QUALITY OF LIFE LIVABILITY IN FUTURE CITIES Learn how Urban Planning, Energy, Climate, Ecology and Mobility impact the livability and quality of life of a “Future City” ETH Zürich - MOOC - EDX Rotha Oudom
MODULE 1: WARM-UP WEEK 1.1 WELCOME This urban planning course will focus on 4 areas that directly affect livability in city: -Urban energy -Urban climate -Urban ecology -Urban mobility Learning Objectives: -Understand the important of livabilty in ciites -Recognise the existing measurable criteria of livable cities -Learn about how different aspects of urban climate, energy, mobility, water and ecology affect the livablity in cities. -Recognize the different measurable criteria for the assessment of livabilty, and how to influence the design of livable cities. 1.2 INTRODUCTION TO ETH ZURICH -A world-class university in the heart of Europe -Swiss Federal Institute of Technology 1.3 INTRODUCTION TO ETH DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE (D_ARCH) -Leading Swiss institute of higher education in the technical & natural science -High quality of teaching and outstanding results of the research. 1.4 INTRODUCTION TO CHAIR OF INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE (IA) Info. Architecture, as we define it, has application on 3 scales: -Small-the objects or building -medium-the village or Urban district -Large-the city or territory On all scale we use form, function, dynamics and geometric references as informative structures. The final goal is to educate, architects, designers and planners in the use of the new methods and instruments in order to produce more sustainable and responsible buildings and urban rural systems. 1.5 INTRODUCTION TO FUTURE CITIES LABORATORY SINGAPORE (FCL) FCL is a transdiciplinary research programme focused on sustainable urbanisation of different scales in a global perspective related to future cities and environmental sustainability. 1.6 FIRST READING ”Information Cities” : This book will provide the basic terms and concepts that we will be discuss during the next weeks. 1.7 FIRST DISCUSSION 1. How do you personally define livability? -Quality of life, recreational activities, education level -Safety, healthy, quality of life, efficient transportation system, public space -Easy and Enjoy -Access to infrastructure, recreational facilities, greater life expectancy, happier population, Intangible element of culture 2. Do you think that cities will become more livable in the future? -With modern technology, need for the communities/ more adequate planning, short time spend on transportation, longer the quality time available for other activities.
3. Which are the best strategies for sustainable urban development? -Making bigger sidewalk, bicycle lanes, solar panels, cheaper electrical bills, greenhouse, garden, food and air and sustain. -Recycling, photovoltaic, wind energy, vehicle reduce pollution, use the material that reduce cooling healing and reduce emission and noise. -New regulations, stricter laws, an aware society, minded group of people work for liveable cities.
MODULE 2: INTRODUCTION TO LIVABLE CITIES 2.1 INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW -What is the relation between livability and the quality of life in a city? -Livable future cities will focus on livability in existing and new cities. -Introducing possibilities of participatory Urban design by citizens -How to positively influence the design of cities toward more livability -Better understand the city, its origin, its planning, its design, its construction, and its functioning. 2.2 INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE For traditional architecture, we use physical materials but as building and builidngs and cities are becoming smarter information architecture needs new types of material.
Data
Information
Knowledge
Build Architecture
Data: refer to the smallest entities of information as values given to objects, expressions, functions, or properties. Example: Numbers, Colors, Other simple descriptions. -Information sets data in relation to each other. It consists of data and connections -We consider information as a virtual material for the information age and for information society. -Knowledge is a result of connecting data and information. -We need information to understand and design big architecture. -What is information in architect and what is the relation between data, information and knoledge in architecture? Example: Brick wall
Past: Protect Bear loads Now (Information age) Tell us its entire story: -The production of the bricks and the mortar -Process of the transportation -The origin of its materials -The construction -Its health related qualification -The thermal properties of the wall, its color, its acoustic properties -The position of each brick in 3 dimensional space
-Combining information, experience, and insight can lead to architectural knowledge. This knowledge is necessary to understand the function and meaning of buildings. -Information Architecture helps to formalize and generalize design principles. -The stocks and flows model is a model to understand the functioning of buildings and cities. -Simulation in architecture requires the existence of a model representing the most important characteristics of the proposed solution. INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE: -Describes object and buildings that are both expressions of information, and at the same time use the architectural metaphor, or the architectural object itself to bring structure and order into information. -The easiest way to explain the relation between information and architecture in a practical sense. 2.3 STOCKS AND FLOWS The concept of stocks and flows constitutes a useful way of abstracting and understanding the parts of the urban system. Stock Flow
Quantities that do not move
Quantities that do move
people, water, material, energy, finances, health, cleansity, information, livability
What we focus on: Climate Energy Water Ecology Mobility
Contribution to livability
Example: explain the concept of stocks and flows of materials in a city Concrete Mix with water Pour, harden STOCK
After concrete expire...
