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Applications for Sustainable Cities
Monday, June 28, 2010
Preface
World Expo 2010: Showcase of Applications for Sustainable Cities
We are experiencing a potentially world-changing event. Shanghai, home to 19 million residents, the country’s largest metropolitan area, is hosting World Expo 2010, which is expected to be the biggest World Expo in history with over 150 countries and 50 International organizations sharing scientific and technological innovations and their experiences of urban development. There will be many diverse eco-city innovations being showcased at the Expo and in and around Shanghai.
This represents a unique opportunity to educate the public about what can be done to reduce the environmental impact of our development by experiencing first-hand true working examples of these sustainable technologies.
Time will tell whether the vast number of visitors touted to the Expo will come or whether the massive infrastructure developed to manage them will be up to the task or whether the boost to the local economy promised as a return on the large investment will materialize.
Whether it appears in the short term to be worth it or not, It is important to realize that there is real, long-term value to the city and to China that far exceeds current short-term concerns.
What makes the Expo so important is that it is a unique opportunity for ideas and solutions from around the globe on how to manage urban living to be presented at a vital time in China’s development.
The Expo is about presenting innovation and ideas, and China badly needs ideas and real examples of how they can be implemented. The country is embarking upon the fastest and greatest urbanization program in the history of the world. The shape and structure of those cities will define the country for many generations. What is encouraging about this time in China is that they already know they need to attend to these things and are already seeking solutions.
It is here that the Expo can play such a vital role in providing ideas (solutions). As China’s cities develop, their enduring success will come because they are places in which people can enjoy diverse, healthy cultured and fulfilled lives. The Expo has gathered together a unique range of presentations of what countries from all parts of the globe and the economic development scale are most proud of in their solutions to urban living. For Chinese city dwellers and those that plan their cities, this is a truly unique opportunity to see, all in one place, what could be. Where the Expo will really succeed is in providing inspiration and options so that the people of China can build better cities and have better lives living in them.
This report on Applications for Sustainable Cities has been developed to document the many valuable applications being showcased at the Expo and to have them live on as an Expo legacy and serve to facilitate the technology transfer beyond the Expo and Shanghai well into the future and throughout China. The World Expo should not only inspire and inform but also empower the visitor with the tools to facilitate the spread of these technologies that we need for a sustainable world.
In Section One: Applications, we will provide a basic overview of applications dealing with design solutions, construction materials, energy, water, waste, transportation, control systems…etc.
Section Two will look at the World Expo Park as a City within a City exploring the integrative infrastructure within the Expo site and throughout Shanghai itself that has been constructed to support this event.
Notable examples from around the World showcasing these Eco-city applications will be presented in Section Three. An Integrative Matrix will correlate categories of applications to specific Expo site locations for easy reference.
David Sutton, Ph.D.
Shanghai, May, 2010
INTRODUCTION P. 3
“Towards More Sustainable Cities”
APPLICATIONS P. 17
Brief survey of approaches to low impact, energy and water conserving construction.
CONTEXTUAL MATRIX
Showing applications in categories by locations at the Expo
EXPO PARK: A City within a City
WORLD CLASS EXAMPLES
Appearing in the World Expo 2010
APPLICATIONS FOR SUSTAINABLE CITIES
Draft Outline
Preface: World Expo 2010: Showcase of Applications for Sustainable Cities
Introduction: Towards More Sustainable Cities
Applications – Brief survey of approaches to low impact, energy and water conserving construction.
Design Solutions — First Principles first
Designing for Comfort, Reducing Demand
- (Basic Strategies of Climatic Design)
- Building Form and Orientation
- Vernacular Design
- Optimizing Building Envelop
- End-use matching
Space Condition (heating and cooling)
- Resist Solar Gain/Shading
- Thermal Mass
- Insulation
- Promote Loss —
- Natural ventilation – ZED Wind Cowl
- Evaporative Cooling/Radiant Cooling
- Heat Pumps/Earth Cooling
- Super efficient AC – — Entire Expo is Chinese Company Broad Air Conditioning
Construction Materials
- Non-toxic, Biodegradable,
- Recycling, local materials
- Bamboo and exceptional wood materials
Water/Landscaping
- Reducing use
- Collection/ Green roofs/walls
- Grey water reuse
- Treatment
- Heating – Solar/other renewables/using waste heat
Waste Management
- Reduce
- Recycling
- Collection/Disposal
- Co-generation
Energy
- Reducing use – First line design solutions
- More efficient end use
- Daylighting
- Renewable Supply
- Solar
- Wind
- Co-generation
Control Systems
- Measuring and Monitoring
Transportation
- Ultracapacitor Buses
- Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles
- Electric vehicles / Solar battery Recharging.
