Environmental performance assessment for urban districts

Abstract

Purpose – The article aims to describe the approach adopted within the framework of a multi-destination development project, the goal of which is to promote innovative technologies and methods to evaluate the environmental quality of an urban district under construction. Design/methodology/approach – The approach lies in the integration of methodologies usually applied on an urban scale (microclimate well-being and air quality, study of air quality), and/or to the individual building (acoustic comfort evaluation), never before adopted for assessment of plots or districts, especially in the dynamic evaluation of the variables identified, all objectively measurable. This method of analysis has been tested on an area of about 255,000 m2, located in the former historic district of the Fiera di Milano, where a series of typical urban functions (residential, commercial and trade) are inserted within a large public park. Findings – The success of the work is represented by indicators (air quality, acoustic performance and microclimate) that relate to the finished district and that can be compared with average values in the same city. The system may constitute a protocol capable of bringing benefits to local authorities. Research limitations/implications – The limit is the need of data that support the dynamic simulation (external factors as vehicular traffic, general neighbourhood activity, pollutant emissions) corresponding to the different seasons. These data are not always available by the municipalities. Practical implications – This type of assessment could be requested of developers/builders for complex projects, resulting in changes to the initial plan if the assessment identifies critical issues related to the design choices (orientation of buildings, quality and presence of green areas, traffic emissions inside the urban district, etc.), with the ultimate goal of creating neighbourhoods with better environmental conditions. Originality/value – The research produces solutions addressed to the Italian situation, but it identifies systems and methods used in other countries.

Assessment of Ecological Environment Quality for Urban Sustainable Development Based on AHP

“…The imperfect relationship network of the system and the intensity of various flows in the natural ecosystem make its decomposition function inadequate and its self-regulation and self-sustaining ability weak. Besides environmental pollution factors, many scholars also use the status of natural resource holdings and biodiversity to reflect the quality of the urban ecological environment [ 7 , 8 ]. Broadly speaking, the quality of the urban ecological environment is a combination of the quality of the socio-economic environment and the quality of the city's natural environment.…”

A study framework for assessing the performance of the urban freight transport based on PLS approach

“…performance Several studies introduce indicators for the evaluation and the improvement of UFT performance (Rai et al, 2017;Galkin, 2017;Ciaramella et al, 2014;Figlus et al, 2017;Morana and Gonzalez-Feliu, 2010;Patier and Routhier, 2009). Other study, highlight performance objectives in several locations and provide a framework to describe the different levels of decision making in city logistics (Ambrosini and Routhier, 2004).…”

“…We can note that Szczucka-Lasota (2017) describes the influence of road transport on urbanization and the transport of oversized loads. On the other hand, (Galkin, 2017;Ciaramella et al, 2014) raised the environmental performance of freight transportation. They indicated that safety, air pollution, energy consumption and noise are criteria for assessing the environmental sustainability of freight transportation.…”

Market Innovation, Rational Housing Supply and Urban Quality at the Neighbourhood Scale

“…Air quality is the second driver assessed through calculations to: quantify the benefits and compare the solutions to an environment derived from a more traditional urban context; highlight the critical points of the district, driving the project of the still-to be-completed part of the neighbourhood to be implemented in the direction of improvement of the performances. In order to assess the air quality, the steps of the assessment are: selection of weather dispersive episodes and weather simulations; definition of three dimensional computational domains and of the pollution sources and calculation of emissions, study of the microscale; study of the microclimate, comparison with the sampling area [5].…”

“…Assessing Environmental performance for urban districts, bring the state of the art to the definition of drivers of quality for the neighbourhood according to drivers measurable and globally recognized as respondent to the average potential customer desire [5]. Once matched all the common characteristics usually chosen by developers in the market (in this paper defined housing general attributes) the CityLife project developer commissioned a research to Architecture Built Environment and Construction Engineering Department of Politecnico di Milano in order to define through an assessment of top-notch and measurable attributes of its project.…”