URBAN TRANSFORMATION FROM BEING SUSTAINABLE TO REGENRATIVE
Paper research by – Ar.Garima Grover
URBAN TRANSFORMATION FROM BEING SUSTAINABLE TO REGENRATIVE Objective Reducing the Urban Impact on Surroundings and achieving healthy built environment.
Abstract What does a natural ecosystem do differently than the man-made world that surrounds us? It is becoming increasingly clear that the consumption of resources now enjoyed in the developed nations will be impossible to be sustained worldwide. This paper is regarding the Urban Built Environment and how our day to day life impacts the surroundings .The vision of our research is to reduce environ-mental impact and mitigate resource depletion by closing resource cycles and achieving a circular (urban) metabolism. The research focuses on integration of technologies for sustainable urban water, materials and energy cycles. We evaluate new concepts for collection, transport, treatment, supply and use of energy, water and materials, which we consider as valuable resources and which qualities have to be preserved. The research includes small urban areas for which we aim at an optimal, sustainable and highly effective balance between supply and demand of water, energy and resources. We have tried to highlight the methods of recycling and reuse to move towards a healthy environment, thus making it a Regenerative Environment. The outcome of the study will help people better target energy conservation by recycling resources at individual/community/study level and enables early identification and mitigation of any negative effects in the environment.
Key words
Built environment , sustainable , Urban metabolism Urban ecosystem Material flows analysis Urban ecological model Urban ecology theory Socio-ecological system
Key Points : 1.. Urban Built Environment 1.1 Urban Built Environment 1.2 Urban Metabolism 2. Metabolism Methodology 2.1. Kinds of Metabolism 2.3 Regenerative versus sustainable. 3. Urban System Engineering 3.1 Types of physical infrastructure which are considered in regard to the concept of Urban Metabolism
1.1 Built environment Built environments are typically used to describe the interdisciplinary field that addresses the design, construction, management, and use of these man-made surroundings as an interrelated whole as well as their relationship to human activities over time (rather than a particular element in isolation or at a single moment in time). The field is generally not regarded as a traditional profession or academic discipline in its own right, instead drawing upon areas such as economics, law, public policy, public health, management, geography, design, engineering, technology, and environmental sustainability. Within the field of public health, built environments are referred to as building or renovating areas in an effort to improve the community’s well-being through construction of “aesthetically, health improved, and environmentally improved landscapes and living structures. In social science, the term built environment refers to the man-made surroundings that provide the setting for human activity, ranging in scale from buildings to parks. It has been defined as "the humanitarian-made space in which people live, work, and recreate on a day-to-day basis.“ Basic knowledge of energy flows in the built environment in general and more specifically in buildings. The accent lies on the energy use of buildings because buildings are the largest energy consumers in the built environment. The built environment is responsible for significant use of final energy (62%) and is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions (55%). Achieving environmental goals, including climate change mitigation, requires comprehensive methodologies to accurately assess the impacts from this sector. Research to date focuses on either individual buildings or on the urban level (e.g., metropolitan regions). Robust and accurate methodologies have been developed to quantify
environmental impacts at both scales. While methodologies overlap between the building and urban levels, assessment remains largely confined within each scale. At the building level, research focuses on materials, architectural design, operational systems, structural systems, construction, and analysis methods. At the urban scale, urban form, density, transportation, infrastructure, consumption, and analysis methods are the main research focuses.
1.2 Urban Metabolism The metaphor of a city, or living environment, as a living organism with a collective urban metabolism can be traced back for more than 150 years. Though metabolism was at first used to describe living organisms, pioneering ecologist Arthur Tansley expanded the term in 1935 to encompass the material and energetic streams from the inorganic construction of settlements, and introduced the ‘Urban Metabolism’. More recently, the concept of urban metabolism has been used as an analytical tool to understand energetic and material exchanges between cities and the rest of the world. Christopher Kennedy recently updated the definition of urban metabolism to ‘the sum total of the technical and socioeconomical processes that occur in cities, resulting in growth, production of energy, and elimination of waste’. It has strong relations to other concepts that build upon mimicking nature, like Biomimicry by Janine Benyus, and Cradle to Cradle by William McDonough and Michael Braungart. Originally, urban metabolism approaches aimed at quantifying inputs, outputs and storage – or: flows and stocks – of the urban system. More recently, recycling of resources and interconnection of flows within the urban environment are incorporated, aiming for a more
circular urban metabolism. Here again, processes in nature where cycles are closed and waste from one process is input for another, are models for the urban situation.
