Restructuring cities for sustainability

Abstract

The FP7-funded SUME project (Sustainable Urban Metabolism for Europe) is focusing on the way how future urban systems can be designed to be consistently less damaging to the environment and particularly to climate change than in the present. Urban development scenarios linked with an agent-based urban metabolism model will try to demonstrate the potential to build and rebuild existing (European) cities in ways which will extract much less of specific energy and material resources from the environmental system, thereby reducing green house gas emissions and improving the climate change performance of urban systems. The built environment – in a systems logic the stocks of the urban system – is using a substantial portion of resource flows to be built and maintained. On the other hand, the spatial qualities of the built urban systems, the so-called “urban form”, have an impact on quantities and qualities of resources needed to maintain urban life. That impact will be estimated and conclusions for future urban development strategies be drawn.