CRP 3850/5850: Circular Cities and Research to Action: Related Literature & Content

Sustainability is to become the guiding principle of social action and economic activity. At the same time, its ways and means are far from clear. As a holistic praxis, sustainability must combine technical and material as well as social, economic, ecological and also ethical strategies, which have multiple complex interactions and all too often also conflicting goals and priorities. In no other field can these be better observed, addressed and influenced than in architecture and building. Each volume of "Building Better - Less - Different" details two fundamental areas of sustainability and explores their specific dynamics and interactions. After introductory overviews, innovative methods and current developments are described and analysed in in-depth essays, international case studies and pointed commentaries. The sustainability criteria of efficiency ("better"), sufficiency ("less") and consistency ("different") form the framework for each book. The first volume presents concepts, methods and examples of circularity in construction and the economy. Urban mining and circular construction are two approaches to the challenges that architecture and urban design are facing, using techniques such as mono-material construction and design for disassembly, and tools such as materials passports and databases. The circular economy is not solely about recycling but encompasses a wide range of strategies from local community projects to new ownership and service models and steering mechanisms such as carbon fees and dividends.

With cities striving to meet sustainable development goals, circular urban systems are gaining momentum, especially in Europe.　 This research-based book defines the circular city and circular development. It explains the shift in focus from a purely economic concept, which promotes circular business models in cities, to one that explores a new approach to urban development. This approach offers huge opportunities and addresses important sustainability issues: resource consumption and waste; climate change; the health of urban populations; social inequalities and the creation of sustainable urban economies. It examines the different approaches to circular development, drawing on research conducted in four European cities: Amsterdam, London, Paris and Stockholm. It explores different development pathways and levers for a circular urban transformation. It highlights the benefits of adopting a circular approach to development in cities, but acknowledges that these benefits are not shared equally across society. Finally, it focuses on the challenges to implementing circular development faced by urban actors.　 This ground-breaking book will be essential reading to scholars, students, practitioners and policymakers interested in the circular economy, urban sustainability, urban ecology, urban planning, urban regeneration, urban resilience, adaptive cities and regenerative cities. 　

For thousands of years humans have experimented with various methods of waste disposal--from burning and burying to simply packing up and moving in search of an unscathed environment. Habits of disposal are deeply ingrained in our daily lives, so casual and continual that we rarely ever stop to ponder the big-picture effects on social, spatial and ecological orders. Rethinking the ways in which we produce, collect, discard and reuse our waste, whether it's materials, spaces or places, is essential to ensure a more feasible future. Waste Matters: Adaptive Reuse for Productive Landscapes presents a series of historical and contemporary design ideas that reimagine a range of repurposed materials at diverse scales and in various contexts by exploring methods of hacking, disassembly, reassembly, recycling, adaptive reuse and preservation of the built environment. Waste Matters will inspire designers to sample and rearrange bits of artifacts from the past and present to produce culturally relevant and ecologically sensitive materials, objects, architecture and environments.

How to reimagine existing buildings to create a more sustainable futureThe construction and operation of buildings is responsible for 41 percent of all primary energy use and 48 percent of all carbon emissions, and the impact of the demolition and removal of an older building can greatly diminish the advantages of adding green technologies to new construction. In Building Reuse, Kathryn Rogers Merlino makes an impassioned case that truly sustainable design requires reusing and reimagining existing buildings. Additionally, Merlino calls for a more expansive view of preservation that goes beyond keeping only the most distinctive structures based on their historical and cultural significance to embrace the creative reuse of even unremarkable buildings for their environmental value.Building Reuse includes a compelling range of case studies--from a private home to an eighteen-story office building--all located in the Pacific Northwest, a region with a long history of sustainable design and urban growth policies that have made reuse projects feasible. Reusing existing buildings can be challenging to accomplish, but changing the way we think about environmentally conscious architecture has the potential to significantly reduce energy consumption, carbon emissions, and waste.

The classic work on the evaluation of city form. What does the city's form actually mean to the people who live there? What can the city planner do to make the city's image more vivid and memorable to the city dweller? To answer these questions, Mr. Lynch, supported by studies of Los Angeles, Boston, and Jersey City, formulates a new criterion-imageability-and shows its potential value as a guide for the building and rebuilding of cities. The wide scope of this study leads to an original and vital method for the evaluation of city form. The architect, the planner, and certainly the city dweller will all want to read this book.