Without Recycling
In Europe and North America the need for A major cost for greenhouse gas concrete has decreased. Recycling of concrete emissions during the production of its components. is a relatively new concept.
for ecological and economic reasons Analysing the stocks and flows of concrete precisely by researchers from ETH Zurich: -676, 000 tons of concrete gravel flow into the city of Zurich -379, 000 tons left the city -Almost half of the inflow (329,000 tons) went to office building. The present: -277,000 tons flow into and only 39,000 tons from demolished apartment building leaving the city. FOOD IN THE CITY -Before it’s grown directly around buildings, now due to population, its production moved further away from the center. TODAY FOOD
come from global resources
Cause high levels of CO2 during its production, its processing, and its transport LAND IN THE CITY -Stable stock/Little flow -Take a closer look: we will find significant flow of land (increase into the sea or lake) Example: Singapore has increased its land area by several hundred square kilometres. POLLUTION -Noise, aerosol, smoke, smog, haze, oil spills, unclean water reduces the quality of life in the city.
Solution
The concept of stocks and flows is a useful way to describe the entities the flow into the city stay stay for a while in the city move out of the city
Small population
Recycling
Turning waste into resources of new products
Reuse material also less popular
-has become a major way of life throughout the world -Long-term survival of the cities
MODULE 3: MEASURABLE CRITERIA OF LIVABILITY 3.1 INTRODUCTION OBJECT: -Recognise the existing -Measurable criteria of livable cities CRITERIA FOR LIVABILITY: -Safety -Income possibilities -Living options -Climate -Culture -Private/Public Transportation -Equality and inclusion -Medical care -City governance TRANSFORMATION OF CITIES: The shape and form of human habitats has changed dramatically overtime. Major forces are: -Climate -Landscape -Transportation potential -Available building material -Available Financial Resources -Skill -Knowledge of the builders LOW DENSITY HABITAT: Reaching from solitary castles to suburbia, is often the dream for people to live in but with Information technology, these habitats with vertical cities. Zurich population more than 4,400 people/km2 Singapore’s twice that number URBAN SPRAWL: The automobile gained a strong advantage over other forms of transportation, eventually leading to the particular layout of cities such as Los Angeles. In the first decade of the 21st century, Singapore along with Abu Dhabi is one of the urban centres that serve as global best practice example for emerging countries. Singapore motto: Live, work, play Link to map: Existing and potential future liveable cities HTTP: www.n.ethz.ch
3.2 CONTEXT AND CRITERIA OF LIVABILITY -Livability is a contemporary term that has classical roots -The philosopher Aristofle use the term Eudaimonia (meaning: Living well and doing well) -Trails/characteristics, pleasure, friendship -His term is sometimes translated as happiness or flourishing -Psychologist Carol Ryff extended the principles of Aristofle: • Autonomy • Personal Growth • Self-acceptance • A sense of purpose in life • Sense of environmental mastery • Positive relation with others -Abraham Maslow: 5 sets of hierarchies:
Self Actualization Esteem Needs Love and Belonging Needs Safety Needs Physiological Needs
-19th Century: Gov. gathering and analyzing social and economic indicators on national scale. They’re interested in: • Gross Domestic product • The unemployment rate • Gross National Income • The consumer price index • Balance of payments • Inflation -Intergovermental Agencies: • World Health Organization • The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Program (O.E.C.D) • The United Nations Development Program -5 Contemporary examples of this term livability: 1. The Mercer Index: • Is a financial services consultancy and producing a quality of life survey • Use 39 criteria including: safety, education, hygiene, health care, culture, environment, recreational possibilities, political economic stability, public transportation. For: Expatriate Business Elites
2. Monocle, a Style Magazine Index: • Most livable city Index • Safety and crime • International connectivity • The Climate • Particularly sunshine • Quality of architecture • Public Transportation • Tolerance in the public realm • Environmental issues • Access to nature • Urban design • Business condition • Proactive policies • Medical Care For: Global Creative Middle Class 3. Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU): • Economic forecasting • Availability of goods and services • Low personal risk • Effective infrastructure in a given city For: Policy and Business Communities 4. OECD Better Life Index • 11 topics (Span material living and quality of life) • Compare over 30 countries 5. The Human Development Index produced by UNDP (United National Development) 3 Major Headings: • Life Expectancy at birth • Education Index (Years of Schooling) • Standard of living (Measure of Gross national income per capital) 4-5 For: Policy and Business Communities In Singapre: Criteria for livability: • High GDP • High Security • Safety • High Standard of Living • A Healthy population • A well-educated population 3.3 THE PARADOX OF LIVABILITY -In contrasting case such as slum seems to lack most of the criteria for livability: • Low GDP per capital • Low security and safety • Low Standards of living • Low standards of health and education -They find jobs in the city -Rural migrants in the city
