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Environment, Development and Sustainability

During the past two decades, Qatar, a developing country, has invested heavily in infrastructure ... more During the past two decades, Qatar, a developing country, has invested heavily in infrastructure development to address several challenges caused by the rapid urbanization. Qatar has made a significant step toward its urban sustainability vision through the construction of the Doha Metro system. By adopting Transit-Oriented Development (TOD), Qatar is overcoming some urban challenges. TOD promotes compact, walkable, and mixed-use development around the transit nodes, which enhances the public realm through providing pedestrian-oriented and active spaces. Additionally, Qatar aims to transfer to a knowledge-based economy through developing an environment that will attract knowledge and creative human power. Qatar Foundation is taking the lead toward implementing a Knowledge-Based Urban Development (KBUD) through its flagship project: Education City (EC). This study aims therefore to evaluate the integration of TOD and KBUD strategies to leverage the potential of TOD in attracting know...

The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences

Lecco, Italy-(silvia.raviscioni)@polimi.it 2 Politecnico di Milano, Master of Science programme i... more Lecco, Italy-(silvia.raviscioni)@polimi.it 2 Politecnico di Milano, Master of Science programme in Building Engineering-Architecture (mariaalejandra.rojas)@mail.polimi.it

Advances in science, technology & innovation, 2022

Integrated Modification Methodology (IMM) has already been applied in established metropolitan co... more Integrated Modification Methodology (IMM) has already been applied in established metropolitan contexts, such as Porto Maravilha in Rio de Janeiro, the neighbourhood of Shahrak-e Golestan in Tehran, and Block 39 in New Belgrade. When Unitec Institute of Technology’s Associate Professor of Urban Design Dushko Bogunovich came up with the idea of a comparative analysis of two sprawling metropolitan contexts – Auckland and Milan – he and Massimo Tadi, Director of the IMMdesignlab in Milan and Associate Professor at the School of Architectural Engineering at the Politecnico di Milano, decided to apply IMM to a sample area of low-density suburban Auckland. The project presented in this book was developed in a joint international design workshop organised by Politecnico di Milano, IMMdesignlab and Unitec Institute of Technology. The workshop was held at Politecnico di Milano, Polo Territoriale di Lecco (Italy), from 25–29 May 2015, and the team, comprising 14 international students from different design disciplines, was coordinated by Tadi and Bogunovich, assisted by engineers Hadi Mohammad Zadeh and Frederico Zaniol (IMMdesignlab). The outcomes of the workshop were then further developed by IMMdesignlab to demonstrate how, by adopting IMM, it is possible to retrofit, renovate and reactivate an inefficient and energy consuming neighbourhood into a more integrated and sustainable one

TERRITORIO, 2020

The Rocinha favela in Rio de Janeiro is paradigmatic of the socio-economic and environmental cont... more The Rocinha favela in Rio de Janeiro is paradigmatic of the socio-economic and environmental contradictions of the Brazilian mega-city, but is also a significant case study for slum-upgrading programs. PolimiparaRocinha, that is a research project developed in the framework of Polisocial (the social responsibility program of the Politecnico di Milano), provides a multidisciplinary methodology integrating environmental expertise, urban design and energy efficiency with water and waste treatment strategies in a systemic approach. The research aims to understand if the optimization of environmental performances, correlated with a bottomup and demand-driven approach, can improve the favela's living conditions.

What is MULTIDISCIPLINARY and what is for? Multidisciplinary working is often seen as revolutiona... more What is MULTIDISCIPLINARY and what is for? Multidisciplinary working is often seen as revolutionary by skill-centred specialists but it is simply a fundamental expression of being guided by holism rather than reductionism (Jan Smuts, Holism and Evolution, 1926). The paper wish to present the meaning of Multi-Disciplinary in Design and the related actual problems, in particular: - The dissolving of the (Design) Disciple(s)…. and Multidisciplinarity. - Crisis, Instability and Complexity - An Holistic and Multi-scale Design Approach: Integrated Modification Methodology (IMM). The boundaries of what were once recognized as discrete design disciplines have been ruptured and continue to dissolve. An indeterminacy of professional boundaries now exists, and fluid patterns of employment within and between traditional design disciplines is commonplace. (Craig Bremner, Paul Rodgers) Did Design loose its discipline?

