Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
The urban Planning of open spaces according to the sustainability criteria
allows improvements on climate and on quality of urban life.
In France, for example, ''guides'' and ''fiches'' (technical manuals) are widespread
guidelines indicating the best practices for building and designing public or private
open spaces as well as already constructed areas, like the ''Guide de qualité urbaine et
d'aménagement durable de la communauté urbaine de Bordeaux'' (CUB
2008
).
In some regional laws (i.e. Emilia Romagna, Tuscany), the Urban Building
Regulations rule on all possible interventions on already constructed areas and on
the organization and utilization of open spaces. It contains also the criteria for
planning new open spaces and building areas (BR Bologna
2009
; Trento
2013
). In
other regions, the Building Regulations regard just binding rules and technical
modality for construction.
Nevertheless, the several European Directives, issued in 2002, concerning
energy saving plans, have indirectly modified building regulations that now have a
new ''Energy and Environmental Annex''.
The Annex is, in fact, the main tool used by the local administrations to reg-
ulate building transformations according to criteria of environmental sustainability
and energy efficiency, to save and rationalize the use of resources, to increase
coherence among the interventions, the territory and the Sustainable Energy
Action Plan (SEAP).
The Building Regulations, therefore, can be an essential tool to modernize the
building sector, promoting people health, protecting environment and saving
resources. In the Regulations, technical and procedural aspects and economic
interests merge together, while different administrative competences (planning,
building and energy) at different levels of government (State, county, municipality)
come across.
In 2012, according to the ONRE report 2013, approximately 1003 (12.4 % of
total) are the Italian municipalities that have amended and reformulated the
building regulations according to criteria of environmental sustainability and
energy efficiency. They are big cities and small towns where a total of more than
21 million people they live in (ONRE
2013
).
4.4
Conclusions
The contemporary city is a strategic resource for sustainable development; it is
also a place with a high concentration of serious problems, and events that con-
tribute to environmental degradation and global warming. The future must start
from cities.
Many experts foresee that it is possible to carry out a reversal of trend by
relying on technology, revising society organizations and lifestyles.
The concepts of adaptation, mitigation, resilience, urban regeneration, decrease
and ''shrinking'' are largely recurring in the present debate but they are to be
experimented and to be verified in the different geographical, political, socio-
economic, environmental and cultural contexts.