- Other
CONTEXTUAL MATRIX (showing application categories X Expo Examples)
EXPO PARK : A City within a City.
Expo Guidelines, Local Grid, Broad Air-conditioning, Shared water
(and ground?) source heat pump system, Roads, Metro, other
transportation. Reconstructed Wetlands. Permanent Infrastructure
(Expo Axis – “Sun Valleys”.) and buildings to remain.
WORLD CLASS EXAMPLES (Appearing in the World Expo 2010)
(Incomplete list, order to be determined)
ZED Pavilion (In the Urban Best Practices Area (UBPA)
Madrid House
Hamburg House (UBPA)
Alsace Pavilion
Danish Pavilion
Swedish Pavilion
Shanghai Ecological House (UBPA) – also one in Shanghai proper.
Pavilion of the Future
Broad Company Pavilion
Freiburg City Exhibit (UBPA)
Bremen Exhibit – Urban Mobility Solutions
Vancouver City Pavilion (UBPA)
German/China House
German Pavilion (Balanced City)
India Pavilion
Finnish Pavilion
Israeli Pavilion
China National Pavilion
China Theme Pavilion
Expo Center
Japan Pavilion
Norway Pavilion
Shanghai Corporate Joint Pavilion
Broad Air Conditioning Pavilion
Pavilion of Innovation at German Center in Pudong (not at Expo site)
Towards More Sustainable Cities
China’s Urbanization Story
Approximately 600 million now live in China’s cities representing about 45 percent of the population but the scale and pace of China’s urbanization promises to continue at an unprecedented rate. If current trends hold, China’s urban population will expand from 572 million in 2005 to 926 million in 2025 and hit the one billion mark by 2030. In 20 years, China’s cities will have added 350 million people—more than the entire population of the United States today. While the US has 46 cities with populations of more than one million and Europe has 60, China has an incredible 175. By 2025, China will have 219 cities with more than one million inhabitants—compared with 35 in Europe today—and 24 cities with more than five million people.
The expansion of China’s cities will represent a huge challenge for local and national leaders. By 2030, two-thirds of China’s roughly 1.5 billion people will live in urban areas. To cope with the increase, China plans to build 50,000 new high-rise buildings and 170 new mass-transit rail and subway systems (by comparison Europe has only 70). The World Bank estimates that between now and 2015, approximately half of the entire world’s new building construction will take place in China.
According to the experiences of OECD and EU countries, the energy utilized in urban buildings and transport accounts for two thirds of final energy consumption. The share also grew rapidly in China from 35.9% in 2000 to 41.9% in 2007. According to China’s National Resource Defense Council (NRDC), China’s buildings accounted for 30-40% of the country’s total energy use.
The Cities Development Challenges and Options
Increasingly, we see Governments giving attention to the construction of eco-cities.
One definition of an eco-city is “a city that provides an acceptable standard of living for its human occupants without depleting the eco-systems and biochemical cycles on which it depends.” Creating sustainable communities and (low carbon) cities will be a long-lasting challenge. With these massive new plans of urban construction over the next 20 years, China has a unique opportunity to construct eco-cities on a major scale. The unthinkable alternative is being locked into inefficient and ultimately expensive systems for many years to come. Cities need resource-efficient buildings, and ecologically friendly water, power and transport systems. Their inhabitants must also be able to live sustainably.
From Ego to Eco-systems:
The need to change mind-set to a sustainable way of thinking
In order to move towards more sustainability in its cities, China will have to make a significant shift in both its hardware and software. A more sustainable model of urban planning and development requires a philosophical rethinking of people’s place in the world, governance and institutional reform, and technological renovation of its current model of industrialization. A new model based on development rather than just economic growth. A new model which improves the health and resilience of its entire people and environment rather than the wealth of a few.
