AN ANALYSIS OF SUSTAINABILITY THE ASSESSMENT AND THE MANAGEMENT OF URBAN ENVIRONMENTS

Abstract

This paper analyses the current trends in sustainability assessment. After about 15 years from the launch of sustainability assessment tools, focused on buildings evaluation, the paradigm of sustainability assessment tools is changing from the building scale to the built environment scale. Currently European cities and cities around the world are concerned with sustainable development, as well as its evolution. Cities seek a way to adapt to contemporary changes, in order to meet the required needs and ensure population’s well-being. Considering this, the new generations of sustainability assessment tools are being developed to be used to guide and help cities and urban areas to become more sustainable. Following the trend of the most important sustainability assessment tools, the sustainability assessment tool  is also developing its version for assessing the sustainability of the built environment, namely, the urban planning projects and the urban regeneration projects, to be developed in Portugal, the -UP. The application of the methodology to three case studies will demonstrate its feasibility; at the same time this will identify the best practices which will serve as reference for new projects, thereby assisting the development of the tool.

1. Introduction

Under these last two decades a significant number of environmental and sustainability assessment tools for buildings have been developed. Tools such as Building Research Establishment’s Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM), Sustainable Building Tool (SBTool), and Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) constitutes the basis for the other approaches used throughout the world [1]. Usually these methods are characterized by evaluating a series of partial and aggregate features of construction, resulting in environmental ratings or sustainability scores [2].

According to Haapio and Viitaniemi [3], the existing building environmental assessment methods and tools should not be underestimated but should not be considered the only possibility for sustainability assessment; one must widen the viewpoint. The requirements for building sustainability assessment (BSA) tools have increased and nowadays it is not enough to evaluate building components or the building separately [4]. The built environment, neighbourhoods, public transport, and services should also be considered simultaneously in these assessments, since the number of people living in urban areas is high and increasing rapidly. Current trends predict that this number will keep rising, reaching almost 5 billion by 2030 out of a world total of 8.1 billion [5].

The incorporation and integration of the urban dimension have been gaining importance over the last decades due to the process of building of the sustainable development paradigm. Thus, emerged different methods, techniques, and tools for urban sustainable assessment, seeking to discover how cities can become more sustainable [6]. It is believed that cities will give answers to a sustainable future, since they are the largest resources consumers of the planet and the largest generators of waste [7], but cities are also the place where it is possible to act more effectively to save the planet from ourselves.

2. From Sustainable Building to Sustainable City

2.1. Buildings Sustainability Assessment

The sustainability level assessment tools began to be used primarily for the evaluation of buildings. Numerous assessment tools have been developed for the construction sector, aiming to gather and report information for decision making during the different phases of construction, design and use of a building [9]. The variety of tools is large, with LCA-based tools, rating systems, technical guidelines, assessment frameworks, checklists, and certificates [4].

The first available environmental assessment tool for buildings was the Building Research Establishment Assessment Method [10]. This method was established in UK in 1990 and together with the following two rating and certification systems provided the basis for the other approaches used throughout the world: SBTool, developed through the collaborative work of representatives from 20 countries [11], and LEED, developed in the USA [12].

In Portugal, a building sustainability assessment method has been developed:  [13]. Sustainable Building Tool for Portugal () was developed by the Laboratory of Building Physics and Construction Technology of the University of Minho, in coordination with the nonprofit association International Initiative for a Sustainable Built Environment-Portugal (iiSBE-Portugal) and the private consulting company Ecochoice SA.

The wide dissemination of these assessment tools is contributing to understanding the impacts of the building sector. Assessment tools are proven to provide unique opportunities for designers, owners, contractors, and users to make decisions and choices during the project and construction of buildings, in order to increase their sustainability level [14].

2.2. From Building Sustainability Assessment to Urban Planning Assessment

The impacts of the building sector are a very well documented fact, which can be addressed throughout measures that are included in building sustainability assessment tools. However, these impacts can be addressed in a more adequate way if the sustainability measures are implemented in a larger scale such as the urban planning.

Nowadays, the goal is to achieve the Zero Impact Built Environment. Solutions should not only focus on zero energy, materials, water, or food but also on the integrated management of all resources that have a major impact on the built environment. The challenge is to achieve a built environment as much as possible sustainable, that is, to achieve a built environment that has the lowest possible environmental impacts, that provides the best living conditions, and that is affordable to the population.

How to achieve all these objectives? No doubt that the buildings are one of the most important components of the built environment but a “built environment” is much more than the agglomeration of buildings. Systems such as transportation, energy production, resources distribution, and waste management, among others, have high impacts and go out of the scope of buildings. Therefore, it is needed to consider the interaction between the buildings and their surroundings, taking into account the life style of the population. Buildings can be very efficient but hardly sustainable because sustainability is a broader concept that can only be implemented at a larger scale. For example, it is very hard to achieve the goal of net zero energy buildings without considering energy efficiency and clean energy production at the urban scale. The same applies to water, materials, food, and so forth. Furthermore, the current population move from rural to urban environments also stresses that sustainability studies have to be performed at the urban scale.

Additionally, the rapid growth of cities and the urban regeneration of degraded and/or abandoned areas are the current concerns of authorities, both at international and local levels. These concerns have directed the focus on developing assessment frameworks and tools for urban communities, such as BREEAM Communities [15], LEED-ND (Neighborhood Development) [16], SCTool (Sustainable Communities Tool, in development) [17], CASBEE-UD (Urban Development) [18], EarthCraft Communities [19] or Green Star Communities [20]. The interest in evaluation systems is increasing among authorities, investors, and especially developers [4], since these systems allow the comparison of municipalities and urban areas, serving to support decision making processes, benefiting authorities, planners, and designers during this process.

These tools were designed to give opportunity for projects to demonstrate their environmental, economic, and social benefits to the local community, in all the planning stages of development processes. These tools’ system consists of frameworks with several indicators, which are grouped into categories. These tools, while evaluating and ranking the sustainability of urban developments, are also instruments that guide and encourage the process of design and development of sustainable, smart, and high quality communities throughout the promotion of reference best practices.

2.3. Sustainability Assessment Tool for Urban Planning: -UP

One example of the evolution of the focus of sustainable assessment tools from buildings to urban planning operations is the Portuguese sustainability assessment method, . A sustainability assessment tool for urban planning operations is being developed under the scope of the urban scale,  for urban planning. The tool -UP will follow the steps of the overall methodology, which considers a set of indicators related by categories and evaluated by a set of parameters. These indicators along with their categories represent the three dimensions of sustainable development: environmental, social, and economic.

The structure of this methodology is being developed and adapted to the Portuguese context by the authors, based on the work of Salat et al. [21] and on the work of the iiSBE working group SBTool Urban, which is also in development. A cooperative effort is being made for the improvement of these methodologies taking into account the latest scientific developments in sustainability at the urban scale.

During the process of developing indicators from -UP methodology care was taken to create a list of indicators that were organized, transparent, objective, and correct as possible. This list was developed based upon the current state-of-the-art of existing methodologies to assess the sustainability of urban projects and urban communities and based upon the indicators of overall system SBTool version. Subsequently the list was harmonized following the discussions inside the working groups (national and international) consisting of civil and environmental engineers, architects, and urban planners, in order to suit the national context. This tool encompasses twelve categories under the scope of the main sustainability dimensions, environment, society, and economy. Additionally, an extra category is considered covering the sustainability of buildings and the information and communication technologies at urban scale.