Building the cities of the future; the architecture of sustainability

With more and more of the global population living in urban areas, incorporating green planning principles and infrastructure has never been so important. The burgeoning movement of green urbanism seeks to resolve this by developing city spaces and infrastructure using sustainable principles and practices to create eco-friendly cities.?

To achieve sustainable urban spaces, policy makers and city planners must work with ecologists, transport planners, the construction industry and many other specialists to create environmentally integrated spaces. This means using sustainable materials, often locally sourced; developing electrified public transport, building energy efficient buildings and incorporating renewable energy resources into the grid.

Copenhagen is a fantastic example of these principles. As early as 1930 the city began electrifying its metro network, with the entire metropolitan train system now being completely carbon free; this process has also been extended to all urban buses, with the entire fleet expected to be carbon neutral by 2030. Extensive redevelopment of the road networks has meant that almost half of the city’s residents feel safe to use bicycles, whilst a huge proportion of the city’s energy comes from wind turbines - the greatest proportion of any world capital.In Barcelona an innovative approach to reducing GHG emissions and combating the urban heat island effect has been the implementation of “superblocks”. By turning 9 distinct blocks into one, homogenous superblock, in which traffic is restricted above 10km/h; you reclaim the block for pedestrians and cyclists, whilst allowing for the introduction of more permanent green spaces. Although only a few of these superblocks have been established to date, the city municipality is planning for over 500 in the near future, drastically reimagining the dynamic of the city.

As the world faces the massive challenges of a warming planet, urban spaces are having to be continuously redeveloped to better protect residents from the dangers posed by intense heat. Cities such as Athens are already assessing what can be done to assuage the dangerous effects of global warming in a sprawling metropolis. Some techniques are as old as time; planting trees in urban spaces can provide shade for buildings and walkways that help to cool down sweltering streets. By expanding pavements, space can be made to plant new trees but this can pose its own problems, making streets too small for essential services like fire trucks and ambulances to operate effectively.

An innovative alternative to planting more trees and plants at street level is the implementation of green roofs. Since 2002, all newly developed or retrofitted flat roofs in Basel, Switzerland have had to be redesigned as green roofs. Whilst not only drastically improving the biodiversity of the city, these green roofs help to better regulate temperature, insulate buildings and naturally purify the city’s air. These new green spaces utilise what was previously dead space, providing an opportunity for residents to grow herbs and vegetables in the heart of the city.

Convincing architects and developers to allow for sustainability in the development and construction of their plans can be difficult, but the Hague has come up with a points based plan that drives competition. Different green measures earn your project points, which are needed to meet a sustainability threshold for the project to be approved. Green roofs and walls, sustainable materials and open, natural spaces all contribute to the points rating of a development.

Clearly the development and rewiring of our cities to meet sustainability standards and solving the mounting problems facing the urban populations of the world is a must for the future. Encouragingly, there are many opportunities and methods to make our metropolitan spaces more efficient and environmentally entwined than ever before. The vast array of skills that are needed to ensure cities work make green urbanism a wonderful tapestry for collaboration. The results of well thought out, sustainable design and redevelopment will be felt by millions of people, improving the lives of urban populations worldwide whilst drastically improving our collective environmental footprint. Ultimately, green cities are happier cities and there should be no better incentive for the world to fully embrace these principles.