MODULE 4: URBAN CLIMATE AND LIVABILITY, PART 1 4.1 CONTEXT -Present the main concept of urban climate and how this stock and flow affects the livability in cities. In the weekends: City people Countries side (Polluted, air, water, stone concrete, noise, hectic)
(Clean air, clean water, undisturbed nature, no noise, a slower pace, very relaxing)
The Ideal Livable: Combine the good sides of both types LIVING AND WORKING
Problems in the cities
Air conditioner cars, buses, subways Walking Less
Avoid walking even short distances Pollution more
Ex: The most livable cities: • Copenhagen • Vancouver Extensive networks of walkways and • Vienna bicycle lanes Reduce private car • Melbourne Increase Health Traffic Jams
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4.2 URBAN CLIMATE: FUNDAMENTALS Introducing fundamental features and examples of applications of climate CITIES MODIFY THE LOCAL CLIMATE:
Empty Land City
Changing: • Radiative, thermal and moisture properties • Surface roughness • Emissions of aerosols and greenhouse gases URBAN HEAT ISLAND: • Urban regions experience warmer temperatures than their rural, undeveloped surroundings • Impact on real world problems with consequences for: 1. Heat stress 2. Human’s thermal comfort 3. Productivity 4. Energy usage Diseases 5. Biological activity Biodiversity HEAT ISLAND TYPES:
• The canopy-layer heat island: is found below the tops of buildings and trees • The surface urban heat island: is defined by the temperature of the surface that extends over the entire 3D surface.
How to measure air temperature in a city and thus the heat-island? • Using Meteorological Sensor: measuring air temperature
4.3 MODELING URBAN CLIMATE The urban heat island effect does not only determine the human comfort and health of people living in cities, also for cooling in an urban environment MULTI-ENERGY GRID WITH RENEWABLES: Energy consumption: Buildings and cities New Urban Energy concepts
Wind Energy
Solar System
ADAPTATION OF COMMUNITIES TOWARDS DECENTRALIZED SELF-REGULATING ENERGY SYSTEMS: Objective: Local neighborhoods become energy self-regulating
Minimize supply from national or international energy systems
Potential: Substantially decentralize the energy sector. URBAN MICROCLIMATE PHYSICS
STAND ALONE BUILDING AND BUILDINGS IN URBAN CONTEXT WITH DIFFERENT ASPECT RATIOS OF STREET CANYONS
A Low ratio: Wide avenues (Road)
3. different ratios
A High ratio: Narrow streets high buildings
MODULE 5: URBAN CLIMATE AND LIVABILITY, PART II 5.1 CLIMATE INFORMED URBAN DESIGN -Focus on Urban Climate in the tropics: How this stock and flow affects the livability in these cities. -Direct influence of the local climate was reduced using technology, with the side effect of higher energy consumption. -The reduced dependence on local weather conditions lead to more freedom in the choice of designs and materials. -Air pollution leading to higher mortality (Dead) -Higher urban temperature due to the creation of local climate zone. Solution: Electricity should become the predominant source of energy in the city, why? • Because it does not release the local emissions + provide the highest efficiency for most of the needs we have. Location: The production of energy should occur outside the city, why? • Minimize the negative effects in terms of heat and pollution on the citizens 5.2 URBAN CLIMATE IN THE TROPICS: APPLICATIONS Examples of climate-sensitive design Context: -People living in Urban areas exposed to the heat island are at greater risk than those in non-urban regions. -Higher temperatures pose particular challenges, especially in tropical cities giving their already high temperature background and predicted global warming. -Higher energy demand from increased use of air conditioning, change to biological activity and disease pattern. Solutions: -Cities are a major source of environmental problems, but also offer solutions -A variety of intervention options are available to urban planners and architects to achieve a desired migration outcome. -They include modifying the morphology of the urban surface as well as its radiative, thermal and evaporative properties. Role of Urban Geometry:
- They sky view factor (SVF) has important implications for incoming and outgoing radiation and thus heating and cooling patterns. -SVF influences trapping of incoming and outgoing radiation. -An inverse relationship exists between the canopy-layer heat island (UHI) magnitude and SVF.