Environmental Performance and Social Inclusion in Informal Settlements

Located between two of the wealthiest neighbourhoods of Rio de Janeiro, on a surface of less than... more Located between two of the wealthiest neighbourhoods of Rio de Janeiro, on a surface of less than 2 km 2 , the Rocinha favela is considered the largest single slum in Brazil, with an unofficial population between 150,000 and 200,000 inhabitants. Its privileged position, dimension and characteristics, compared to the other circa 1000 favelas of Rio, make Rocinha a paradigmatic case of the socioeconomic and environmental contradictions of the Brazilian mega-city, but a significant case study for any slum-upgrading programme. The Brazilian experience with slums upgrading is globally recognized, but it is still fragmented and needs to be improved. An overview of the main slum-upgrading policies and programmes carried out in Rio shows that the lack of appropriate participatory programmes and systemic approaches can hinder successful solutions.

With an extremely high level of complexity, urban structures and the built environment are ever-c... more With an extremely high level of complexity, urban structures and the built environment are ever-changing entities, in which transformation is a continuous process. Specific patterns of transformation characterize each specific context, and in different urban systems, similar transformation actions generate different reactions and transformation results. Consequently, to plan for any modification on a formal or informal urban system, it is fundamental to learn about that system’s structure. The IMM methodology focuses on the systemic arrangements of the built environment and proposes holistic procedures to understand the nature of the urban systems as entities based on the unique qualities that each context offers. This chapter presents the results of this specific diagnostic process. In the first phase, the built environment system is broken down into its subsystems, and the relationship between those parts is investigated (horizontal investigation). Later, the synergy between them ...

This study aims at highlighting a morphological property of urban CAS (complex adaptive systems),... more This study aims at highlighting a morphological property of urban CAS (complex adaptive systems), Permeability, by introducing a set of quantitative metrics for its definition. It defines a strategy for the analysis of urban permeability, reproducible on any urban context. Our approach is multidisciplinary and moves from the idea that the urban structure can be seen as a porous medium where buildings represent solid elements and open spaces represent the pores. The selected metrics include concepts like tortuosity and constrictivity, which are routinely employed in fluid mechanics to characterize mass transport through porous domains. We showcase the proposed methodological framework on three different types of urban structure for three cities. The results highlights and quantify morphological differences between urban areas developed in different historical periods. Results are arranged in diagrams to provide a new objective perception of urban permeability as a synergetic emergence between constituent parts of the urban fabric.

Volume 09 - March 2020

Solid waste management (SWM) is recognized worldwide as an important issue to deal with in pursui... more Solid waste management (SWM) is recognized worldwide as an important issue to deal with in pursuing livability. The favela (slum) of Rocinha represents a good synthesis of all challenges which can be encountered in this field: high population density , lack of space and narrow streets, residents struggling with low incomes. In Rocinha, services coverage is lacking and unsatisfying in many sectors, including SWM. In this study, we investigate the reason for this inadequacy. Waste streams have been analyzed as a first step. The second step was the description of the SWM system and of its criticalities. All accessible information has been used and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) played an important role in the data processing. In the final discussion, we suggest a small-scale and decentralized waste management network, collaborating with the centralized collection system. This study is a piece of the project Polimipararocinha of Politecnico di Milano (Italy) which pursues the ov...

International Journal of Sustainable Development and Planning

The paper presents the so-called Integrated Modification Methodology (IMM), which is aimed to mak... more The paper presents the so-called Integrated Modification Methodology (IMM), which is aimed to make cities and human settlements more inclusive, resilient and sustainable. In particular, the paper resumes how it has been implemented to the case study of favela rocinha in rio de Janeiro. IMM is the result of a research project financed by Politecnico di Milano university using Italian national funds allocated by law to social purposes. This kind of projects have to be multidisciplinary and in favour of human and social development. Many are the aspects considered in the project case study: energy, work, mobility, ecosystem, service, food and waste water). for all of these aspects, which are crucial in rio de Janeiro slums, the engineering issues have to be matched not only with the requests of the other practitioners working on the same area, in a holistic view of the problems, but also with cultural and social constraints. The aim of this approach is to produce integrated solutions which can be understood by the population, made its own and so managed in the best possible way; so, the cultural improvement may also produce a relevant economic activity. In the paper, the methodology for approaching a difficult case like favela rocinha is presented, together with the main outcomes of the work of the different specialists who dealt with the different parts of the work. In details, the paper deals specifically with water and wastewater management, to show more deeply the applied methodology. The paper shows that this approach has requested, in some cases, to propose solutions that textbooks would not consider theoretically the 'best' ones, but that are more suitable for the actual situation of a slum like favela rocinha, definitively to make the development of those systems more inclusive, resilient and sustainable. Keywords: community involvement in urban modifications, urban management, water and wastewater management.

