Integrating Land-use Planning and Transportation in Belfast: A New Policy Agenda for Sustainable Development

Much of the interest in promoting sustainable development in planning for the city-region focuses on the apparently inexorable rise in the demand for car travel and the contribution that certain urban forms and land-use relationships can make to reducing energy consumption. Within this context, policy prescription has increasingly favoured a compact city approach with increasing urban residential densities to address the physical separation of daily activities and the resultant dependency on the private car. This paper aims to outline and evaluate recent efforts to integrate land use and transport policy in the Belfast Metropolitan Area in Northern Ireland. Although considerable progress has been made, this paper underlines the extent of existing car dependency in the metropolitan area and prevailing negative attitudes to public transport, and argues that although there is a rhetorical support for the principles of sustainability and the practice of land-use/transportation integration, this is combined with a selective reluctance to embrace local changes in residential environment or in lifestyle preferences which might facilitate such principles.

The Belfast Victorian Terrace: A Sustainable Approach?

To help the building of new low-carbon housing, recent years have seen the widespread demolition of Victorian housing in UK cities. In this regard, Belfast is no different from its counterparts on the British mainland, where Compulsory Purchase Orders force people to sell and vacate their terraced homes to make way for newly constructed 'sustainable' housing. The global economic downturn has temporarily slowed down this process leaving many Belfast terraces now blocked up awaiting future demolition. This stay of execution is an unlikely but welcome opportunity to review and assess the true value to owner, streetscape and city of this important and common house-type. Important questions need to be asked. Should sound Victorian terraces be demolished? What is the genuine cost of demolition and replacement in terms of community and environment? With reference to case studies in a Belfast context, the argument will be made that new is not necessarily better, that the existing Victorian terrace is an important and valuable resource and one that, with intelligent intervention, offers a genuinely sustainable alternative to new-build housing.

Dubai revisited: is new planned housing sustainable?

Dubai, the second largest city of the United Arab Emirates, is a fast growing hub with increasing need for infrastructure, housing and public facilities. Dubai is trying to market itself as an attractive holiday destination, which saw the launching and building of large scale planned communities, some of which are located on reclaimed land along the city's coast line. This paper reviews Dubai\'s green building agenda by examining the scale and typologies of new and planned low carbon projects, and discusses the potential of renewable sources of energy that can reduce the country's dependence on fossil fuels and improve the country's long term sustainability. It assesses the potential of solar energy, wind power, and geo-thermal energy in Dubai and the UAE in general.

Bio-port Free Energy City

In an age of depleting oil reserves and increasing energy demand, humanity faces a stalemate between environmentalism and politics, where crude oil is traded at record highs yet the spotlight on being ‘green’ and sustainable is stronger than ever. A key theme on today’s political agenda is energy independence from foreign nations, and the United Kingdom is bracing itself for nuclear renaissance which is hoped will feed the rapacious centralised system that the UK is structured upon. But what if this centralised system was dissembled, and in its place stood dozens of cities which grow and monopolise from their own energy? Rather than one dominant network, would a series of autonomous city-based energy systems not offer a mutually profitable alternative? Bio-Port is a utopian vision of a ‘Free Energy City’ set in Liverpool, where the old dockyards, redundant space, and the Mersey Estuary have been transformed into bio-productive algae farms. Bio-Port Free Energy City is a utopian ideal, where energy is superfluous; in fact so abundant that meters are obsolete. The city functions as an energy generator and thrives from its own product with minimal impact upon the planet it inhabits. Algaculture is the fundamental energy source, where a matrix of algae reactors swamp the abandoned dockyards; which themselves have been further expanded and reclaimed from the River Mersey. Each year, the algae farm is capable of producing over 200 million gallons of bio-fuel, which in-turn can produce enough electricity to power almost 2 million homes. The metabolism of Free-Energy City is circular and holistic, where the waste products of one process are simply the inputs of a new one. Livestock farming – once traditionally a high-carbon countryside exercise has become urbanised. Cattle are located alongside the algae matrix, and waste gases emitted by farmyards and livestock are largely sequestered by algal blooms or anaerobically converted to natural gas. Bio-Port Free Energy City mitigates the imbalances between ecology and urbanity, and exemplifies an environment where nature and the human machine can function productively and in harmony with one another. According to James Lovelock, our population has grown in number to the point where our presence is perceptibly disabling the planet, but in order to reverse the effects of our humanist flaws, it is vital that new eco-urban utopias are realised.

