASTE REDUCTION, RECYCLING AND RESOURCE RECOVERY

Waste is the ultimate externality or pollution produced by humans and all other living organisms. In the past, humans have dealt with waste primarily by simply discarding it upon the land. As the world becomes increasingly urbanized, however, waste that is simply thrown away upon the land or into the water becomes a primary cause of disease and water pollution. Also, landfills generate methane, a gas that contributes more to global warming than carbon dioxide, while transporting waste to distant landfills uses energy and contributes to global warming.  Finally, the more technologically advanced we become as a society, the greater percentage of our wastes that come from chemicals and thus are hazardous wastes. All of this requires a new concept where we need to learn to design our built environment in ways that eliminate waste (or that starts to look at what were traditionally wastes as renewable resources).  Because of tough pollution control laws in developed nations, many companies are already doing this with their wastes. But we need to do a better job of waste reduction where we incorporate this as a “sustainability” criterion in everything we do.  Also, for those wastes that we do have, we need to begin to look at them as an urban ore to be mined through recycling and resource recovery.

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GREEN BUILDING DESIGN

In addition to the production of waste, the other major aspect of our man-made environment are the buildings that we live and work in.  Most people do not realize that the energy used to heat and cool our buildings account for 40 of all of our energy usage.  As such, the inefficient design of buildings is a major contributor to global warming.  Following are methods of “green” building design that can make the construction and use of our buildings more environmentally sustainable.

Design of Sustainable Buildings Incorporating Green Roofs

A new approach to building “green” buildings is to incorporate green roofs on buildings.  Actually, this is an approach that might have been utilized to help cool one of the first cities in ancient times — i.e. the hanging gardens of Babylon. Green roofs help reduce the “heat island effect” created by all the concrete of our urban areas that cause cities to be hotter than the surrounding area. This, in return, reduces the need for air-conditioning and energy usage. Green roofs also can help to absorb carbon dioxide from the air. Both can help reduce global warming. In this regard, on Earth Day of 2009, the City of New York announced incentives and regulations to actually require the conversion of buildings to green roofs where there can be shown to be an economic benefit. Chicago is another city to aggressively promote the conversion of buildings to green roofs. What makes green roofs attractive today are new plastic membranes that are laid on the roof to collect the rain water run-off. A special soil is then put on top of the membrane in which plants are grown. The plants in turn absorb much of the rain water, thus reducing the stormwater runoff produced from the building. Above is an example of a green roof on a building built recently in Fukuoda, Japan.

Design of Sustainable Buildings Incorporating Vertical Farming

Vertical Farming — Another variation on a green building is known as “vertical farming.” This is a new concept to build high-rise farms (i.e. food grown in specially designed high-rise buildings) so as to reduce the transportation costs of bring food from the countryside to cities. In the proposed building shown above, wind turbines are installed on top of the building to provide energy for the building. Instead of growing the plants in soil, the proposal is to grown the plants using aeroponics. This is an approach where plants are hung in the air and a fine spray containing water and nutrients is sprayed on the roots of the hanging plants. The proposal is to collect rainwater and to store it in water tanks to supply the water. After spraying the roots of the plants, the excess water is then collected and re-used.

Design of Sustainable Buildings Incorporating Solar Energy

Perhaps the most obvious approach to the design of sustainable buildings is to incorporate passive and active solar features into the design of our buildings.  Passive solar features might include using natural ventilation or light to heat, cool or light a building, while active solar systems include such things as solar photovoltaic panels to generate electricity or solar hot water systems to use the heat of the sun to heat the water used by a building.  As an example of a building that utilizes solar energy, above are apartments in Windsor, Victoria, Australia that are built with not only both passive solar and solar photovoltaic systems, but also are made of recycled materials and include a system to collect rainwater for the irrigation of the landscape of the building.

Design of Sustainable Buildings Incorporating New Energy-Efficient and Renewable Materials

New Energy Efficient Renewable Building Materials — Most individuals do not realize that the heating and air-conditioning of our buildings accounts for over 50 percent of all our energy usage. One way to reduce such energy usage and to make our urban environments more sustainable is to construct our buildings with more energy-efficent materials. This includes better insulation for our homes and using new types of glass to regulate the amount of light allowed into buildings based upon the season of the year. For the construction of the swimming stadium for the Beijing Olympics, this same concept of regulating the amount of sunlight allowed into the building was used – but instead of glass, the exterior of the building was constructed of a special plastic “bubble-wrap” that could be electronically controlled so as to allow or restrict light into the building.