Green Urban Infrastructure Solutions (GUIS) are becoming more and more popular globally. Recent research reveals the environmental benefits derived from GUIS as well as their contribution to climate change adaptation. However, the urgent need for GUIS in order to meet the Paris Agreement, has not translated into an easy implementation thereof. This paper proposes a circular design methodology (CDM) where the combination of research and practice contributes to minimize both current skepticism and barriers when implementing GUIS. It includes a community engagement process to better understand their sensitivity and build consensus on GUIS. Additionally, GUIS are implemented, in a series of pilot projects and specific research is applied to comprehend the environmental benefits derived from these GUIS. The paper argues that GUIS represent a significant opportunity to respond to climate change risks as well as to achieve other urban benefits; however, in order to overcome existing barriers and skepticism, the proposed CDM reaches for more consensual urban solutions and drives uptake and implementation of GUIS, contributing to move from pilot project to common practice.

Constant change in current market and social conditions has triggered the demand for a more adaptable building stock. The capacity to assume and accommodate change has thus become a new requirement for buildings. At the same time, there is a growing demand for more environmentally conscious buildings. New protocols, building codes, and certification systems are becoming stricter regarding buildings’ CO2 emissions, energy efficiency, and other environmental aspects. The current building industry fails to satisfy these two demands; conventional buildings rarely enable change, unless undergoing complex renovations, and rarely consider environmental features beyond mandatory legislation. In this context, this paper proposes Modular Ecotechnological Architecture as a response to both demands. The basis is an integrated design that looks at energy, water, and materials’ efficiency altogether, combined with a modular industrialized building system. The system allows buildings to grow or reduce in size according to their needs, with little impact for their inhabitants, enabling versatility for a variety of uses within the same space and over time. This paper presents the concept of this new building system together with the technical, building code-related, and economic challenges encountered throughout recent experimental projects.

Urban environments are great consumers of energy. In Spain, the housingservices sector is responsible for almost 30% of the total energy consumption. There are many initiatives towards the reduction of energy consumption in buildings. However, many of the alternatives are diminished due to a lack of a holistic approach in the planning, design, and building of new communities. This paper reports a new methodology that integrates concepts of energy efficiency in the overall planning and design process. A community in Toledo, Spain, serves as a case study to extract conclusions later applicable to other areas. The methodology evaluates energy efficiency solutions at different scales and stages within the planning and building process of both neighbourhood and buildings. It then revises the planning and building protocols for the optimization of the community's energy efficiency, contemplating their practical applicability. With this, the proposed integrated methodology is improved and adapted to a widereaching design of energy efficient urban communities.

While there is a growing practice of engagement processes in urban planning, with diverse strategies and actions, there are still many questions regarding the evaluation; the gap being how to conclude that a process has been successful or not, and in what terms. In this context, this paper analyses a series of international reference models over the last fifty years, including levels of participation (Arnstein, UN-Habitat, IAP2), key performance indicators (IISD), evaluation guidelines (IOPD) and quality standards and indicators for community engagement (NSfCE, OGP, UNICEF). Based on this analysis, the research proposes an evaluative framework specific for citizen engagement in urban design and planning processes. The framework includes consists of six standards, with quantitative and qualitative indicators to consider both a process's outputs as its outcomes. The standards are: scope (level of engagement, process planning and structure), inclusion (diversity and quantity of stakeholders by gender, age, stake-holder type and others), mechanisms (typology, diversity and outreach), communication, building capacity (raising awareness and understanding), and impact (contribution to the urban plan). The research applies the framework to conduct a comparative study among cases of engagement processes in municipal-scale urban planning in the Basque Country, Navarre and Cantabria, in the north of Spain. Six case studies include small-and medium-sized towns and cities with a wide range in scale, from 4,000 to 350,000 people, and both pre-COVID and during-COVID experiences. Results reveal tendencies, common benefits and challenges. Conclusions allow for a better understanding of the matter and expect to be useful and transferable to future urban planning-related engagement processes in order to overcome initial preconceptions, avoid false expectations, and better design and undertake them to increase their social impact and contribution to the urban plans they are framed within.

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