1.
Environment
Society
Economy
Sustainable Development
Sustainable development is development that delivers environmental, economical and social services to all residents of a community, without threatening the viability of the natural, built, economic and social systems upon which the delivery of these systems depend. [2]
Economy
Society
INTRODUCTION
In urban settlements, where over 80% of Europeans live, the concentrations of people and their activities create intensified demands on the environment. However, this very concentration offers opportunities, through design and actions at an urban scale, to minimise the various environmental impacts - ideally to the point where they can be assimilated by the ecosystems of the region without lasting damage. It can then be said that a level of sustainable existence has been reached at which the community can live in symbiotic harmony with its environment. The best known definition of sustainable development, that of the World Commission on Environment and Development (the Brundtland Commission), dates from the publication in 1987 of ’Our Common Future‘ [1]: (Sustainable development is)…“development that meets the needs of today‘s generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs”. It is worth emphasising that it is our needs, not wants, that deserve primary attention. It is also worth reminding ourselves that we in the developed countries have used power and knowledge to help ourselves to a grossly disproportionate share of the world's resources leaving much environmental, social and economic degradation in less developed countries - and sometimes closer to home. There are many indicators of sustainability that can help in assessing the present condition, and strategies that may be adopted by a community to ensure its continued existence and development. An holistic, interdisciplinary approach involving the natural and physical sciences and the humanities is a feature of most comprehensive analyses, and the issues involved in developing and implementing action plans for sustainable urban living are diverse and often interdependent.
Environment
Two models of sustainable developments.
While recognising that social and economic factors are also of fundamental importance, the focus of this maxibrochure is on physical environmental issues. It aims to outline some of the current thinking in urban design, and show some exemplary responses, as an aid to the process of making urban settlements in Europe more environmentally sustainable. 1.1
Evaporative cooling at the Alhambra, Granada, Spain.
BACKGROUND
The knowledge of an appropriate response to climate was fundamental to the planning of many traditional settlements. Vernacular architecture and urban design often embodied an intimate knowledge of the locality, climatically and geographically, and its potential for sustainable life. Long before the Roman architect Vitruvius wrote the Ten Books of Architecture two thousand years ago, builders, were of neccessity, optimising their local environment, through the manipulation of site, the forms, organisation of external spaces, and the building layout itself. During the Industrial Revolution in the mid-1800s, the design of buildings came to depend less on ambient energy and more on the abundant supply of fossil fuels for their thermal comfort. Current trends in architecture and urbanism often continue to ignore the potential of passive measures to achieve thermal comfort. The resulting impacts can be measured in environmental, social and economic terms. There is increasing acceptance among planners, urban designers and governments that current modes of human existence in developed countries are unsustainable in environmental, social and economic terms. Some of the factors supporting this view are indications of: global climate change; resource depletion; droughts and floods; local pollution and damage to ecosystems; species extinction; deterioration in the quality of life, especially in cities; increasing polarisation in wealth distribution; and poor equality in access to resources and knowledge.
Evaporative cooling at EXPO ’92, Seville, Spain.
2
The nature of the problem, now beginning to be recognised in broad terms and sometimes only from indications at a global or regional scale, is such that it is still possible to take corrective action and begin to halt the decline, and reverse it in many instances, if measures are urgently applied. However, failure to act appropriately at this stage may soon result in our having to face catastrophic failure of the