City-zen 'Roeselare' Roadshow - Site Specific EVENT

The City-zen Roadshow's are 'site specific performance based' interactive events that bring together experts and city stakeholders 'onsite' to co-creatively design a future sustainable vision for their city. There would be nine European Roadshows over a four year period, the duration of a Roadshow being typically between 3 to 8 days. The City-zen Roadshow travels with a team of internationally recognized experts, in the field of energy planning and design to help develop a sustainable agenda for cities and their neighbourhoods. The overall aim of the Roadshow team is to work closely with people from the hosting city, whether they be city leaders, energy planners, local architect, professionals, academics, students and citizens. The Roadshow delivers energy and urban design fun-shops in which all local stakeholders are welcome and encouraged to join and to take ownership of the final outcomes. Outcomes that will allow the cities resources, both people and energy, to be directed effectively, by highlighting the energy challenges and potentials to be found in their neighbourhoods, and to finally present a sustainable ‘City Vision’. The Roeselare Roadshow took place in Roeselare (Belgium), between the 23rd & 27th of April 2018

Strategieën voor een verhoogde implementatie van duurzaam bouwen in Vlaanderen. Toepassing op het schaalniveau van het stadsfragment

Dit onderzoek gaat na uit welke factoren het implementatiedeficiet duurzaam bouwen in Vlaanderen bestaat, en stelt strategieën voor om de vastgestelde afstanden tot doel te helpen overbruggen. De focus komt daarbij te liggen op de duurzaamheid van het stadsfragment. In een eerste groep hoofdstukken worden de staat van het milieu, de hiermee verbonden impact van de gebouwde omgeving, en de manier waarop deze milieuvraagstukken ingebed worden in ruimere inspanningen voor het realiseren van duurzame ontwikkeling, in kaart gebracht. Sterktes en zwaktes van het lokaal beleid worden opgespoord, en methodologische uitdagingen voor beleid en onderzoek worden vastgesteld. Het onderzoek duidt daarbij aan dat interventies op de schaal van het stadsfragment een aanzienlijk, maar totnogtoe slechts beperkt aangeboord potentieel voor verbetering inhouden. Dit staat in contrast met duurzame ingrepen op de schaal van het individuele gebouw, welke stilaan dagelijkse praktijk worden. Het tweede luik van het onderzoek stelt daarom een methode voor om geïntegreerde stedelijke duurzaamheid op wijkniveau te evalueren en aan te sturen.Een voorafgaande analyse van mogelijke definities voor het concept geïntegreerde duurzame ontwikkeling laat toe om de verschillende soorten disciplinegebonden input te identificeren die vereist zijn om tot dergelijke definitie te komen. Herman Dooyeweerds filosofie van de modale sferen wordt daarbij weerhouden als een geschikt theoretisch referentiekader.Vervolgens wordt een set van indicatoren die geïntegreerde duurzame ontwikkeling op het niveau van een stadsfragment kunnen beschrijven, samengesteld. Deze set dient een dubbele doelstelling. Enerzijds dient ze een wetenschappelijke basis voor evaluatie aan te reiken, in het bijzonder voor wat betreft de kwantificeerbare aspecten van milieuperformantie. Anderzijds dient ze toe te laten om het complex geheel van zowel kwantitatieve als kwalitatieve factoren voor stedelijke duurzaamheid, op een bevattelijke en transparante manier te beoordelen. Dit moet ondermeer toelaten dat evaluatie- en beslissingprocessen op aanbrengen van experts door een bredere groep actoren en stakeholders voltrokken worden. De uitwerking van de methode wordt daarbij ondersteund door een analyse van bestaande indicatorsystemen, en een controle van het voorstel in termen van de theorie van de modale sferen. Wegingsfactoren voor de indicatoren worden afgeleid met de hulp van een expertpanel. Voor de weergave van de geëvalueerde prestaties wordt een nieuw soort radardiagram ontwikkeld.Drie case studies laten tenslotte toe om de methode te toetsen aan concrete praktijkomstandigheden. De selectie van de cases is zo opgevat dat een representatief staal van contexten voor stedelijke interventie in Vlaanderen bekomen wordt. Meerbepaald worden een greenfieldontwikkeling, een stedelijk herwaarderingsproject en een randstedelijke invuloperatie bestudeerd. Voor de derde case wordt ook een alternatief ontwikkelingsvoorstel geformuleerd, en geconfronteerd met de bestaande plannen. Een beknopte sensitiviteitsanalyse en een samenvattende vergelijking van de cases laten toe om enkele meer algemene conclusies te formuleren. Het derde luik van het onderzoek plaatst de resulterende bevindingen van alle voorgaande analyses in een breder perspectief. Hierbij worden inzichten vanaf het schaalniveau van het stadsfragment geëxtrapoleerd naar de domeinen van stedenbouw en ruimtelijke ordening. De rol van opgeschaalde levenscyclusanalyse, toekomstige energievoorziening, stedelijke morfologie, het mobiliteitsvraagstuk en de daaraan gelinkte planningsinstrumenten wordt onderzocht.status: publishe