Annual International Conference on Architecture and Civil Engineering (ACE 2017)

Journal of Architectural Engineering Technology

Nowadays the environmental ramifications of urban development have become crystal clear. Subseque... more Nowadays the environmental ramifications of urban development have become crystal clear. Subsequently, the main headline is how one should implement practical methods to tackle urban growth and environmental issues simultaneously. How should one integrate urbanization and the issue of saving natural resources? How design strategies could contribute to climate mitigation and emission reduction? Is urban morphology correlated with these issues? And eventually, how can the urban transformation be performed, retrofitted and monitored in order to achieve a more sustainable result? A strictly sectorial approach could result in neglecting mutual dependencies of these demands. Conversely, an integrated approach can help to sharpen a better comprehension of the different performances of different urban assessment. IMM®, Integrated Modification Methodology, is a multi-stage, iterative process, applied to urban complex systems, for improving the metabolism of the city as well as its energy performance. The method has been depicted through prior publications by the authors; hence, the current paper solely focuses on one stage of the multi-stage IMM method. Due to the fact that the majority of predicted urban growth will occur in megacities of developing countries, totalling 5% of the earth population, the article presents a case study Janeiro using the IMM method to propose urban improvements on the megacity of Rio de Janeiro.

Environment, Development and Sustainability

The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences

Advances in science, technology & innovation, 2022

TERRITORIO, 2020

Environmental Performance and Social Inclusion in Informal Settlements

Volume 09 - March 2020

International Journal of Sustainable Development and Planning

Annual International Conference on Architecture and Civil Engineering (ACE 2017)

Journal of Architectural Engineering Technology

New Belgrade is a new settlement. Its development began in 1948 on formally swampy terrain which ... more New Belgrade is a new settlement. Its development began in 1948 on formally swampy terrain which was levied with sand. However, the municipality’s name appeared much earlier than the settlement was formed. The story goes that in 1924, on the outskirts of Zemun, Petar Kokotovic opened a tavern and named it Novi Beograd. At this point there is one and a half million square meters of residential and commercial development being constructed.
The Faculty of Architecture, University of Belgrade and the School of Architectural Engineering of Politecnico di Milano in collaboration with Polisocial the Social Responsibility Programme of Politecnico di Milano established a General Agreement to develop a join research project, titled: “Sustainable Development of a new pilot neighborhood in Belgrade, via IMM® methodology.
The project aim to became a more general paradigm for similar condition in East Europe, defining integrated new strategies based on IMM methodology to retrofit and transform the energy dissipative existing neighbourhood developed during the ’60 and ’70 in more efficient, liveable and integrated urban system.
From this project IMM aims to develop particular strategies to help municipalities and local authorities to retrofit, renovate and reactivate inefficient, neglected, energy consuming and unliveable neighbourhood, settled during the Communist time, in a more integrated and sustainable part of the existing cities.

IMMdesignlab with Resilience Lab, prof. Craign Bremner from Charles Sturt University (Australia) ... more IMMdesignlab with Resilience Lab, prof. Craign Bremner from Charles Sturt University (Australia) and students from School of Building Engineering and Architecture defined the main design strategies for the project addressed to create a new SMART_KEEN, SUSTAINABLE and Cool Local community.
The project is be based on four main pillars:
1. SMART_Agricultural_hub. A new hub for new agriculture farm (strategy aims to support the localisation in Farini of young farm/farmers).
2. BOOSTING_Rural. A new Educational hub on rural activities integrating traditions and innovation.
3. SMART_Village_4SMART Working. A diffuse hotel internet-connected (wifi connection; widespread hotels; Co-working)
4. CREATIVE INDUSTRIES. Strategies for the region’s creative industries to work with agricultural industries to attract creative practitioners from outside the region to come to the region.