One definition, from UCLA’s California Center for Sustainable Communities, is “a systems approach for assessing sustainability by measuring the total energy, materials, and waste products that flow into and out of an urban area.” Or, in the translation of Mikhail Chester, an Arizona State University professor who collaborates with the center, “The gist of it is that a city is like an organism — it takes in resources and spits out waste.”
Implementation: Case Studies After Wolman’s introduction of the phrase, a study of Hong Kong offered the first description of UM: “We must come to understand and appreciate the nature of the inputs of urban settlements; their transportation networks; the capacity of their natural and man-made circulatory systems; the generation, disposal and resource potential of their wastes—in short, we must become familiar with the metabolism of our cities” (Newcombe et al. 1978). If Wolman labeled the reliance of urban environments upon the natural world as metabolism, the Hong Kong study operationalized it by cataloging the rates of resource consumption and waste production, with additional analyses of energy, food, nutrients, and water supply (Boyden et al. 1981). This pioneering case study used previous mass-balance studies to characterize physical indicators of flows through the city and social variables affecting the population (Newcombe et al. 1978). The research considered the flow and end use by looking at the composition of the built environment, energy use, “metabolic consumption” (i.e., energy), nutrients, flows of phosphorus and water, flow of
materials, the “circulatory system” (i.e., transport), air systems, sewage, aggregates, and solid waste (Newcombe et al. 1978). This analysis was used to project the effects of urbanization on resource requirements for the turn of the century. Warren-Rhodes and Koenig (2001) updated the study to compare flows in 1971 and 1997, explaining that UM “measures quantitatively a city’s load on the natural environment”. The trend analysis showed increases in material usage and pollutant generation, leading the authors to conclude, “systemic overload of land, atmospheric and water systems has occurred” (WarrenRhodes and Koenig 2001). They suggested “high metabolic rates can be beneficial to a city’s survival” in terms of efficient resource consumption but noted that a high environmental cost outweighed any benefits in Hong Kong. A metabolic study of Tokyo considered the health and ecosystem risks of various material stocks and flows (Akiyama 1994). It quantified the accumulation, and calculated the residual time, of chemical elements in urban waterways and synthetic compounds. The study noted the high energy consumption in the city and the large amount of materials rapidly moving through the transport system, highlighting two approaches to UM: the black box and subsystem models (Akiyama 1994). The former considered city-level macroscopic indicators and the latter looked at flows of materials and their controls. Twenty-five years after the Hong Kong study, material flow analysis and emergy evaluation were contextualized with the UM analogy: “The metabolism of a city can be seen as the process of transforming all the materials and commodities for sustaining the city’s economic activity” (Huang and Hsu 2003). Newman (1999) presented material flows for Sydney, Australia in 1970
and 1990, showing an increase through time in per capita resource inputs and most waste outputs. Hendriks et al. (2000) described the metabolism of Vienna by using a material flows analysis. Several metabolic concepts were considered, including the anthropogenic metabolism (i.e., flows within the city), which was linked to natural metabolism (i.e., the environment). The metabolism of the city was then linked to the hinterland. 2. Metabolism Methodology 2.1 Kinds of urban metabolism
LINEAR
METABOLISM
CIRCULAR METABOLISM:
Turning regenerative cities into reality Anna Leidreiter “We have become a society of abundance and harbour a throw-away mentality,” German agriculture minister Isle Aligner said in Berlin in March 2012, after announcing that over 11 million kilograms of food are discarded per year in Germany, 60 per cent from private households. Across the European Union we throw away 3 billion tonnes of waste per year, some 90 million tonnes of it hazardous. Such huge totals inevitably mean that huge amounts of resources are used in vain, just as the greenhouse gas emissions caused in their production are in vain. As cities become the primary human habitat, the reduction of waste becomes a key issue in attempts to minimise cities’ ecological footprints. The relevant concept when transforming our cities into regenerative systems is therefore the ‘metabolism of cities’. Cities need to move from an inefficient linear metabolism towards a resource-efficient circular metabolism. The latter differs in that all wastes produced are converted into nutrients for future growth. Currently urban systems externalise their wastes in ways that undermine and damage the health and well-being of ecosystems, locally, regionally and globally. Resources flow through the urban system without much concern for their origin or for the destination of wastes. Inputs and wastes are considered as largely unrelated. Oakland: the zero waste city The concept of zero waste goes beyond recycling discarded materials to consideration of the vast flow of resources and waste through our society, and moves to eliminate wastes by treating them as inputs elsewhere. The city of Oakland reduced its annual tonnage to landfill from 400,000
tons (363,000 tonnes) to 291,000 tons (264,000 tonnes) in only four years. This was possible by explicitly retiring discarded materials to the local economy, applying the waste management hierarchy in priority order (reduce, reuse, recycle, and compost) to the maximum extent, and promoting recycling market development. Oakland’s zero waste principles promote the best use of materials to eliminate waste and pollution, emphasising a closed-loop system of production and consumption, moving in logical increments toward the goal of zero waste by undertaking the following steps: (1) improving downstream reuse and recycling of end-of-life products and materials, (2) pursuing upstream re-design strategies to reduce the volume and toxicity of discarded products and materials and promote low-impact lifestyles, and (3) fostering and supporting the use of discarded products and materials to stimulate and drive local economic and workforce development. For example, East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD) is a publicly-owned utility that operates its main wastewater treatment plant in Oakland. It converts post-consumer food scraps to energy via anaerobic digestion. Waste haulers collect post-consumer food waste from local restaurants and markets and take it to EBMUD. After the digestion process, the leftover material is composted and used as a natural fertiliser. According to the cities decision makers the major opportunities to reduce landfill lie in two areas: capturing organics (yard waste, food scraps) for composting, and increasing recovery of recyclables from waste materials hauled by private interests, especially the construction industry. In 2008, organic material (including plant debris and food scraps) was by far the largest remaining recoverable material type in all sectors, representing 48 per cent of Oakland’s total
landfill disposal. Furthermore, 26 per cent of Oakland’s total annual landfill disposal comes from the ‘non-franchised direct hauling sector’ (i.e. commercial waste removal services unrelated to the government’s waste collection responsibilities). This material is hauled by parties other than the franchisee (the government’s contractor) to a number of landfills within and outside the county, and largely consists of construction and demolition debris. Enabling political frameworks Changing a linear metabolism into a circular approach means initiating a comprehensive political framework. Looking at the success of Oakland, a combination of strategies enabled traditional ‘end of the pipeline’ recycling programs as well as upstream solutions to product waste, policy and regulatory changes. No single strategy can achieve zero waste. However, the first key step is often the simple act of target setting, since that unleashes further progress. In March 2006, the Oakland City Council adopted the goal of zero waste by 2020. One of the main barriers to implementing an effective policy framework in cities is a lack of vertical policy coordination. Vertical support is important not only to enable local authorities, but also to support horizontal coordination around a common goal. Key to Oakland’s success was the fact that the California Integrated Waste Management Board has also set a goal of zero waste in its strategic plan for the state, and that neighbouring Alameda County had established a legal framework. Oakland shows that solutions and best policy examples exist, so there is no time to lose in developing strategies to support their implementation elsewhere. Planners seeking to create regenerative urban systems should start by studying the ecology of natural systems. Nature essentially has a circular zero-waste metabolism. On a predominantly urban planet, cities will
need to adopt circular metabolic systems to assure their own long-term viability as well as that of the rural environments on which they depend.