From sustainable housing sciences to sustainable housing policies : challenging the social responsibility of researchers and designers

Paper presented at the XXXIII IAHS World Congress on Housing, 27-30 September 2005,"Transforming Housing Environments through Design", University of Pretoria.Whereas knowledge on sustainable housing techniques expands more and more, it can be noticed that the widespread introduction of sustainable construction techniques in a typical market situation often fails to happen. Considering that, for example, the Kyoto protocol targets are just a first step in fighting the consequences of the greenhouse effect, one should principally expect the reverse to happen. We distinguish three factors that contribute to this anomaly between 'knowing' and 'acting': * the present higher investment costs of sustainable construction * the difficulty of introducing awareness and attitude change with the larger public * the inertia of policy makers in enforcing effective environmental measures that interfere with the public's everyday life, in this case in the domain of housing. This raises some interesting questions for the scientific community: * should researchers only 'inform on demand' or should they take the opportunities for a more pro-active attitude towards public, professionals and policy makers, while at the same time maintaining their scientific objectivity? Or, more fundamentally, does knowledge induce an ethic component one should not deny? * can one think of promoting design strategies that provide for a multi-stage introduction of sustainable building methods, thus reducing the actual gap between goals and reality? These questions are being addressed taking the context of Flanders, one of Belgium’s three regions, as a starting point.Authors of papers in the proceedings and CD-ROM ceded copyright to the IAHS and UP. Authors furthermore declare that papers are their original work, not previously published and take responsibility for copyrighted excerpts from other works, included in their papers with due acknowledgment in the written manuscript. Furthermore, that papers describe genuine research or review work, contain no defamatory or unlawful statements and do not infringe the rights of others. The IAHS and UP may assign any or all of its rights and obligations under this agreement

Lost in Transition or Geared for the S-Curve? An Analysis of Flemish Transition Trajectories with a Focus on Energy Use and Buildings

In recent years, many cities have adopted action plans to become climate neutral in the coming decades. Hereby, a strong motivational factor has been the goal to realize a win-win situation in the long term: climate neutrality and sustainable functioning are not only beneficial for the environment, but are equally beneficial for society and for the economy if well-integrated trajectories are adopted. Nevertheless, as actors across the fields start to implement these plans, many practical obstacles have arisen. These barriers are typical of a systemic transition: dominant practices are characterized by path dependencies, vast institutional frameworks and vested interests that are hard to break through. At the same time, relevant initiatives typically show some elements of uncertainty and a long term return, factors that make it difficult to attract financial investments. The present article addresses the state of the art for current transition experiments in the region of Flanders, Belgium, focusing on actions related to energy and buildings in cities. A brief overview of the state of affairs in several cities and provinces is presented, and some important opportunities and bottlenecks are identified. The resultant findings are tested against the framework of transition theory and related literature on the subject. Subsequently, a set of possible strategies to overcome the above mentioned barriers is formulated. These strategies focus on effectively mobilizing actors and investments

Sustainable Development, Architecture and Modernism: Aspects of an Ongoing Controversy