Role of Surface Cover: -Surface materials used, through their radiative and thermal properties, greatly influence surface and hence air temperatures. -Bright surfaces generally have higher reflectivity (albedo) and are able to reject a larger portion of the incoming solar energy back to space. -Most urban building materials are characterized by heat capacities and are therefore good stores of heat, which is released at night therefore contributing to the urban heat.
Traditional Architecture: Interventions are location + climate specific but clear strategies for hot, humid climates exist: • Reducing direct solar insulation through window recess, eaves, proper building orientation, shading by trees, etc. • Maximizing ventilation through taking advantages of prevailing winds and breezes, plenty of openings and windows, minimizing blockage from nearby buildings, allowance for ground level ventilation etc. • Use of light building materials and reflective roofs to reject solar energy and minimize heat absorption. Example of climate-sensitive design: city scale
Sustainable Living • New Marina Bay Financial District • Vegetated roof and wall to improve energy efficiency • Variable building height to promote turbulence and deflect wind to the pedestrian level: alignment of main roads to prevailing winds to enhance ventilation.
Concluding Remarks: It’s important to ensure that the rapidly expanding cities of the developing and tropical world incorporate climatological concerns in their design to provide a better living and working. 5.3 OUTDOOR THERMAL COMFORT -Understanding people’s behaviour toward urban climate -Concept of human comfort cities.
how can we calculate, predict, influence it for the design of livable
-Promoting the use of streets and outdoor space by pedestrians will benefit cities: • Physical • Environmental • Economical • Social aspects -Pedestrians are directly exposed to their immediate environment in terms of variations of air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, and Solar radiation. -A number of bio-meteorological mindices have been developed to describe human thermal comfort level by linking local microclimatic condition and human thermal sensation.
-People’s exposure to a climatic environment has, over time, enabled them to reach thermal equilibrium. -P.E.T (Physiological Equivalent Temperature) is a temperature dimension index measured in degree celsius, it is defined as the air temperature at hich, in a typical indoor setting, the heat budget of the human body is balanced with the same core and skin temperature as these under complex outdoor conditions.
Portable weather stations (Calculate the outdoor thermal comfort)
MODULE 6: ENERGY AND LIVABILITY, PART 1 6.1 INTRODUCTION The basic concepts of Energy in cities: -Clean Air -Clean Water -Protection from the elements -Healthy Food -Personal Security -Mobility
Type of energy demand Energy Supply -Electricity -Oil -Heating Fuel -Gas -Transportation Fuel -Nuclear -Process Heat -Water -Wood -Solar -Higher energy demand + Growing population = Mounting side-effect Air/Noise/Soil Pollution -Every form of Energy -Energy gradients:
Heat
UHI
• Build Dam • Build batteries for car • Constructing Nuclear Power Plans
6.2 ENERGY SYSTEMS Man-made energy systems 1. Visual representations of statistical data Using Sankey diagrams 2. Examine what role energy storage in energy systems play • Feature - Capacity to store energy • Storing energy can be understood as a conservation of the energy gradient for future to use
MODULE 7: ENERGY AND LIVABILITY, PART II 7.1 DESIGN ACTIONS Energy production and conversion: -This requires large port infrastructure, and land transportation infrastructure in the form of roads, rails or pipelines that shape the territory surrounding the city.
