- Project Title
- Green Rating Tools for a Green Urban Infrastructure
- Description
- In a highly urbanized world, climate change, global warming and peak oil are some of the greatest challenges we face.
The built form of cities, their infrastructure and transport systems contribute to these problems by anthropogenic heat gains and Carbon dioxide production. These, combined with the impermeability of urban surfaces, leads to warmer cities that lead to a greater use of air-conditioning and the greater use of energy.
To reduce the impact of this, organisations such as the Green Building Council, have focussed on individual buildings and produced a ‘rating system’ to measure their ‘sustainability’. However, there is no rating system for the areas outside buildings; streets, squares and other public areas.
The purpose of this research is to produce a method by which urban areas can be ‘rated’ for their ‘green’ credentials by accounting for such things as urban ecology and the Urban Heat Island Effect. Such a rating tool could be used by Planners and urban designers to assess the merits of proposed new developments against benchmarks.
- Year of Completion
- 2011
- Type
- Research Thesis
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