Philosophical Re-thinking:
Sustainability is and always will be fundamentally an ecological concept. Like all living things, the human species and their systems of operations must adapt to the limits of earth’s natural life-support systems. All the human device and accord in the world cannot transcend those limits.
Based on the false assumptions of unlimited natural resources to draw from, unlimited ecosystem services to support us and unlimited places to put our wastes, human society has evolved linear economic systems that takes natural resources, makes products and then disposes of them as waste when they are no longer deemed ‘useful’ or ‘of sufficient value’. Sooner or later, in a finite world, this one-way industrial process must end. There is a limit to resources available as well as the capacity for the earth’s life-support systems to absorb the impact. The myriad of environmental problems we are experiencing today in our cities are a manifestation of reaching these limits. Calls for moving towards sustainable development come from such an understanding.
Sustainable Development is not about technology and economics; it is about state-of-mind. As the great American Naturalist Aldo Leopold once put it: (over 60 years ago):
“Civilization has so cluttered elemental man-earth relation with gadgets and middlemen that awareness of it is growing dim. We fancy that industry supports us, forgetting what supports industry.”
Through these words, Leopold is reminding us that we need to appreciate our place in Nature and our absolute dependence on the natural processes that sustain us. Technology may give us the tools to more effectively interact with natural process but brute force technology forced upon the living landscape is not wise “scientific development” and certainly not sustainable.
Sustainable living is mindful living – being conscious of how we are involved with, how we affect and are totally dependent upon our planet’s life-support systems.
Governance and Institutional Reforms:
Government policy needs to be informed by this realization of our dependence on natural ecosystem services and the planet’s physical limits. Planning and implementation needs to be ecosystem-based and moved towards flexible and adaptative practices and procedures. Managing cities’ demand for resources rather than simply focusing on building the supply infrastructure needed to keep pace with demand is an essential step toward sustainable governance and planning.
For example, boosting energy productivity—the level of output we achieve from the energy we consume—is largely a ‘pain-free’, measurable, ‘low-hanging fruit’ option. China’s cities would generate positive returns from future energy savings, freeing up resources for investment elsewhere. Urban China has the opportunity to abate energy demand growth by 30 QBTU , including the potential to reduce oil demand by just over four million barrels of oil per day. In tandem, China would be able to cut urban water demand by close to 40 percent by 2025.
The government’s role is to envision the common good where everybody’s needs are met and encourage the most effective and efficient means of meeting those needs. Then a bristling market with innovative suppliers providing super-efficient processes and appliances and a diverse set of energy sources specifically matched to end-use needs can supply them.
In order for this to happen, we need a government intent on providing for the Common Good that facilitates the exploration of efficient, effective means, the education of the people about those means and the provision of those means. This must be done by insuring a level playing field, so that the best of human ingenuity and creativity can work as it should, serving the agreed upon ends of society.
The supply-side approach rests on the belief that more energy we use, the better off we are. Energy, like money or material, has been elevated from a means to an end in itself. Albert Einstein brilliantly summarized this aberration:
“Perfection of means and confusion of ends seem to characterize our age.”
On a path of energy efficiency, on the contrary, how much energy we use to accomplish our social goals is considered a measure less of success than of our failure–just as the amount of traffic we must endure to gain access to places we want to get to is a measure not of well-being but rather of our failure to establish a rational settlement pattern. The cornerstone of a sustainable energy policy is to seek to attain our goals with elegant frugality of energy and trouble, using our best technologies (ingenuity) to wring as much social function as possible from each unit of energy use.
Technological Renovations:
Rethink our problem solving approaches and use the most appropriate technology we have for a given task. We can envision two fundamentally different ways, or “paths,” to supply our energy needs, for instance. The “hard path” involves large scale, highly technological approaches that rely on centralized electrical production. This strategy implies large capital investments in plants and distribution networks, increasingly costly technologies to locate, extract, transport, and convert the raw fuels, and a centralized bureaucracy of managers and technicians to organize and maintain the system. In contrast, the “soft path” involves small scale, widely dispersed, elegantly simple approaches that rely on a mix of different local sources of energy tailored to specific needs.
