herbert girardet - uk green building council girardet.pdf · • as countries urbanise, village...
TRANSCRIPT
In the age of the city
Herbert Girardet
An urbanising world
• Cities define human existence and impacts in the 21st century
• As centres of human interaction and innovation, they are the heartland of national economies, financial systems and cultural life – and of resource consumption
• As countries urbanise, village people moving to the city typically increase their per capita resource use fourfold
• Are limits to growth also limits to urbanisation?
• Crucially: cities are subject to the second law of thermodynamics – they can’t escape the clutches of entropy
• The challenge is to reconfigure cities into systems and places that work for both people and planet
18th c. Birmingham: an age of innovation
• Lunar Society 1760s to 1810s – science and enterprise
• Steam technology, electricity, ceramics, metallurgy, medicine, botany, anatomy, surveying, chemistry, geology, chemistry, astronomy, engineering , zoology, architecture, art
• Steam engines, railway carriages, bicycles, spinning technology, machine tools, printing
• Nails, nuts and bolts, screws, brass goods, pumps, bedsteads, buttons, pen nibs, toys, silver plate, medical instruments, jewellery, guns, coins, buckles, swords, clocks, glass, paper; chocolate
Source: Nakicenovic
2009
Structures and processes
• City planners are primarily concerned with urban structures and spaces
• But in many ways the processes that make cities work are more important in understanding urban dynamics and impacts
• Crucially, the metabolism of cities is not confined to the urban environment:
• It is increasingly global, and reaches to all corners of the planet
London
London’s Ecological Footprint
• Population: 7,500,000 people
• Surface area: 158,000 ha
• Area required for food production: 1.2 ha per person: 8,400,000 ha
• Forest area required for wood products: 768,000 ha
• Land area required for carbon sequestration
• = bio-fuel production: 1.5 ha per person: 10,500,000 ha
• London’s footprint: 19,700,000 ha = 125 times London’s surface area
• Britain’s productive land: 21,000,000 ha
• Britain’s surface area: 24,400,000 ha
© Herbert Girardet , 1995
Shanghai Pudong 1978
Shanghai Pudong 2013
Adelaide
‘Regenerative’ Adelaide 2013
• 40% electricity supply from wind and solar• 120,000 PV roofs on 600,000 houses = 250 MW peak
• PV roofs on most public buildings
• Solar hot water systems mandated for new buildings
• 3 million trees planted on 2000 ha for C02 absorption and biodiversity
• 15% reduction of C02 emissions since 2000
• Water sensitive urban development
• 180,000 tonnes of compost made from urban organic waste
• 20,000 ha of peri-urban land used for vegetable and fruit crops
• Reclaimed waste water and urban compost used to cultivate this land
• Large scale-building tune-up programmes across the city region
• 60% carbon emissions reduction by municipal buildings
• Construction of Lochiel Park Solar Village with 106 eco-homes
• Thousands of new green jobs
Urban ecology
Study of -
• living organisms and their relationship to each other within an urban environment
• benefits of vegetation and green spaces for urban populations
• collective impacts of urban populations on environments beyond city limits
• ways and means of creating a mutually beneficial, regenerative relationship between urban populations and ecosystems