urban sustainable development in the mediterranean area the case of sestri ponente genoa

In November 2014 a green facade was built in the Sestri Ponente district in Genoa, Italy, on an office building owned by the Istituto Nazionale di Previdenza Sociale (National Institute of Social Insurance). This area, which is characterized by a relatively high population density, faces important environmental issues related to, for example, air pollution, stormwater management, and the urban heat island effect. The Department of Sciences for Architecture at the University of Genoa (Italy) is conducting monitoring activity to evaluate the effectiveness of the green facade with regard to summer cooling, winter heating – in collaboration with Research on the Energy System – air quality improvement, and economic and environmental sustainability. Starting from this first pilot project a question arises: what would be the effect of vegetation at the district scale? This article discusses the potentialities for urban sustainable development of the integration of green infrastructure. Simulations carried out with ENVI-Met software demonstrate the potentialities of different amounts of vegetation for urban heat island mitigation. In addition, the possible stormwater runoff reduction was calculated. Such calculations are based on urban design projects developed for the area to evaluate the possible improvement to environmental quality owing to the integration of green infrastructure