The distinction between hard and soft energy paths rests not on what energy source it uses but on the technical, socio-political structure of the energy delivery system thus focusing our attention on consequent and crucial organizational differences. Soft energy systems are characterized by: (a) a reliance on renewable flows that are always there whether we use them or not (e.g. sun and wind, and biomass) — on energy income not on depleted non-renewable energy capital; (b) the use of diverse energy sources – supply is seen as an aggregate of many modest contributions, each designed for maximum effectiveness in particular circumstances; (c) flexible, low-tech (not unsophisticated) applications; (d) the matching in scale to end-use needs, taking advantage of free distribution of local energy flows; and, (e) the matching in quality to end-use needs.
Thousands of Community energy programs (small scale solar, wind, hydro, biogas, industrial process heat/co-generation… etc.) can be developed using local resources employing thousands of local residents generating income and building local economies meeting the specific determined needs of each community. At the community level first steps can also be better addressed, steps like reducing the need for delivered energy in the first place by “plugging the leaks,” using technical fixes and simple design solutions such as sealing drafts, thermal insulation measures, increasing the efficiency of appliances used, heat recovery and co-generation of electricity – all being produced at site of use and under local control.
“Scientific Development”, that is Sustainable Development based on Scientific Principles, does not necessarily imply hard path technologies and delivery. The most sophisticated and elegant science, technology and engineering often include the simplest design techniques and low-tech applications. The goal should be the elegant simplicity of applying the most appropriate, efficient, cost (economic, environmental and social) effective means to meet the specific desired ends – this is the soft path and it can be taken to meet most of our society’s needs.
This Rethinking, Reform and Renovation are essential to a new approach to urbanization in China.
Cities as Eco-Systems:
When talking about Eco-cities, we need to see cities as ecosystems sustained by the functions of the ecosystems of which they are a part. Ecosystems supply our clean air and water, generate oxygen, absorb carbon dioxide, capture and transform the sun’s energy, provide food for all its constituents, generate no waste, are very diverse and dynamic, independent yet interconnected. Ecosystems support life in all its forms for the common good.
Using the criteria from the Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, we can envision China’s future eco-cities as having some of the following characteristics:
1. Compact built-up areas below and above ground (6 to 10 levels up), with population densities of 10,000 per square km. These concentrated constructed areas are separated and surrounded by large expanses of open green areas. A common eco-city criterion is to have large green areas within ten minutes walk of the residents’ place of work and living.
2. Large open green spaces of forests, grasslands and agriculture as well as urban gardens and green rooftops serve as the lungs of land ecosystems (natural and urban) providing the oxygen we need as they capture and store the CO2 in the air. This carbon capture function has become evermore important in these times of global warming. Together with the wetlands, these areas provide the crucial functions of water harvesting, retention and purification. Water is a cities’ life-blood (as it is for all ecosystems). Healthy urban metabolism needs to insure a safe water supply by focusing on water conservation, harvesting and purification. There should be no less than three times the area of these valuable service areas to urban built area. When consciously planned with prevailing water and wind channels in mind (using the best permaculture practices), these areas can effectively combat urban heat island effects.
The most ecologically sound mobility for this pattern of compact areas separated by large green areas is to have a prominent transportation aorta of light rail connecting these city clusters and connecting with intercity subway and other energy efficient public transit, bicycles and pedestrian pathways serving 80% of the urban population. Those taking the direct train on the main axis will have no more than a half an hour trip to downtown.
Living systems sustain themselves by accessing the constant flow of incoming solar energy and circulating the material resources they need through grand closed looped cycles of use and reuse. Likewise these eco-cities will maximize their use of solar energy and other renewable energy sources, striving for more efficient use of energy. For example, lowering energy consumption and carbon emissions by providing 80% of the energy for building air-conditioning and heating being supplied by terrestrial heat, solar energy, biomass and other clean technologies.
Likewise, the linear construction and industrial processes of past cities with their ecosystem depleting and waste production, will be replaced by circular processes where all outputs are fed back into the system for reuse, and essential ecosystem services are repaired and protected.
