This book explains how learning from past mistakes in urban design can help to enhance sustainable cities and how the principles of Green Urbanism can yield more resilient urban settlements. Environmental design is a fundamental principle in shaping cities. However, environmental challenges like increased resource consumption, water degradation and waste-related issues are among the greatest problems now facing humanity – which is why these issues need to be considered with regard to “smart cities,” either for the development of new urban centers or for the transformation of existing cities. The book not only discusses the importance of integrating sustainability principles in the urban design process, but also demonstrates their application to the development of sustainable cities. As such, the book offers essential information and a source of inspiration for all those who want to build more sustainable cities.
This book explains how learning from past mistakes in urban design can help to enhance sustainable cities and how the principles of Green Urbanism can yield more resilient urban settlements. Environmental design is a fundamental principle in shaping cities. However, environmental challenges like increased resource consumption, water degradation and waste-related issues are among the greatest problems now facing humanity - which is why these issues need to be considered with regard to "smart cities," either for the development of new urban centers or for the transformation of existing cities. The book not only discusses the importance of integrating sustainability principles in the urban design process, but also demonstrates their application to the development of sustainable cities. As such, the book offers essential information and a source of inspiration for all those who want to build more sustainable cities.
This book incorporates a wealth of research focused on the more and more urgent challenges that urban planning and architectural design all over the world must cope with: from climate change to environmental decay, from an increasing urban population to an increasing poverty. In detail, this book aims at providing innovative approaches, tool and case study examples that, in line with the agenda of 2030, may better drive human settlements toward a sustainable, inclusive and resilient development. To this aim, the book includes heterogeneous regional perspectives and different methodologies and suggests development models capable of limiting further urban growth and re-shaping existing cities to improve both environmental quality and the overall quality of life of people, also taking account the more and more close relationships among urban planning and technological innovation.
This edited volume consists of three parts. It is a culmination of selected research papers presented at the second version of the international conference on Improving Sustainability Concept in Developing Countries (ISCDC) and the second version of the international conference on Alternative and Renewable Energy Quest in Architecture and Urbanism (AREQ), organized by IEREK in Egypt, 2017. It discusses major environmental issues and challenges which threaten our future. These include climate change impact, environmental deterioration, increasing demand for energy and new approaches for alternative renewable energy sources which became a necessity for survival. In addition to addressing the different environmental issues witnessed today, research presented in this book stressed on the need of sustainably shaping buildings and cities using renewable energy sources. Topics included in this book are (1) Resilience in the Built Environment, (2) Design for energy-efficient architecture and (3) Alternative and Renewable Energy Resources Quest in Architecture and Urbanism. The book is of interest to researchers and academicians who continuously aim to update their knowledge in these fields, as well as decision makers needing the enough knowledge to carry out the right decisions towards the benefit of the environment and society.
This book explores the current challenges of teaching biophilic design within environmentally sustainable design (ESD) education. It shows how design frameworks and success matrices can be used within ESD education, explores the development of biophilic design frameworks and shows how design thinking can be used to adopt biophilic design within ESD education. It introduces the new 'Process Bridging Technique (PBT)' that can be used to generate sustainable design frameworks able to fulfil the requirements of a performance-based approach and, at the same time, enhance human-nature connectedness. Based on an educational design research project developed in the past two years at the University of Sydney, this book informs new approaches to ESD education and bridges the spheres of research, education, and profession. It serves as a practical guide on how to systematically develop a design framework that can be used in architecture education, while presenting the pioneering 'Process Bridging Technique' developed by the authors.