View from west coast Park to Jurong, Singpaore
-Requires large centralized plants or smaller decentralized installations
Solar Farms
-Production of energy from renewable resources require dams, windmills and photovoltaic elements.
-Energy Distribution
High voltage line ruin the landscape view
-Energy Conversion An average household in Switzerland uses beteen 3000 and 5000kwh of electricity per year.
City Models (Definition) -Building electricity storage ill become increasingly important as a measure to reduce peak loads on the grid, converting building into smart elements in the smart grid of the future.
7.2 ENERGY CONSUMPTION -The two topic: • Energy consumption • The response our society creates by using energy and the resulting impact on the earth • Energy and livability
-Tiny nuclear power plants were meant to supply everything • The feasibility of using a small nuclear fission reactor underneath the city’s campus (ETH Zurich) -Nuclear energy became a threat, not to individuals, not limited to nations, for the global community. -Energy consumption view from an environmental impact perspective • Ecological footprint (assess mankind’ s impact on earth’s ecosystems) Biologically productive area (needed for crops, grazing lands, fishing grounds, forest production)
-Oil exporting countries • Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates • Western Europe, the US, Singapore, on place seven, and Switzerland on place 18 of over 100 countries. -On a global level: we consume 2.7 global hectare per Capita -Biocapacity: reduced from 3.2 in 1961 to 1.7m 2010 -We are consuming more than earth offers How can we measure or calculate the footprint of our consumption? -per global hectare -per square meter -per capita -per GDP output...? -Higher energy flows actually erode quality of life. 7.3 ENERGY AND LIVABILITY -Cities or countries which rank high on a Human Development Index are relying on high energy consumption levels as well. -Visionary sketches of future cities are the colors white, blue and green. Represent a clean, fresh, healthy mixture of urban built environment and nature, water and sky - “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” -The early method of practical sustainability was similar to accounting, by surveying the forests and indexing input and output calculating how many trees would be cut down without endangering the population of trees on the forest in the long run. -”Nachhalt [sustain] German: that which one holds on to when nothing else holds any longer” -Hans Jonas: “Act so that the effects of your action are compatible with the permanence of genuine human life” “Environmental protection requirements must be integrated into the definition and implementation of the Union’s policies and activities, in particular with a view to promoting sustainable development” -How sustainable are cities? -What can we do to make them more sustainable? “[Cities] are not by themselves sustainable”, they will never be, but “they are a key to sustainability”.
MODULE 8: WATER, ECOLOGY AND LIVABILITY 8.1 DESIGN ACTIONS -Modern urbanized humans in most parts of the world love nature and everything green.
Cities Garden Cities eg. Singapore eg. Resilient cities (Siena)
Cities in a garden
-Made of “stone, stone streets, stone walls to increase stability and fine resistance, city relied heavily on the water in the city, drawn from fountains.
”It leads to a new type of urban environment, or rather to buildings inside a continuous garden” - The balance might crumble due to population pressure, increased fossil energy demand, and pollution - City impact their environment more than ever before.
Extensive transportation, sewage, or supply infrastructure - tunnels, pipes
Leak after a while and contaminate the ground water - If we succeed to balance, and more importantly keep clean from pollution, the stocks and flows of water soil, and air, then we could have a fruitful co-existence of city and nature in any combination. -In this sense, some of today’s high density rural-urban environments on the island of Java, on the Philippines or in northern India could point to a different, yet attractive and affordable form of urban settlements. -Good civic governance is the basis for sustainable, livable and resilient cities. -If these technologies can be integrated in the urban design and management process, informed and driven by citizen guidance, high livability is almost guaranteed.
