Green Planning for Cities and Communities

If urban planning plays a fundamental role in the future of humanity, which is concentrating an increasing share of the population in cities, then green planning is the most effective response to the climate change emergency. This chapter analyses theories, strategies and tools that characterize the green planning of cities and communities useful for understanding and managing its complexity. The first section analyses the continuously evolving relationship between urban planning and sustainable development. The topic of sustainable development in green planning is seen as a comparison between two approaches, one more utopian and idealistic and one more pragmatic, both in the two fundamental declinations: the more anthropocentric and the more ecological. Subsequently, the more applicative aspects are dealt with: from the analysis of the sectoral planning tools, relations and synergies are highlighted with the aim of providing an integrated, inclusive model. The final part of the chapter proposes a planning strategy aimed at supporting a structured, integrated and effective green planning model for cities and communities.

Green in cities does not only play an aesthetic role but also contributes greatly to making the urban environment more sustainable in all senses of the term: environmental, energy-wise, economic and social. The purpose of this chapter is to tackle the issue of green in cities by highlighting the connections that exist between having a nature base or renaturing of cities and sustainable planning, stimulating the necessary in-depth analysis of a topic that must constitute an information resource for those who deal with green planning. The chapter, after an introduction that highlights the need to seek a new alliance between urban spaces and natural spaces, deals with the issue of urban infrastructure, highlighting its potential. The final part of the chapter deals with the issue of urban heat islands providing some improvement strategies.

This chapter illustrates the need for the inclusion in sustainable urban planning of the problem of the impact of disasters on cities and communities: disasters that will continue to occur and may well even become more frequent because of urban expansion, increasing population densities and climate change effects. To achieve this result, first of all some basic tools about disaster terminology, disaster trends and disaster risk computation are provided. Subsequently, the latest international decisions at global level to face disasters and climate change and to promote sustainability are explained and elucidated, showing their connections and synergies. In the final part, some originally selected elements on how to put in place strategies and those actions which are no longer deferrable are proposed.

Cities are like organisms, drawing in resources and emitting wastes. In nature, organisms are related to ecosystems characterized by a circular metabolism, so a green planning to move towards sustainable cities needs to adopt a circular approach to the way in which are managed the resources consumed (materials, food, energy, water and land) and the emissions produced (solid waste, airborne and waterborne) in cities and their related territories. Initially, the origins of the theme of circularity are illustrated, in particular, in relation to urban applications (urban metabolism) and territorial (industrial ecology) and current developments, with the analysis of a virtuous example. Thereafter, some possible strategic approaches to favour urban circularity (urban mining, building regeneration) are analysed, highlighting the importance of flow mapping and the creation of exchange platforms. Finally, some methods of assessing environmental impacts are shown to verify the effectiveness of circularity with respect to the objective of sustainability, and examples of benchmarks/targets adopted in some concrete cases experienced are presented.

In green planning, the correct management of energy in towns and cities is a critical issue and is the topic of this chapter. In the first part, a general overview is provided, identifying the new paradigms to be pursued according to the needs of reducing, and possibly eliminating, the emission of greenhouse gases and those gases that have an impact on the environment, also considering the technological evolution currently in progress and opportunities offered by the market of energy generation and management market. In the second part of the chapter, a methodological approach to Green Energy Planning on a territorial scale is proposed and discussed. The chapter is completed by an in-depth analysis of the European project which promotes an approach to bottom-up energy planning, the Covenant of Mayors: its methodologies are discussed and a case study is analysed.

Cities are responsible for around 70% of global energy demand and are considered as having a crucial role in effective abatement of global energy consumptions. The topic is largely discussed in available literature, which reveals the great diversity of applied approaches and the necessity to move towards the concept of smart energy systems, focussing on synergies among different energy sectors. However, considering the large share of responsibility of the building sector, this chapter focussed on related energy demand assessment. After an initial introduction, which spotlights the most complex elements, the chapter presents some methods of analysis to evaluate the energy performance of the existing building stocks. Subsequently an overview is presented of the methods and tools for determining the energy demand of buildings within urban energy planning, paying particular attention to those that rely on hourly profiles. The assessment of hourly energy demand of the existing building stock, as well as the prediction of its variation due to energy efficiency measures, are fundamental activities for planning strategies of distributed generation, district heating and/or cooling networks, renewables integration, energy storages, etc., all necessary in moving towards smart energy districts.

In the energy-environmental balance of a city, the building sector uses on average 40% of the energy taken from fossil fuel sources, thereby significantly contributing to air pollution and the emission of greenhouse gases. Green planning strategies must therefore carefully consider this sector, promoting energy retrofit actions that can contain environmental impacts. The energy and environmental redevelopment of buildings must not only be considered an emergency but also an interesting opportunity for growth in the construction market; however, some critical issues, not only of a technical but also economic and social nature, must be assessed. This chapter, focusing on the issue of energy and environmental redevelopment of buildings in cities and communities, on the territorial scale, aims to provide green planners with useful tools to approach their strategies in a pragmatic manner.