2.2 Regenerative versus sustainable Regenerative and sustainable are essentially the same thing except for one key point: in a sustainable system, lost ecological systems are not returned to existence. In a regenerative system, those lost systems can ultimately begin "regenerating" back into existence. Put more simply, regenerative systems create a "better" world than we (humans) found it, now and into the future. There is also a linguistic problem with the word "sustainable", which in the strict sense is meant to mean "self-sustaining". Because the word root "sustain" means "last" or "endure," the general public and even many non-experts in the industry define the word only as "able to last" or "the capacity to endure." In popular usage by designers and product manufacturers, "sustainable" has become a relative term referring to any material, process or product (including a building) which is less toxic or environmental harmful than those conventionally used. A product that contains 75% recycled material is often considered "sustainable", but is in fact merely MORE sustainable than a comparable product that contains no recycled material. A truly sustainable material would be one made of 100% recycled material that can, in turn, be completely recycled into a comparable new material or product. This is rarely the case. "Regenerative" also suffers from a slightly different linguistic problem, the term is still competing with the biological community in terms of its use for the re-growth of limbs etc.. However once the word itself gains wide usage, its meaning becomes more general, much like in
the case of the term "sustainable". The base meaning of "re-generative" means the "capacity to bring into existence again." So if an item or system is regenerative the item or system has the capacity to bring itself into existence again. Using the example above, a truly regenerative product would not only be 100% recycled and recyclable, but it would also improve the environmental conditions at the factory where it was made, the business where it was used and so on throughout its life-cycle (creating habitat, filtering water, catalyzing nitrogenfixation processes in the soil, etc.).
3. Urban System Engineering Urban systems are comprised of the processes by which life in metropolitan areas is organized and operated. These processes may be grouped into four major categories of; infrastructure, built environment/planning, administration and human services. The urban systems program in Systems Engineering will focus primarily on urban infrastructure. Within this focus, it will emphasize the systems associated with municipal solid waste, sewerage, wastewater and drinking water supply. Related infrastructures include transportation, energy and communications.
3.1 Types of physical infrastructure which are considered in regard to the concept of Urban Metabolism To be able to apply this concept to urban design and planning, one has to understand the different flows and the different scales of the city and its hinterland as well as the corresponding infrastructures. The relevant types of physical infrastructure (present in the Netherlands) which are considered in regard to the concept of Urban Metabolism are as follows: Water supply; water extraction and purification, drinking water supply network; Wastewater treatment; sewer, wastewater treatment plants, recovery installations; Solid waste management; solid waste collection, separation facilities, transportation infrastructure, landfills, incineration facilities; Energy supply; electricity generators, electricity grid, heat network, pipelines for liquid or gaseous
energy
carriers;
Food
supply;
farms,
nutrient
supply,
storage
facilities;
Transportation;
roads,
bicycle infrastructure, pedestrian infrastructure, canals,
public
transportation. The morphology of infrastructure is directly linked to the quality of urban metabolism, and the design and engineering of these infrastructures, imbedding them into the urban environment, is therefore of great importance. ‘Water is a brutal delineator of social power which has at various times worked to either foster greater urban cohesion or generate new forms of political conflict’.
Conclusion But what does a natural ecosystem do differently than the man-made world that surrounds us? The main difference lies on the fact that nature essentially has a circular zero-waste metabolism where every output by an organism is also an input which replenishes and sustains the whole living environment. As Herbert Girardet says, in order for cities to become more sustainable they must change the linear to a more circular metabolism, creating a self-regulating sustainable relationship with the biosphere. Therefore, the challenge of today is to create sustainable cities, truly regenerative. “A sustainable city […] is a city where achievements in social, economic, and physical development are made to last. A sustainable city has a lasting supply of the natural resources on which its development depends (using them only at a level of sustainable yield). A sustainable city maintains a lasting security from environmental hazards which may threaten development achievements (allowing only for acceptable risk).”A
regenerative city, though, is not just resource-efficient and low carbon emitting, but it positively enhances rather than undermines the ecosystem services it receives from beyond its boundaries.
references
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Built_environment https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233188921_Exploring_built_environment_stock_meta bolism_and_sustainability_by_systems_analysis_approaches http://www.wur.nl/en/Expertise-Services/Chair-groups/Agrotechnology-and-Food-Sciences/Subdepartment-of-Environmental-Technology/Research-3/Urban-Systems-Engineering-1.htm http://web.sys.virginia.edu/graduate/concentrations/227-urban-systems.html https://www.elsevier.com/journals/sustainable-cities-and-society/2210-6707?generatepdf=true http://www.mdpi.com/2076-0752/3/2/279/htm
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