This timely book focuses on an overview of the fundamentals behind high-performance workplaces underpinning occupants’ satisfaction, health, and productivity. To this end, it covers human, environmental, and organisational aspects proven to be of great relevance to the design of high-performance workplaces. Perhaps most significantly it looks at these characteristics both before and after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. From the exodus from private offices to the rise of open-plan workplaces, where, how and when people work was changing rapidly pre-COVID. Post-COVID, pandemic-imposed restrictions banished workers from offices into their homes fast, leaving organisation scrambling to keep workers functioning away from HQ. After the immediate shockwaves set by the pandemic, workers and organisations have had the time to learn about positives and negative aspects of remote working with the vast majority now questioning the need to go back to HQ and the purpose of offices. In this book, the contributors share and discuss lessons learned from research conducted in workplaces pre- and post-2020 with a view of providing a clear picture about what high-performance workplaces are about, including the key drivers behind workers’ satisfaction, health, and productivity. This handbook builds on a programme of applied research conducted in workplaces led by the editors over the last decade which is aimed at understanding the synergies between the design, performance, and experience of spaces. It examines ergonomics, biophilic design, acoustics, indoor air quality, thermal comfort, diversity, leadership, psychological safety, culture, and much more. Research findings are presented side-by-side with case studies selected from the research database led by the editors. Industry experts add to the academic voice, reinforcing the authenticity of this book and its relevance to other stakeholders found outside the academic arena, including the property and design industry, students, government, and the community in general.
This book seeks to identify and to examine factors and mechanisms underlying the growth and development of smart cities. It is commonplace to discuss smart cities through the lens of advances in ICT. The resulting overemphasis on what is technologically possible downplays what is politically, socially and economically feasible. This book, by analysing the smart city through a variety of perspectives, offers a more comprehensive insight into and understanding of the complex and the open-ended nature of the growth and development of a smart city. A solid conceptual framework is developed and employed throughout the chapters, and a selection of case studies from Europe, Asia, and the Arab Peninsula grants the readers a hands-on perspective of the matters discussed. The chapters included in this book address a set of questions, including: How do the twin-processes of digitalization and smartification unfold in the context of the smart city agenda? How do these processes relate to the concepts of smart city 1.0, 2.0., 3.0. and 4.0? In which ways have the spatial aspects of city functioning been influenced by the intrusion of ICT? In which ways do the same processes contribute to the attainment of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)? What are the implications of smartification and the emergence of smart organizations (public, private, and voluntary) for the spatial development of smart cities? Do ICT and its application in the city space boost the processes of revitalization and how does ICT influence the process of gentrification? To what extent and how does the intrusion of ICT-enhanced tools and applications in the city space impact on a city’s relationship with its broader territorially defined context? Are the administrative borders and divisions inherent in the fabric of a city becoming less/more porous? How should urban sprawl be conceived in the context of the smart city debate? This book will have a broad appeal to academics, students, and policy makers with interests in urban planning, sustainable development, cities, economics, technology, sociology, urban studies, digitalization, SDGs, wellbeing, and resilience.
The authors in this book analyze resilience and sustainability in seven different complex adaptive systems (human beings, megaprojects, higher education, food systems, climate change, healthcare settings and cities) by highlighting transitions from complexity to transdisciplinarity as a strategy for knowledge integration. The book provides insights about the nature of complex adaptive systems based on the cases studied, in particular the issue of second order cybernetics (associated to the mind-matter problematic), the role of entropy in complex systems and the importance of the notion of reflexivity in the current cognitive-reflexive stage in world capitalism. In this way, the book aims at contributing to current debates and objections about the validity of traditional ontological and epistemological positions in the face of radical and rapid transformations worldwide affecting some aspects of capitalist development. The Conclusions explore how complex sustainability needs to integrate several elements beyond the conventional view expressed in the standard, anthropocentric definition of sustainability. The contributions in this book are important for anyone interested in meaningfully designing research on resilience and sustainability that uses complexity and transdisciplinary perspectives and frameworks. ENDORSEMENTS: "This volume, edited