Sustainable Urbanism

Doug Farr is an architect and planner who wrote the book Sustainable Design: Urban Design with Nature. In this talk, Farr discusses how LEED certification of buildings can only do so much since it doesn’t take into account how buildings are integrated sustainably with its surroundings. He argues that we need to think differently about we organize our cities – more densely in more compact, complete, and walkable neighborhoods – to design sustainability into the way we live. The video is an hour and 20 minutes long, but may be worth it for the ideas and case studies presented about planning and architecture design.

Introduction

Ecological, economic, and social factors , as well as the change in climatic conditions, resource distribution and globalization will lead 75% of the world's population to live in cities and urban settlements within the next 25 years. Such a trend and the current global state of urban life calls for new planning tools through an interdisciplinary approach to understand and reinvent urban habitats to meet the growing challenges.
Cities are the single most critical issue of global sustainability because while they cover only 2% of the earth’s surface, they consume 70% of the world’s resources. Moreover, in virtually all of the developing countries and most significantly in the more advancing economies of China and India there is also a vast rural to urban migration taking place. The lure of jobs and an opportunity for a higher standard of living are generating population shifts of as many as 1.2 million per week.

These pressures of urban growth have only expanded already overextended inefficient existing infrastructures and have become an overload of congestion, pollution, depletion of natural resources and an insatiable demand for energy.

Unsustainable Urban habitats :

Modern cities are examples of unsustainable systems