Poster Session
Understanding Environmental Sustainability Strategies within Urban Gardening Projects in Christchurch, New Zealand View Digital Media
Poster Session Julia Kasprowski
With the steadily increasing population density - especially in Western cities - the need for green spaces in the urban environment rises equally. To secure healthy urban growth, particular attention should be paid to the sustainable use of space and resources. Urban gardening is known to provide a wide range of sustainable ecosystem services to the urban environment, however, little is known about the implementation of sustainable operation methods and structures within urban community gardens. This paper examines the environmental sustainability strategies of urban gardening projects in the example of Christchurch, with a focus on biodiversity, irrigation, and waste cycling. It aims to identify the sustainability strategies that are present in the gardens and explores the conditions for implementing such strategies effectively. To gain hands-on insights into the structures, practices, and organisations, five urban community garden projects were investigated, and a case study analysis was conducted. Site visits and semi-structured interviews with garden managers were carried out and further zoning maps of the gardens were created. Results indicated that many sustainability strategies emerged naturally within the gardens (e.g., composting), however, strategies based on specific local conditions were also present. This research concludes with recommendations for strategies to implement environmentally sustainable urban gardening practices and systems, learnt from the New Zealand case. This provides inspiration for urban gardening projects internationally and can be used by urban planners, designers, and policymakers to better understand the importance of community gardening within the urban context and their contributions to a range of environmental sustainability outcomes.
Towards Determining Environmental and Socio-economic Indicators of Landscape Greenery: Case of Small-scale Farmers View Digital Media
Poster Session Saghi Movahhed Moghaddam, Jan Vanek
Achieving small-scale farmers’ support and understanding the simultaneous role of environmental and socio-economic determinants of tree planting is a prerequisite for sustainable agricultural landscapes in the Czech Republic. There are already several empirical studies on factors affecting tree planting but lacking a comprehensive combination of environmental and socio-economic determinants. Thus, identifying key factors influencing tree planting in rural areas is becoming more important. Accordingly, this study identified the determinants of tree planting using a mixed method to combine environmental and socio-economic indicators by first, exploring the correlation between each individual socio-economic factors of tree planting (e.g., type of land ownership, level of income), and then, developing a conceptual model to clarify key factors and their extent of impact on tree planting. Then, this study investigated the correlation of environmental indicators such as soil erosion and hydrology. Overall, unlike many previous studies that focused on either environmental or socio-economic factors, the present study's conceptual model attempted to reveal that both factors play a role in encouraging small-scale farmers to plant trees on their farms rather than converting them to agricultural lands.
Adaptive Facades: A Case Study of the Designing and Operating Intelligent and Adaptive Facades View Digital Media
Poster Session Reza Foroughi
Windows are among the most important building systems as they provide lights and outside views for occupants, and they are the critical element that needs to be correctly designed to save energy. As windows are made of transparent surfaces and are exposed to different climatic conditions, most of the heat gain and loss occurs through this part of the building. Windows are responsible for 28% of cooling and 35% of heating loads in commercial buildings, equal to almost 6% of total primary energy use in the United States. Using an adaptive façade system is one of the most effective design strategies to control daylighting and energy load. The biggest challenge in designing adaptive facades is striking a balance between heating and cooling loads and lighting energy consumption since decreased cooling loads may result in increased heating loads and vice versa. To achieve this goal, an intelligent and adaptable solar facade is designed and constructed to investigate the trade-off between heating and cooling loads and lighting energy use and minimize the buildings' energy consumption. An optimization model is developed using the Hill-Climbing (HC) algorithm coupled with EnergyPlus software to design the proposed adaptable facade. The DesignBuilder software (a graphical interface of EnergyPlus) is also used to create the model's geometry. The developed model can identify the optimum configurations of adaptable solar panels and consequently minimize the building energy consumption.
