Urban Sustainability Audits and Ratings of the Built Environment (original) (raw)
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The Evolution of the Sustainability Assessment Tool : From Buildings to the Built Environment
The Scientific World Journal, 2014
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 SBTool PT 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 SBTool PT -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.
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Technological and Economic Development of Economy, 2009
A simple method for the assessment of sustainability of a residential building is proposed. The method consists of two steps. First, areas that influence sustainability level of the building (e.g. building architecture, design, in‐built materials) are identified. For each area, several elements and corresponding indicators are determined. Depending on their nature, the indicators are expressed either in quantitative or qualitative terms. The impact areas and their corresponding elements influence all three aspects of sustainability. In the second step, the indicators are aggregated according to their influence on individual sustainability aspects. Special attention is placed to the determination of weights assigned to the indicators in order to make the assessment method relevant in the local context. Initially, the consensus‐based method within the research team was used as a technique for aggregated indicators’ weighting. Later, the open discourses among the developers and stakeho...
2014
This paper analyses the current trends in sustainability assessment. After about 15 years fromthe 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 SBToolPT is also developing its version for assessing the sustainability of the built environment, namely, the urban planning projects and the urban regeneration projects, to b...
Critical overview of urban sustainability assessment tools
2016
Sustainability assessment has been promoted by several institutions and organizations in order to encourage sustainable practices in the building sector. The scope of the first assessment tools was on buildings and building solutions. Research within this field of knowledge is already well established. But very recently, there has been a progressive development of tools aiming at broader scales such as neighborhoods, urban districts and larger urban areas. These assessment tools borrowed strategies that were used in their predecessors (aiming at the building scale) that bring some problems when assessing sustainability in urban areas. In this article, several sustainability assessment tools for urban areas were analyzed in several criteria. The analysis showed that all existing assessment tools share some issues regardless of having different approaches. It is argued that sustainability assessment tools need to evolve in the sense of becoming more similar regarding their assessment framework and scoring methods.
Environmental Management and Sustainable Development, 2017
The present paper aims at highlighting the connections between the environmental assessment of urban planning and building design activities at different scales. Environmental assessment is a multi-scale and inter/trans disciplinary process, which considers the city through an ecological approach. Environmental assessment includes different tools depending on the planning and design phase, with links and overlaps but also with contradictions. Four different evaluation fields are discussed - land use, water management, local resources, energy - also concerning the case of two Environmental Reports for Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) processes of municipal urban plans for two Italian municipalities, Vado Ligure and Altare. The analysis of case studies shows that SEA is not always an effective tool for strategic urban planning, as it includes similar assessment criteria to building scale ones, causing overlaps and contradictions.
A critical review of environmental assessment tools for sustainable urban design
2015
Cities are responsible for the depletion of natural resources and agricultural lands, and 70% of global CO2 emissions. There are significant risks to cities fromthe impacts of climate change in addition to existing vulnerabilities, primarily because of rapid urbanization. Urban design and development are generally considered as the instrument to shape the future of the city and they determine the pattern of a city's resource usage and resilience to change, from climate or otherwise. Cities are inherently dynamic and require the participation and engagement of their diverse stakeholders for the effective management of change, which enables wider stakeholder involvement and buy-in at various stages of the development process. Sustainability assessment of urban design and development is increasingly being seen as indispensable for informed decision-making. A sustainability assessment tool also acts as a driver for the uptake of sustainable pathways by recognizing excellence through their rating systemand by creating a market demand for sustainable products and processes. This research reviews sixwidely used sustainability assessment tools for urban design and development: BREEAM Communities, LEED-ND, CASBEE-UD, SBToolPT–UP, Pearl Community Rating System(PCRS) and GSAS/QSAS, to identify, compare and contrast the aim, structure, assessment methodology, scoring, weighting and suitability for application in different geographical contexts. Strengths and weaknesses of each tool are critically discussed. The study highlights the disparity in local and international contexts for global sustainability assessment tools. Despite their similarities in aimon environmental aspects, differences exist in the relative importance and share of mandatory vs optional indicators in both environmental and social dimensions. PCRS and GSAS/QSAS are new incarnations, but have widely varying shares of mandatory indicators, at 45.4% and 11.36% respectively, compared to 30% in BREEAM Community. Considerations of economic and cultural aspects are only marginal in the reviewed sustainability assessment tools. However, the newly developed sustainability assessment tools such as GSAS/QSAS and PCRS diverge from their predecessors in their consideration of cultural aspects.
Integrated Urban Built Environment Sustainability Assessment
2014
Urban man-made assets have impacts not just on those who develop, build and operate them, but on people who may be quite remote from them. For example, the impact of a building on greenhouse gas emissions arising from fossil fuel use, pollution caused by travel to work patterns and employment opportunities provided by urban developments may be far removed from their immediate locality. There is a growing recognition of the need to internalize these external costs and benefits in accountancy frameworks, drawing on experiences in accounting for sustainable development. This desire, however, presents major challenges in identifying, evaluating and allocating the external environmental, social and economic costs and benefits of an urban environment. This paper reports on the development of an Urban Development Sustainability Assessment Model (UD-SAM) which allows decision makers to identify sustainability indicators (economic, environmental and social) and which may lead to more holistic evaluation of the sustainability impact of elements of the urban environment. The UD-SAM builds on a sustainability assessment model (SAM) developed originally in the oil industry. This paper describes how SAM has been tailored for the construction industry and urban sustainability assessment, and how a set of generic sustainable development indicators have been identified and validated by stakeholders.
Review and analysis of tools for the implementation and assessment of sustainable urban development
future, 2006
The principles of sustainability and ecologically sustainable development (ESD) are widely accepted as important components of urban planning and development, and indeed the language of sustainability is heavily featured in recent urban planning strategy and policy. There are currently numerous initiatives to incorporate ESD principles in urban buildings. Building assessment tools such as AccuRate and BASIX exist, along with the Green Building Council's 'Green Star' suite of tools and others (e.g. NABERS, BREEAM, LEED), as do various reviews of these approaches. There is much less activity, however, on the incorporation of ESD principles into the planning and design of the broader urban form. This paper focuses on assessment tools aimed at the suburb or precinct scale, presenting a representative review of existing initiatives. It will highlight strengths and weaknesses of the approaches reviewed, and propose future directions for the provision of assessment tools to improve the ecological sustainability performance of urban development.