8.2 CITY AND ECOLOGY How trees can provide in the urban environment?
-Plants use a lot of water -Cooling city -Reducing the risk of flooding
Root takes water
-In a city there usually much less vegetation -Cleaning the air
Less cooling from evapotransportation
Trees: ozone, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides
-In summary, trees and other green infrastructure are important in cities, not only for their beauty, but because they bring environmental benefits. -Fact: Trees in the city of Atlanta in the United States removed 64.5 tonnes of PM 2.5 particles per year. “Bringing economic benefits through improved health, worth many millions of dollars” 8.3 ECOSYSTEM SERVICES Ecosystems can provide benefits to people contributing to human being
Linking local to regional - an integrated approach
MODULE 9: MOBILITY AND LIVABILITY 9.1 WALKABILITY AND THE CITY PART I -Zurich, a city in the center of Europe -People walking is very important. They have the same rights as the cars, the trams, the buses and the others. -It’s okay to mix and match the different modes of transportation. This is part of livability, and also one reason why cities like Zurich or Vienna or Vancouver are rank very highly in livability. -Transportation has taken on an important role in modern societies and represents up to one third (1/3) or even (a little bit) more of the entire energy demand of the country. -Mobility can dominate all the previously important aspects of a livable city. -Individual types: Walking, riding a bicycle, driving a motor scooter, a motorbike or a car. -Public forms of transportation: Bus, Tram, subway, train, boat, cable car. -A special form of mobility is walking, which is presently rediscovered in urban systems throughout the world. -In industrialized countries, the lack of movement throughout the day can have adverse health effects. -Planning can help to increase walkability and thus reduce the overall social cost of personal mobility. 9.2 WALKABILITY AND THE CITY PART II -Overview on the impact that mobility has on the life quality in cities. -Achieving societal well-being does not restrict only to money alone, but also includes social capital, fairness and good health.
-According to report released by the world health organization in 2013, 1.24million people died in road accidents every year. -People who live and work or attend school near those major roads have an increased incidence and severity of health problems associated with air pollution. -In china, for example, costs related to ambient air pollution account to 1.7 trillion US dollars or 18% of its GDP. -Two Swiss economists: a person with a one hour commute has to earn 40% more money to be satisfied with life as someone who walks to office.
-As people spent more time on longer commutes, it also changes the shape and quality of their social networks. -Human mobility for livable cities: • Cyclists are the happiest commuters • Walking and cycling improve public-health • Walking, cycling and public transport are more space efficient and economical than motorised transport • But all those modes impose demands on urban design. -The street with more traffic however, saw dramatic drops in both social activity and friendship. -There is plenty of scientific evidence that people who regularly walk or cycle, not only live longest and are less often ill, also more creative and less stressed. -The quality of the built environment plays an important role to motivate people to walk cycle more often. -Walking along a major road or across an overpass is a completely different experience than to walk along an interesting street or through a park. 9.3 EMBRACING WALKABILITY
-Walkable street should be useful, safe, comfortable, interesting which measure by: • Length of sidewalk • Shelter from rain • Noise level • Shading • Separation from traffic • Greenery • Comfortable surface • Transparent Façades -How far you can go within a 5 or 10 minute walks.
MODULE 10: TOWARDS CITIZEN DESIGN SCIENCE 10.1 PARTICIPATORY PLANNING AND CITIZEN DESIGN SCIENCE -Concept of citizen design science (CDS) and how we use this approach to explore and enhance the livability and resilience of cities. -What is citizen design science? Citizen science is an advancing movement throughout the world in which citizens of all ages and backgrounds support scientists by either collecting or analysing data and observations. -Millions of individual observations turn into a flow of data and information to improve the planning and functioning of a city. -Until today, there no description of the human design process. -We want to propose citizen design science as a concept that adds the strength of thousands of citizens in terms of observation, human cognition, experience, and local knowledge into a scientific framework. -In traditional urban planning, the citizens vote on a proposal made by specialists. -In citizen design science, on the others hand, citizens are involved in the development of the proposes from the very beginning, The underlying process to obtain content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people is crowdsourcing, citizens will be able to provide their view of the city and they will volunteer data on their daily routines. -Public participation in design research is of crucial importance and will maximize the capabilities of current technologies. -In practical terms, this means you combine your individual design capacity for objects, processes, or systems with your observations and data collections. This combination we call citizen design science. 10.2 PUBLIC URBAN SCIENCE I -Who builds cities? • Architects, planners • Developers • Banks who do and don’t give mortages and loans • Private corporations • Residents -Some build for: • Self-interest (Developer) • To plans and designs (Architect, planner) • Incidentally and unthinkingly 10.3 PUBLIC URBAN SCIENCE II -One kind of city builder is the market, Another kind of city builder is the planner Worked traditionally through rational models of urban governance -The market is one kind of city builder. Another important city builder, of course, is the planner.
