Not only are cities making an ever-increasing contribution to the massive amount of global waste generated by human society, but they are also becoming places of pure consumption, having almost fully lost their characteristics as places of production; to quote Latour “..the life we live in is not the life we live from..". In history, living in the city also meant living in proximity to the places of production, in cities that were almost self-sufficient. Nowadays, urban users are producers of demand and waste, conscious of 'the life they live in' but unaware of 'the life they live from'. This phenomenon has been acting as a driving force in cities, with an emphasis on historic areas which become purely tourist attractions that are increasingly characterized by the presence of leisure and entertainment services (mainly bars and restaurants), thereby reducing the conditions needed to enable these areas to be fully residential. In contrast to this, a change is offered by the circular economy which asks for more resilient forms of living with an emphasis on urban environments. The ideas of the circular economy are also impacting the built environment, addressing the retrofitting of buildings and the building construction process itself, as well as reimagining how assets can best integrate and serve within the city, with suggestions for new models of spatial and social use. The objective of this session is to investigate new forms of urban use aligned with the circular economy, especially in terms of social and economic innovation. New ideas are needed to reintroduce production to the city in line with modern health and safety standards and based on territorial valorisation and resilience. New residential forms may also be introduced, potentially breaking the traditional home-work dichotomy, and relying on history, nature and NBS to provide inspiration for resilience.
This session is expected to receive inputs from past, recent and ongoing research and experience - from both academia and the field. Contributions from private initiatives and suggestions from both companies and non-profits will be welcomed.
Nature-based solutions promote socio-ecological adaptation and resilience; through a systemic approach. They consider human well-being, sustainable economic development and environmental benefits. This work aims to design and implement nature-based solutions in Mértola, Alentejo, in Portugal, as a way of improving living conditions in the territory.
Mértola is an aged territory, with very low population density (4.7 inhabitants per km2). The Alentejo Region has one of the highest suicide rates at world level, with 54.2 deaths per 100 thousand inhabitants (INE, 2017). Psychological problems also have a worrying expression in this region (e.g. dementia, anxiety, depression...). In addition, climate change and resulting heat waves, place the senior population in conditions even more vulnerable, especially when the territory doesn’t have the infrastructure to tackle the problem. Mértola’s Köppen-Geiger climate classification has changed recently from Temperate (Csa) to Semi-arid (Bsk), due to the extreme temperatures and lack of precipitation. The soil is incipient and degraded by successive monoculture campaigns and erosive agricultural practices. The urban landscape is dense and lacks green spaces. Mértola is also known as Village-Museum, which makes it difficult to approve nature-based projects because the plants’ roots could damage its heritage. However, NBS are enormously successful in responding to societal and climate change challenges, such as those that Mértola is witnessing. They could allow the municipality to improve the physical and mental health of the community, while mitigating climate change.
The selection of areas to intervene was made through a GIS analysis of the territory. The parameters considered were: land surface temperature, types of infrastructure and their classification of use, capacity to support and allow the growth of plants; the possibility of using existing structures and the proximity to water resources and/or green areas. Participatory mapping was also used to understand people flows and the most frequent crossing points. The project valued local know-how and brought together different entities that work and know the territory, including the Mértola’s City Council and the Terra Sintrópica project. The latter is used as a case study to demonstrate the results of the principles of syntropic agriculture in the regeneration of soils in Mértola, consequently necessary for the implementation of NBS. The one month period of stay in the territory and contact with the population contributed to the selection of the type of intervention proposed. It was highlighted the need for spaces of recreational value which they could visit on hot days so they didn’t have to be isolated in their homes. The community participation reinforced the feeling of belonging and helped dissolve any conflict that could have taken place.
The final design considered the necessary resources (natural elements and artificial materials); as its origins and composition; its functionality and aesthetic benefits; and has the ability to preserve the identity of the municipality. This is a pilot project that could be adapted to all territories with identical characteristics; therefore, the implementation phase is left to each municipality’s responsibility.
