Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
concerning energy efficiency have been extracted from the Green City
Index. These indicators will be used to study the relevance to sustainable
urbanism principles for the highest-ranking city. In the European Green
Index, Copenhagen scores as Europe's greenest city. Successive govern-
ments at the national and municipal levels have strongly supported the
promotion of sustainable development and have been taking environ-
mental issues and sustainable energy seriously since the oil shock of the
1970s [23]. In Latin America, Curitiba scores highest as Latin America's
greenest metropolis, continuing to live up to its reputation for sustainable
urban planning [32]. It has been pursuing a long-term strategy since the
1960s to control urban sprawl and to plan and manage its transportation
systems. In the African index, Johannesburg was chosen because it ranks
above average overall, along with five other cities. It is particularly strong
in energy and CO
2
, land use, transport, air quality and environmental gov-
ernance, ranking above average in each category [33].
The previous analysis of best practices in Europe, Latin America, and
Africa (as specified in Table 3.1 [23,32,33]) has shown the relationship
between scoring high on energy efficiency indicators and applying or
fulfilling principles of sustainable urbanism. For decades, Copenhagen
and Curitiba have been famous for their adoption of sustainable urban-
ism principles. Therefore, it is clear that urban planning is the major
tool to achieve eco-efficiency and not limit actions to urban manage-
ment and proposing policies. Johannesburg, as with most African cities,
is still expanding and thus needs to develop a comprehensive approach
to tackling its urban development and to ensuring energy efficiency.
In August 2011, the city launched its Growth Development Strategy to try
to overcome problems of sprawling and population increase. This should
be advocated in fast growing cities and emerging new ones in a continu-
ously urbanising world.
3.6 Guidelines for Egyptian Sustainable Cities
The city of 10th of Ramadan is an example of new development in Egypt.
It was one of the first new cities to be developed outside existing cities
in the 1970s and is situated to the northeast of Cairo, some 50 km away.
The city was planned according to the principles of the Athens Charter,
advocating separation of uses and car dependency. This has contributed
to its limited ability to attract population and to sustain growth. Although
the city has a strong industrial economy based in its big industrial zone,
currently the city's population is only 260,000 (far behind its original tar-
get population of 500,000 by 2005) with only 66% occupation and a density
of 42.8 inhabitants/ha. Table 3.2 [1,34] illustrates the poor performance