Recent estimates suggest that cities account for about 70% of the global energy demand and thereby can be identified as key players to decarbonise the energy generation sector. Among the possibilities to face this challenge, the integration of renewable energy sources into the energy supply mix has a prominent role. Currently, many cities have drastically reduced their energy demand in all final uses and are even boosting a process of 100% energy transition to renewable energy sources. This goal is clearly ambitious not only from an economic point of view, but also even from the technical standpoint, meaning that this integration of renewables is not straightforward. Hence, an effort from academic researchers in order to develop proper methods and tools to support energy planning at urban scale as well as efforts from public services administrations to acquire a proactive role is desired. In this chapter, in order to provide insights into heterogeneous expertise involved in the sector, a framework on the renewables integration at city scale is outlined, highlighting the current main issues and challenges that are encountered, describing some selected experiences and investigating the possible technological solutions.

The objective of this chapter is to indicate in which direction cities must invest in order to become smart and sustainable in terms of mobility. On the basis of the current trends and considering technological innovation in the mobility sector, the chapter will address those aspects which the planners will have to take into account not only in the design of the new neighbourhoods, but also in the redevelopment of the recovery of the existing ones. The authors discuss both collective mobility and individual mobility, thus ranging from underground railways to electric scooters. In the final part, general criteria for sustainable mobility planning are provided.

The rating systems which certify the environmental sustainability of neighbourhoods or cities contribute greatly to enhancing the quality of built environments, also from a social and economic point of view, thus improving the quality of life of the inhabitants. For this reason, in a proper vision of green planning of cities and communities they are essential tools. This chapter focuses on the most widespread protocols used for the certification of urban space sustainability: BREEAM^® Community, LEED^® V4 for Neighbourhood Development and LEED^® for Cities and Communities. The analysis confirms the validity of these instruments which, in addition to certifying the environmental, social and economic sustainability of neighbourhoods and cities, provide indicators that facilitate an objective comparison between different urban realities. The completeness of the areas covered by these protocols certainly places them among smart city protocols.

The use of any territory at various scales, from the national to the urban or neighbourhood, would not be possible if there were no infrastructures. Such infrastructure is composed of a variety of public and private physical attributions to improve that territory: these include various types of civil engineering structures, e.g., bridges, motorways, railways, airports but also energy and communication networks, just to mention a few examples. It plays a strategic role in the social, economic, environmental well-being of human beings but also of the ecosystems. To underline the importance of infrastructures, one of the Sustainable Development Goals of the U.N. (SDG 9) regards the development of quality, reliable, sustainable and resilient infrastructures. In the green planning of cities and communities, the topic of infrastructure must be examined with great attention. The purpose of this chapter is to address the issue of infrastructure by focusing on the relationship between international environmental sustainability protocols and infrastructure. The chapter will analyse in particular the international Envision^® protocol, designed to certify the sustainability of infrastructures by presenting some examples of its application.

The topic of smart cities has come to the fore at a time when technological innovation in the cities, owing to the ever increasing use of ICT infrastructures and services, especially the Internet, is spreading widely. The digital city seems to have taken the upper hand over the real one, and cities are joining the smart revolution aiming to become smart cities. The risk is that the most concrete meanings of the smart revolution will be lost, giving too much weight to technologies. This chapter addresses this issue by highlighting the true meanings of the smart city approach on urban planning and the necessary and useful synergy with the green aspects most linked to the physical environment of the city.

The sustainability and the smartness of cities must be objectively measured starting from real observations. Only in this way is it really possible to measure progress or identify critical elements of the development policies adopted. This chapter addresses the issue of indicators and rating systems that can be constructed from them. After a general introduction on the indicators, international standards designed to promote sustainability in cities and to support actions related to SDGs will be analysed. Subsequently, the most widespread ranking systems will be considered, and some case studies of their application will be proposed.

The design, construction and management of sustainable and intelligent buildings, neighbourhoods and cities require tools that can manage complexity in a completely different manner to the practices adopted to date. This chapter introduces the most advanced current approach, Building Information Modelling (BIM), focusing in particular on its use to support green and smart planning of buildings, neighbourhoods and cities. The initial part of the chapter introduces the general concepts underlying the BIM. The second part explores its application, the Green BIM, intended as the use of the tool to support the sustainable design of buildings. The chapter concludes with the introduction of a more recent concept, the City Information Modelling (CIM), intended as a common platform to design, build and manage the buildings, infrastructures and services of neighbourhoods and cities that evolve towards sustainable and smart schemes.