In recent years, the multiple dimensions of climate change paired with unprecedented forms of rapid urban expansions have created, in planning and architectural fields, a general sense of responsibility and the need for tools to help manage the efficacy of these considerations within practice. In order to overcome the operational struggle that confronting such intrinsically complex problems creates, the paper discusses the relevance of narrative-specific data-visualizations in triggering actions for ecological transition, consequently addressing the original environmental challenges.
Exploiting several data layers, among which the Ecological Footprint consumption values, a computational methodology to visualize a city’s consumption over its surrounding territory as it would operate only by proximity over local resources is introduced. It avoids the over-complexity of mapping the real flows for which the city is responsible, while obtaining a still tangible understanding of its citizens’ - often unsustainable - lifestyle. In this manner, it offers a proportional model to reconnect cities to their land consumption, which can further act as a propositional base for planning processes towards the sustainable management of resources and materials.
Additionally, addressing the topic of consumption at the city level through the lens of its surrounding territory offers an opportunity to globally perceive the challenges of urban circularity if exploiting computation paired with the vast resources of online databases. In this regard, the research proposes a big-data supported tool that, while trading off a certain level of precision in the representation of the single city in favor of a global overview on the topic, finds relevance in its holistic and ubiquitous attributes. For this reason, an algorithmic pipeline is developed in the R programming language to query, process, and display city-specific cartographies, further rendered accessible in an intuitive web interface. More specifically, in order to compute the aforementioned city-specific analysis, the application exploits three data-repositories:
Finally, the paper argues the possibilities that tailored data-analysis opens, through speculative - yet, theoretically contextualized - approaches, to understand complex problems inherent to the global metropolis.
Whether by visualizing the dormant regional tensions driving metropolitan governance, by strategically supporting the development of 0Km policies, or by triggering a social “awakening” effect, the work aims to give new light on the issues of land consumption and urban self-sufficiency; key to enabling truly responsible circular cities.
Abstract: Society conveys values to cities and their buildings, the key to sustainability, only in part recognized as heritage values, when protected by urban and/or heritage planning. There is a growing recognition of the importance of acknowledging the values conveyed by locals and tourists in heritage management and urban planning. However, the knowledge and tools available today remain predominantly expert-based. Their contribution to heritage listings and conservation plans is therefore limited. Moreover, some cities tend to unbalance locals and tourists' needs, leading to overly touristic areas, gentrification and communities' exodus. Although research on the values conveyed to cities and buildings is growing, there is seldom research comparing them, nor researching its evolution over time. Hence, how do the attributes and values of Faro’s heritage conveyed by locals and tourists set the frame for transformation? This research developed at a master's design studio aims to reveal the cultural significance (values and attributes) conveyed by locals and tourists, taking the neighborhood São Francisco (included in an Urban Rehabilitation Area) in Faro, Portugal, as a case study. By using multiple methods relying on spatial analysis, which includes photographing, mapping and categorization of the facades and their attributes in São Francisco, and social media analysis, where a hundred Instagram posts were manually collected following strict guidelines, heritage attributes could be identified. Public engagement was used in the site survey game in which pictures of the attributes would be shown to locals and tourists who would connect predefined words to them in order to collect the heritage values. By following these methods, this research aims at revealing patterns and relations between: 1) attributes, in particular, buildings’ facades and their characteristics (morphological analysis) and 2) values (distinguishing local and tourists). After the fieldwork, results showed clear concurrences and contradictions between both communities. Results that stood out contain the general low appreciation of contemporary apartment complexes while agreeing on the quality of pre-existing typologies. In some cases there was ambivalence, such as the perception of street art, the materialization of facades, and the authenticity of attributes developed into design guidelines for a masterplan in which these relations are portrayed. These consist of: 1) areas of facade conservation, 2) area of opportunity for redesign, 3) an area where the current building height should be maintained, 4) a buffering zone for highrise buildings was established to release the pressure from the conservation area, responding to an existing increase in height, 5) specific locations for street art. By understanding these relations, the Municipality of Faro can improve their awareness of who values what, and why, in order to support their strategies about how to accommodate new functions in historic buildings while respecting the limits of acceptable change of built heritage according to these stakeholders. Hence, the expected impact is to raise awareness about the cultural significance of both societal groups in order to better inform heritage management and urban sustainable planning.