Productive Synergies in the City

The chapter focuses on the development of sustainable growing infrastructure in the city at two scales. Firstly the development of a large-scale city wide fuel productive landscape through the development of algae arrays in Liverpool and their connection through urban agriculture systems to develop a closed-cycle food and energy system where waste is food and secondly a hyper-localised neighbourhood food production system in Salford UK that utilises a closed cycle aquaponic system to re-invigorate an urban food desert.

The author develops a three-part model for the implementation of urban agriculture based on hardware (the technological system), software (the biological components) and interface (the links to food and other social networks). The conclusion being that it is possible to develop urban agriculture in cities if their implementation is seen as a process, rather than a static design. Also that as the benefits of such systems are wider than purely the physical outputs of the system in terms of energy and food, and thus we should re-evaluate the purely economic model of appraisal to include these.

Authenticity, Identity and Sustainability in Post-war Iraq: Reshaping the Urban Form of Erbil City

Issues of authenticity and identity are particularly significant in cities where social and cultural change is shaping active transformation of its urban fabric and structure in the post-war condition. In search of sustainable future, Iraqi cities are stretched between the two ends of the spectrum, authentic quarters with its traditional fabric and modern districts with their global sense of living. This paper interrogates the reciprocal influences, distinct qualities and sustainable performance of both authentic and modern quarters of Erbil, the
capital of the Iraqi province of Kurdistan, as factors in shaping sustainable urban forms for Iraqi cities. In doing so, the paper, firstly, seeks to highlight the urban identity as an effective factor in relation to sustainable urban form. Secondly, the city of Erbil in Iraq has been chosen as a field study, due to its regional, social, political and historical role in the region. Thirdly, the study emphasises the dynamic activities and performance of residential projects according to rational sustainable criteria. The research concludes that urban identity and the sense of place in traditional and historical places should inform design strategies in order to achieve a more sustainable urban context.

Urban Oasis:Ajman as Event City

The Urban Oasis celebrates Ajman’s history as well as encourages a greater future. Stitching into the existing urban fabric of Ajman and the surrounding cities, the master plan provides an entrance that encases a number of different events. From studying other successful event cities, it became apparent the need for a variety of events over a yearly basis.

Sustainability is another key feature of the master plan. From the way the urban network of streets are formed and orientated to how energy is produced and conserved. Another sustainable aspect that drove the master plan was the retention of the camel track. An important and incredible event in itself, the camel track provides an opportunity to celebrate Ajman’s culture and retain an important part of its history.

Demand-side characterisation of the smart city for energy modelling.

This paper presents a new methodology for characterising the energy performance of buildings suitable for city-scale, top-down energy modelling. Building properties that have the greatest impact on simulated energy performance were identified via a review of sensitivity analysis studies. The methodology greatly simplifies the description of a building to decrease labour and simulation processing overheads. The methodology will be used in the EU FP7 INDICATE project which aims to create a master-planning tool that uses dynamic simulation to facilitate the design of sustainable, energy efficient smart cities.

Sustainable non-automotive vehicles: The simulation challenges

Simulation is a well-established and effective approach to the development of fuel-efficient and low-emissions vehicles in both on-highway and off-highway applications.

The simulation of on-highway automotive vehicles is widely reported in literature, whereas research relating to non-automotive and off-highway vehicles is relatively sparse. This review paper focuses on the challenges of simulating such vehicles and discusses the differences in the approach to drive cycle testing and experimental validation of vehicle simulations. In particular, an inner-city diesel-electric hybrid bus and an ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) powered forklift truck will be used as case studies.

Computer prediction of fuel consumption and emissions of automotive vehicles on standardised drive cycles is well-established and commercial software packages such as AVL CRUISE have been specifically developed for this purpose. The vehicles considered in this review paper present new challenges from both the simulation and drive-cycle testing perspectives. For example, in the case of the forklift truck, the drive cycles involve reversing elements, variable mass, lifting operations, and do not specify a precise velocity-time profile. In particular, the difficulties associated with the prediction of productivity, i.e. the maximum rate of completing a series of defined operations, are discussed. In the case of the hybrid bus, the standardised drive cycles are unrepresentative of real-life use and alternative approaches are required in the development of efficient and low-emission vehicles.

Two simulation approaches are reviewed: the adaptation of a standard automotive vehicle simulation package, and the development of bespoke models using packages such as MATLAB/Simulink.