-The models of rational planning were inspired by the ideas of Enlightenment and its investment in ordered knowledge, and the production of orderly worlds. -Zoning is one of the keys into districts for the purpose of regulating the height of buildings, the density, or the functions or uses of land. -Zoning ideas were first advanced by Reinhard Baumeister in the 1870s. -”The planner”, one commentator has suggested, is ideally and appropriately rational man, operating at arms’s length from the messy world of politics. -”Planning was a science, not an art” (Taylor, 1988)
“The model expresses, the planner stood above the city, seeing the city from a bird’s eye view, seeing the city in its entirely”
10.4 PUBLIC URBAN SCIENCE III -There was a moment where rational planning seemed to be violating cities, as opposed to caring for the collective needs of urban citizens. -It came into being with an understanding that many things play out to allow scientific facts to do their work as components of planning and design, that good science can’t necessarily usurp politics. -What opportunities exist now for citizens to hack into governance structures, using the information technology to garner information in terms with counter imaginaries about how a city should be governed, built, and the future that it might have?
MODULE 11: LIVABLE FUTURE CITIES 11.1 FOCUS AREAS AND LIVABILITY -4 urban focus areas: Energy, Climate, Ecology and Transportation -Water, wind and solar are the main renewable sources, and their integration into the urban surrounding becomes an attractive design challenge for the future. -Individual buildings, as power plants, groups of buildings as power farms, using small-scale wind generators and photovoltaic panels could change the character and the community growth in many countries of the world in the future. -Cool and dry climates, the urban heat island effect may be seen as an increase in comfort during winter months. -Hot and humid climates, the urban heat island effect would seriously decrease quality of life and livability. -Cool climates. the main focus will be on the avoidance of the production of CO2 and long-term emissions, in order to make the urban climate comfortable for everybody. -What becomes clear is that any kilowatt hour not released within a city in hot and humid climates will eventually increase human comfort. -In a perfect world, urban climate would match the human comfort zone in terms of temperature, humidity and noise. -Urban ecology is a relatively new field, but already has a strong impact on the livability of cities. -Urban transportation is the result of mobility, with mobility becomes almost a human right for every person. Yet it is in our hands to decide if mobility turn into a purpose in itself and begins to reduce the livability of a city through heat, noise and pollution emissions of indivudual transportation, or if we able to reduce it to a necessary level through intelligent planning and distribution of functions in the city. 11.2 LIVABLE FUTURE CITIES -Urban Energy: • The interaction between the individual buildings and clusters of buildings with local climate will local climate will become much more sophisticated. • Wind or solar energy produced on site, may radically change the stocks and flow of energy in the city. -Urban Climate: • The more we understand the interaction of the urban climate with the anthropogenic energy input into the city the better we will be able to take advantage of this knowledge. • In terms of architecture and planning, building act as heat exchangers between the interior and the exterior. • How to decrease the need for cooling in the first place and then how to devise new cooling approaches to make the processes running in the buildings more efficient and leading to more comfort with less energy.
-Urban Ecology: • We see the practical benefits of urban ecology in city renovation projects in Singapore or in Seoul, where previously quite unattractive, merely functional water bodies have been converted into lively places of interaction between the population and the environment.
-Urban Mobility: • In practical term, urban mobility will always be necessary. • The challenge for designers and planner will be to try to avoid the need for excessive transportation in the beginning through measures in planning and urban design. • All four of these factors are highly interdependent with political decisions on the one hand on the local, and the national level. • For each city, these effects and the necessary measurements to steer them towards improved livability will be very different. • Therefore, it is our highest goal to create an integrated simulation platform with input from citizen that would make it possible to develop a more livable city together for the future, and you can individually contribute to this through citizen design science.