Better solutions to green design and eco-communities

Post date: Apr 17, 2012 12:56:22 PM

The challenge of achieving sustainable development is pressing and elusive. Discussion around the role of land-use planning and design in sustainable development has never been more urgently needed than now.

In this quarter's issue of Planning Theory and Practice, our Interface section addresses precisely this point - asking the question: What can existing examples of green design and ‘eco-communities’ teach us, in critical theoretical and practical senses, about the role of planning and design for sustainability?

Drawing on four case studies from North America and Europe, the authors of this Interface pose questions, but also contribute to the central debates with insights from actual practice – what worked (and what didn’t) in a diverse range of socio-political contexts, planning regulatory environments, and urban landscapes.

Instead of taking the usual tack of looking at how to design and construct ‘green’ high-end private residential buildings, this Interface shows us different aspects of sustainable planning and design: How purpose built eco-communities sometimes need key regulatory enforcement to ensure genuine reductions in carbon dioxide emissions and how renovation of existing social housing stock can be done to offer the same high levels of energy efficiency as might be expected for newly constructed energy efficient buildings.

“When the consultants measured the first house, the results were better than our calculations. That is astonishing. You use normal materials. The only difference is you take more care of the building physics...”

For both planning practitioners and researchers, the Interface ‘Exploring the Challenges of Environmental Planning and Green Design: Cases from Europe and the USA’ offers evidence from existing cases as well as critical commentary and synthesis about the future of planning and design for a more sustainable world.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14649357.2012.652007