IMM® is International and multidisciplinary Design Laboratory for Urban Sustainability. Our work ... more IMM® is International and multidisciplinary Design Laboratory for Urban Sustainability. Our work is driven by the principle that urban design can directly affect the quality of our environment, improve the energy performances as well as the quality of our lives making our future more sustainable and responsible. IMM® is the acronym of Integrated Modification Methodology, an innovative design methodology based on a specific process with the main goal of improving the CAS’ (complex adaptive systems) energy performance, through the modification of its constituents and optimization the architecture of their ligands. Its approach is fundamentally Holistic, Multi-Layer, Multi-scale. In this methodology, the city is considered to be a dynamic Complex Adaptive System comprised of the superimposition of an enormous number of interrelated components, categorized in different Layers or ‘Subsystems’, (also complex adaptive systems) which through their inner arrangement and the architecture of their ligands provide a certain physical and provisional arrangement of the CAS. The IMM® investigates the relationships between urban morphology and energy consumption by focusing mostly on the ‘Subsystems’ characterized by physical characters and arrangement; hence, the text casts spotlight on IMM phasing process. The main object of this design process is to address a more sustainable and better performing urban arrangement.

urbanhybridization.net

This paper sketches out the relationships between urban design and sustainable development&am... more This paper sketches out the relationships between urban design and sustainable development&quot;. Moreover it emphasises the role of urban design for a sustainable urban development. Over half of greenhouse gas emissions are created in and by cities. 80% of ...

Look at the IMM contribution at the international workshop, titled: "Airport infrastructure and e... more Look at the IMM contribution at the international workshop, titled: "Airport infrastructure and environmental management landscape (La Seu d’Urgell-Andorra Airport)” organized by the Master program on Landscape and Heritage intervention and Management” (UAB, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona).
The workshop has been held at La Seu d’Urgell airport on the Catalan Pyrenees in Spain, between 12-17 May 2013.
The proposal works on the conversion of the airport into a future tourist nodal center connected with the landscape and the natural heritage of the area of the Pyrenees.
The opportunity to explore new economic clusters connected with innovation, creativity bound, or sport extreme in open areas, and the potential to accommodate new logistic uses related to the geographical proximity with Andorra.

This book discusses the potential of a systemic and multidisciplinary design approach to improve ... more This book discusses the potential of a systemic and multidisciplinary design approach to improve urban quality, health, livability, and inclusiveness for people living in informal settlements. In most instances, attempts to address informal settlements lack an adequate assessment of their impact on the wider built environment and implementation of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. The Integrated Modification Methodology (IMM), introduced here, offers a systematic, multidisciplinary design tool encompassing several of the aspects that define the environmental performance of urban systems. The book also demonstrates the application of the methodology to an informal settlement, proving its potential to guide systemicurban transformations, also in urban areas lacking formal planning. The case study investigated is in the Rocinha favela in Rio de Janeiro, which ischaracterized by poor water quality, lack of drainage and sanitation systems, and very few green spaces. Based on a rigorous methodology, the process described here can also be applied in similar contexts around the world.

Regeneration of the Built Environment from a Circular Economy Perspective, 2019

By the middle of the current century, the world's population is projected to grow exponentially, ... more By the middle of the current century, the world's population is projected to grow exponentially, becoming one of the major concerns for the built environment all around the world, where informal settlements are going to grow even faster. This growth will increase the demand for basic infrastructure which is lacking in such contexts. In developing countries, the promotion of urban technologies could contribute immensely to a sustainable development and to population well-being, besides creating interesting economic opportunities. Urban technologies could reduce the environmental impact of cities' development and of urbanized slums renovation, creating employment opportunities for locals and economic opportunities for investment. However, deploying this in slums is a complex and challenging task. This text presents a project based on a multidisciplinary and integrated design methodology for the sustainable regeneration of Rocinha, one of the largest favelas of Rio de Janeiro. The project adopts a systemic approach and foresees the deployment of an urban management system (UMS) able to manage and integrate several urban services including sanitation, energy, mobility, waste, food delivery and cultivation, and the flow of information connected to them, with the aim of reducing the environmental impact while improving the quality of life of citizens. Each of these areas required the development of a specific project that, empowered by the UMS, will allow for the circulation of information between citizens, fostering social inclusion, and raising awareness on the topic of the city's resource management. This project is a demonstration of how minimal but calculated local modification can produce considerable global reaction and ultimately change the system as a whole.