In some discourses on sustainability, modernism in architecture is blamed for its technocratic beliefs that supposedly generated a lot of the social and environmental problems the world is facing today. At the same time, many architectural critics seem to be convinced that the present call for sustainability with its “green buildings”, is but another screen behind which well-known old power structures hide. In this paper, we react to these viewpoints in different ways. First we clarify the issues that are haunting current architectural discourses by unraveling the logics behind the viewpoints of the critics of the “environmental doctrine” on the one hand and the technical environmentalists on the other hand. We will offer, secondly, a new framing to these debates by relying upon the modal sphere theory of the Dutch philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd. This new framing will allow us to reconnect, thirdly, with the discourse of modernism, which, we will argue, is all too often conflated with a technocratic paradigm—a partial, incomplete and even misleading representation. In conclusion, we present a different framing of modernism, which allows understanding of it as a multilayered and multifaceted response to the challenges of modernity, a response that formulated a series of ideals that are not so far removed from the ideals formulated today by many advocates of sustainability. We are, thus, suggesting that the sustainability discourse should be conceived as a more mature and revised version of the paradigm of modernism, rather than its absolute counterpoint.status: publishe

Sustainable Development, Architecture and Modernism: Aspects of an Ongoing Controversy

In some discourses on sustainability, modernism in architecture is blamed for its technocratic beliefs that supposedly generated a lot of the social and environmental problems the world is facing today. At the same time, many architectural critics seem to be convinced that the present call for sustainability with its “green buildings”, is but another screen behind which well-known old power structures hide. In this paper, we react to these viewpoints in different ways. First we clarify the issues that are haunting current architectural discourses by unraveling the logics behind the viewpoints of the critics of the “environmental doctrine” on the one hand and the technical environmentalists on the other hand. We will offer, secondly, a new framing to these debates by relying upon the modal sphere theory of the Dutch philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd. This new framing will allow us to reconnect, thirdly, with the discourse of modernism, which, we will argue, is all too often conflated with a technocratic paradigm—a partial, incomplete and even misleading representation. In conclusion, we present a different framing of modernism, which allows understanding of it as a multilayered and multifaceted response to the challenges of modernity, a response that formulated a series of ideals that are not so far removed from the ideals formulated today by many advocates of sustainability. We are, thus, suggesting that the sustainability discourse should be conceived as a more mature and revised version of the paradigm of modernism, rather than its absolute counterpoint

The Sense and Non-Sense of PEDs—Feeding Back Practical Experiences of Positive Energy District Demonstrators into the European PED Framework Definition Development Process

This article discusses early developments of the Positive Energy District (PED) concept, both in terms of its definition and of its implementation in real world demonstrators. Based on the specific challenges for creating an operational definition for the European +CityxChange project, the feasibility of creating a PED was practically explored by identifying 4 possible subtypes that respond to varying constraints regarding the energy balance of the PED. This article provides the context and describes these 4 ambitions levels: PEDautonomous, PEDdynamic, PEDvirtual, and PrePED; and the 3 boundary modes: geographical, functional, and virtual. The work thus expands on the first general PED definitions as they were put forward in the SET-plan and by the European Commission, while allowing a better response to the specific boundary conditions of PEDs’ physical context. As such, it provides an operational, city-focused, bottom-up PED definition. The present study analyses how these efforts connect to current work being performed on the development of a European PED Framework Definition. In the latter, new elements such as context factors are introduced in order to account for the varying boundary conditions that PEDs must address, and in particular the difficulties of realising PEDs in existing and densely built-up urban areas. Hereby it can be argued that the approach with 4 subtypes is a bottom-up method of addressing the same challenges as a context factor based approach operating in a top-down manner, this time starting from the regional or national renewable energy potentials. Both approaches indeed strive towards an optimum setup of PEDs both within their geographical boundaries and in their interactions with the surrounding energy infrastructures and cities. These efforts are instrumental in helping to prevent that a PED is being regarded as a goal in se, functionally disconnected from its surroundings. There are strong arguments in favour of handling PEDs as building blocks for the broader realisation of carbon neutral cities and regions, thus contributing to the systemic change that is needed to futureproof the built environment as a whole. Without applying this integrating perspective, PEDs risk creating a sub-optimal lock-in within their sites and thus remain one-off experiments, lacking connection to the wider urban sustainability strategies that are needed to properly address today’s energy and climate emergencies. This holds even more when considering the quality-related requirements that come with sustainable urban design and governance. Therefore, this study further explores how PEDs can fully support such a deep urban sustainability transition, and what could consequently be the next steps towards successful and upscaled PED deployment