TABLE OF CONTENTS - The Professional Green Building Council

Theme B: Creating a livable, healthy and environmentally viable citiesAs noted by Herbert Girardet [10], “to create an environmentally sustainableLondon means reducing its resource use – as measured by its ecological footprint –by a factor of around 4. But often this may require a Factor 10 improvement in theperformance of London’s engineering systems”.As we have seen, due to its overall low density in spite of its many high risebuildings, Shanghai is moving towards a super-Los Angeles type urban structure,thus its ecological footprint will even be higher than that of Los Angeles due to itshuge size, industrial structure and overall lack of resources efficiency.To achieve Shanghai sustainability a factor 4 would be required now and a factor10 will certainly be required in 2030 if Shanghai was as efficient in its resourcesuse as London or North America. But Shanghai is 8 times less efficient than Paris.If we follow Herbert Girardet assumption about London and cross it with the factthat Shanghai needs now 8 times more biosphere resources to produce one unit ofvalue, a factor 80 may already be required in the performance of Shanghaiengineering systems to achieve sustainability. As this is an impossible goal toreach in the short term, the action on engineering systems must be complementedby an action of control and optimisation of urban form, avoiding sprawl andpromoting compactness.3. THE TARGET FOR A FAIR EARTHSHARE AND FORCLIMATE CHANGE: FACTOR 204.1 The Limits of the Carrying Capacity, Urbanisation and Climate ChangeThe carrying capacity of the Earth, that is to say the quantity of biosphere availableto support human life is only an average of 1.7 ha per human being [2]. Thestruggle against Global Warming and a fair Earth share (an equitable share of thebiosphere) imply a radical transformation of urbanism.The planet Earth as a whole and the Asian continent in particular have not acarrying capacity sufficient to sustain a Los Angeles type urbanisation of Asia.421