Standards drive green building. Now many cities are adopting polices that require new building to be built to a certain standard. The World Green Building Council now certifies green construction and performance in 14 countries, including China. Incentives to developers and consumers to invest in and purchase and tax breaks to buyers have encouraged the construction of energy conserving buildings. New low energy, sustainable building materials have been used in the newly constructed buildings that represent the highest energy efficiency standards. Their performance will be monitored and standards enforced.
Harmonious neighborhoods of the cities’ residents will be facilitated and maintained and special efforts made to preserve local customs and culture as well as provide good public safety and security and opportunities for active participation. Each of these local extended communities integrated within a string of compact cities can strive for the harmonizing goals advocated by the Leadership in Environment and Energy Design Neighborhood Development System (LEED ND).
Using these criteria we can look to the day when the rush of the world’s cities to build the tallest (ego) sky-scrapers is replaced by a competition to build the world’s most (eco) sustainable ones.
David B. Sutton 沙乐明, Ph.D is a human ecologist, writer and international consultant specializing in, ecological conservation, sustainable development, integral health and creative communications. He has over twenty-five years experience teaching at the University level. At Stanford University, he lectured on international conservation and development issues and the led the Stanford Alumni Seminar in India and Nepal. He was a principal instructor in the training of trainers for Sweden’s, The Natural Step in the USA.
For the past eight years he has lived and worked in Shanghai where he writes, lectures and is often engaged as a commentator on TV and for workshops and conferences. He was recently featured in the BBC series, “Hot Cities: Counting the Cost” filmed in Shanghai. Dr. Sutton is currently documenting notable examples of sustainable technologies and urban best practices at the World Expo.
Notes:
QBTU is a Quadrillion British Thermal Unit. 1 QBTU = 1×1015 BTU or about 1 Exajoule (1.055x1018J)
These ideas are further explored in, “China can lead the World on a Soft Path” by David B. Sutton, 2009. The ideas are taken from the brilliant physicist, Amory Lovins, who argued thirty years ago in his article called, “Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken” published in the journal of Foreign Affairs (Fall, 1976) that the United States should disengage from the vulnerable and highly wasteful dependence on fossil fuels (the “hard path” as he put it) and develop a plan to increase the efficiency of energy use and the use of renewable energy resources. (the alternative “soft path”) Later he expanded his analysis in the book, Soft Energy Paths (Cambridge, Ballinger,1977). More recently he co-authored, Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution (Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins, Little Brown, 1999). A prolific writer, he continues his cutting edge analyses at the Rocky Mountain Institute.
The Natural Step Framework’s definition of sustainability includes four system conditions (scientific principles) that lead to a sustainable society. These conditions, that must be met in order to have a sustainable society, are as follows:
In a sustainable society, nature is not subject to systematically increasing:
concentrations of substances extracted from the Earth’s crust;
concentrations of substances produced by society;
degradation by physical means and, in that society,
people are not subject to conditions that systematically undermine their capacity to meet their needs (as defined my Chilean Economist Manfred Max-Neef)
“Ecology, Eco-polis and Sustainable Settlement Development,” Wang Rusong, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 2008.
Permaculture is the art and science of designing human being’s place in the environment. A permaculture design teaches to understand and mirror the patterns in healthy natural environments. With this kind of environment we can then build profitable, productive, sustainable, cultivated ecosystems for people with the diversity, stability and resilience of natural ecosystems.
The World Green Building Council, a global version of U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC)—well known for its Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification and rating program was formed in 2002.Looking at the LEED criteria provides insight into the many ways buildings can become more energy-efficient. The certification process for new buildings begins with site selection, and then moves on to energy efficiency, water efficiency, materials use, and indoor environmental quality. Among the current members, China ranks third in certification after the United States and India with 287 million square feet of LEED-certified floor space.
LEED ND is a new set of performance standards for certifying the planning and development of neighborhoods. The intent is to promote healthful, durable, affordable, and environmentally sound practices in building design and construction. The LEED rating systems places emphasis on the site selection, design, and construction elements that bring buildings and infrastructure together into a neighborhood and relate the neighborhood to its landscape as well as its local and regional context.
“Primer on Eco-City Applications: Shanghai World Expo 2010,” by David B. Sutton, Ph.D. (in preparation).