and co-authored by Gerardo del Cerro Santamaría, is an important book for our times. It illustrates the necessity of utilizing transdisciplinary approaches to address the unremitting onslaught of environmental disasters in the post-COVID era. It serves as an essential primer for understanding the critical intersections between complexity, sustainability, and resilience. Readers will undoubtedly become more reflective about their own inquiries as they learn how scholars from different fields integrate knowledge to offer innovative and meticulously researched insights regarding many of today’s most pressing global issues." — Tanya Augsburg, San Francisco State University "From Complex Systems to Transdisciplinarity, edited and co-authored by Gerardo del Cerro Santamaría, takes resilience and sustainability to center stage, and brings to the fore the limits of individual disciplines in understanding the intricacies of nature, ecology and capitalism as it applies to seven complex systems. The book advocates for an interconnected, creative and holistic path while calling for a transition from complexity to transdisciplinarity as a means of integrating knowledge. This challenges conventional ontological and epistemological perspectives in the face of our rapidly changing societies. This book offers a novel analytical perspective and is a valuable resource for researchers and scholars interested in addressing global challenges through complex resilience, sustainability and transdisciplinarity." — Florent Pasquier, Sorbonne Université and Centre International de Recherches et Études Transdisciplinaires (CIRET), Paris, France "Today’s grand and global challenges are marked by irreducible complexities. They cannot be adequately addressed by reductionist approaches and are likely to not have a single, undisputable solution. The contributions to this volume, carefully edited by Gerardo del Cerro Santamaría, acknowledge these impurities and argue for approaches that transgress on-sided or narrow-minded perspectives. Thus, they offer topical insights into different domains and concepts that address issues of sustainability and resilience without reiterating traditional dichotomies between nature and culture or society and technology. Hence, the volume puts transdisciplinary in the centre of research practices that are both experimental and democratic. From Complex Systems to Transdisciplinarity is insightful and innovative, and a book you cannot ignore." — Cornelius Schubert, Technische Universität Dortmund, Germany "This book shows how the Anthropocene world is an unpredictable system of complex systems. To comprehend and transform this world towards sustainability, we need new ontological and epistemic lenses offered by transdisciplinary inquiry. Policy makers, scientists and corporate leaders will benefit from reading this important collection of essays on the fundamental topics of resilience, sustainability, cybernetics, reflexivity, nature, and entropy." — Paul Shrivastava, Penn State University and The Club of Rome, United States of America
The concept of ‘sustainable urban development’ has been pushed to the forefront of policymaking and politics as the world wakes up to the impacts of climate change and the destructive effects of the Anthropocene. Climate change has emerged to be one of the biggest challenges faced by our planet today, threatening both built and natural systems with long-term consequences, which may be irreversible. While there is a vast body of literature on sustainability and sustainable urban development, there is currently limited focus on how to cohesively bring together the vital issues of the planning, development, and management of sustainable cities. Moreover, it has been widely stated that current practices and lifestyles cannot continue if we are to leave a healthy living planet to not only the next generation, but also to the generations beyond. The current global school strikes for climate action (known as Fridays for Future) evidences this. The book advocates the view that the focus needs to rest on ways in which our cities and industries can become green enough to avoid urban ecocide. This book fills a gap in the literature by bringing together issues related to the planning, development, and management of cities and focusing on a triple-bottom-line approach to sustainability.
Designing Better Architecture Education is an outcome of a research conducted systematically with diligence, passion, wide and in-depth exercise on the obvious and latent aspects of undergraduate architecture education. Although specific to India, this study probes the diverse global scenario in acknowledgement of the global style of architecture, where green preferences surface as compulsion. The findings are arranged systematically, analyzed impartially and inferred upon logically. The final bunch of suggestions aimed at a much desirable architecture education revamp in India is, in fact, relevant for architecture education as a whole anywhere. The author suggests compaction of graduation time, intensification of exposures, interactions and instructions, shift of focus, introduction of contemporary specializations, restructuring intake, revamping academic administration and a significant change of stance in teaching itself, including methods, philosophy, attitude and paraphernalia. The book provides valuable information, insight and suggestions to rejuvenate the academic approach to the education of architecture and forms a reliable basis for further endeavour in this direction.
