Designing Sustainable Cities

This book offers practical solutions to achieving sustainable urban design and development, and helps designers communicate these solutions effectively to planners, developers and policy-makers. Addressing sustainability issues in relation to the design and planning of the urban environment is a complex, multi-disciplinary issue, and solutions never arrive from a single perspective. The authors use design as a facilitating factor to consider when and by whom decisions that contribute to sustainability are made. Through three major city-centre case studies - London, Manchester and Sheffield - they consider social, environmental and economic factors and examine their relationship to the decision-making process. Designing Sustainable Cities begins by identifying the key processes and lead decision-makers. The following chapters develop an understanding of the dimensions of sustainability, presenting the tools by which the dimensions can be analysed. Later chapters illustrate the trade-offs and the relationships between the dimensions of sustainability - with case study examples - as well as the use of IT in making design decisions. Finally, the book gives recommendations for future approaches to the design, development and on-going management of urban environments. Designing Sustainable Cities covers: ? latest research data on the urban environment and the interaction between social, economic and environmental issues ? methods of understanding the context in which urban design takes place ? guidance on the codes of practice ? process maps to help understand the context, make trade-offs and develop design solutions that allow for change ? methods for testing the consequences of design proposals and monitoring outcomes.