TABLE OF CONTENTS - The Professional Green Building Council

Theme B: Creating a livable, healthy and environmentally viable citiesENERGY AND ECOLOGY EFFICIENCY OF URBANMORPHOLOGIES: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF ASIAN,AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN CITIESSERGE SALAT 11 CSTB (French Scientific Centre for Building Science), Paris, FranceABSTRACT: The growth in energy consumption in cities obeys laws derived from physics,thermodynamics and ecosystems theory. The fundamental energy pattern of a city consists of variousbuildings and spaces. This urban morphology interacts with people behaviour and with the localclimate. A sustainable city is an integrated entity: structurally, functionally and environmentally. Thefollowing comprehensive analysis uses macro level indicators such as ecological footprints andmetabolism inputs and outputs and micro level parameters in order to compare the transformingenergy patterns of European, American and Asian cities. At the micro level of city texture, we willuse the passive zone concept and a set of indicators, such as density, roughness, porosity, sinuosity,occlusivity, contiguity, solar admittance and mineralization. With this environmentally orientedmodel of urban fabric, we will describe an analysis method that we will use to connectarchitectonics, urban morphology, energy flows and climate in a comparison of Asian and Europeancities. What we will draw is a better understanding of how the city morphology governs the patternsof energy flows at the global scale level and at the scale of the urban texture and what are the mostenergy and ecology efficient urban morphologies.Keywords: Energy, urban morphology, urban metabolism, cities ecological footprints, climatechange1. INTRODUCTIONHome of interaction between people and buildings, the city is where humancivilization changes patterns of living and of energy consumption. UK data showthat the energy requirements for buildings in the domestic and non-domestic sectorexceed those for transport and industrial processes. In urbanized countries like UKbuildings represent half of energy consumption; and with transportation, citiesrepresent more than three quarters or energy consumption.The complex relationships among climate, ecosystem health, and socioeconomicdevelopment call for an integrated theoretical framework within which to study theworld’s cities. Advances in the fields of industrial ecology, urban metabolism andurban ecology shed light on these relationships.412