The project presented in this book was developed in a joint international design workshop organised by Politecnico di Milano, IMMdesignlab and Unitec Institute of Technology. The workshop was held at Politecnico di Milano, Polo Territoriale di Lecco (Italy), from 25–29 May 2015, and the team, comprising 14 international students from different design disciplines, was coordinated by Tadi and Bogunovich, assisted by engineers Hadi Mohammad Zadeh and Frederico Zaniol (IMMdesignlab). The outcomes of the workshop were then further developed by IMMdesignlab to demonstrate how, by adopting IMM, it is possible to retrofit, renovate and reactivate an inefficient and energy consuming neighbourhood into a more integrated and sustainable one.

International Journal of Urban and Civil Engineering, 2020

Although how cities' forms are structured is studied, more efforts are needed on systemic compreh... more Although how cities' forms are structured is studied, more efforts are needed on systemic comprehensions and evaluations of the urban morphology through quantitative metrics that are able to describe the performance of a city in relation to its formal properties. More research is required in this direction in order to better describe the urban form characteristics and their impact on the environmental performance of cities and to increase their sustainability stewardship. With the aim of developing a better understanding of the built environment's systemic structure, the intention of this paper is to present a holistic methodology for studying the behavior of the built environment and investigate the methods for measuring the effect of urban structure to the environmental performance. This goal will be pursued through an inquiry into the morphological components of the urban systems and the complex relationships between them. Particularly, this paper focuses on proximity, referring to the proximity of different land-uses, is a concept with which Integrated Modification Methodology (IMM) explains how land-use allocation might affect the choice of mobility in neighborhoods, and especially, encourage or discourage non-motived mobility. This paper uses proximity to demonstrate that the structure attributes can quantifiably relate to the performing behavior in the city. The target is to devise a mathematical pattern from the structural elements and correlate it directly with urban performance indicators concerned with environmental sustainability. The paper presents some results of this rigorous investigation of urban proximity and its correlation with performance indicators in four different areas in the city of Milan, each of them characterized by different morphological features.

Rocinha, located in the city of Rio de Janeiro, is one the largest favela of Latin-America. Found... more Rocinha, located in the city of Rio de Janeiro, is one the largest favela of Latin-America. Founded in the early 1930's it is now home of more than 160000 inhabitants, and it is characterized by low water quality, poor housing, lack of drainage and sanitation systems, and of green and public spaces. This paper presents the preliminary results of a joint research project between the Politecnico di Milano and the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) for the improvement of the urban quality, health, livability and inclusiveness of Rocinha, that moves from an upgrading process of the environmental performance of the existing built environment. The project, in the frame the social responsibility program of Politecnico di Milano (Polisocial), is based on a multidisciplinary and integrated design methodology named IMM (Integrated Modification Methodology). The research aims to demonstrate that in a planet where the informal settlements are exponentially growing, strategies to improve the quality of life of their inhabitants are possible, and preliminary results, mostly achieved in the diagnostic phase of the process, are presented. Rocinha is seen as a complex system that has been investigated in its own morphological structure and the related environmental performance, focusing on: climate and energy, ecosystem services, waste management and their relation with urban morphology. This phase opens up to the next phases, specifically the intervention and retrofitting, that intend to select intervention areas and priorities and then to objectively size the implementation in Rocinha.

International Journal of Sustainable Development and Planning, 2020

Detritus, 2020

Solid waste management (SWM) is recognized worldwide as an important issue to be addressed with t... more Solid waste management (SWM) is recognized worldwide as an important issue to be addressed with the aim of enhancing liveability. The Rocinha favela (slum) depicts a synthesis of the challenges to be faced in this field: high population density, lack of space and narrow streets, residents struggling with low incomes. In Rocinha, service coverage is lacking and inadequate in numerous sectors, including SWM. The present study investigates the reasons underlying this inadequacy. As an initial step, waste streams were analysed and the SWM system and its criticalities delineated. All accessible information was used, with Geographical Information Systems (GIS) playing an important role in data processing. In the final discussion, a small-scale and decentralized waste management network to be implemented in collaboration with the centralized collection system is suggested. This study was conducted as part of the Polimipararocinha project focussed on the overall urban re-qualification of Rocinha.