THESE Ecoquartier-Outil NEST - Nobatek

Abstract
The present work is focused on the current stakes related to the urban environment; it aims at defining
what is a sustainable neighborhood, starting from the study of reference projects and integrating
strongly field process requirements and constraints; Within this framework, environmental
evaluation is positioned in the earth of the neighborhood design process as a tool for decisionmaking
aid, allowing city stakeholders to inscribe their project in the concerns of sustainable urban
development. The finality is to propose a method for evaluating the environmental impact of sustainable
neighborhoods projects in the first design phase.
This thesis is integrated in a CIFRE convention with the Nobatek company (technological Center
working on sustainable construction and planning) and the GRECAU laboratory (Group of research
in environment architectural and urban design). It proposes an analysis of the urban practice,
defines the requirements for specific tools for the planning of sustainable urban projects and
proposes a tool for environmental evaluation. The research work here presented is conducted for
pragmatic objectives, as required by the collaboration with the company nobatek, i.e. closed to
the reality of the planning process.
The first part establishes the dependent stakes with town planning and proposes a historical study
of the urban models for the ideal city. It is proposed there a glance on the principles and evolutions
of the concept of ideal city in order to locate and include/understand the concept of sustainable
city. The second part establishes the relevance of the district as the best scale of experimentation
and proposes a definition of the sustainable neighborhood and analyzes various reference
cases through their typologies, their urban form and their technical solutions. The third part
proposes an overview of various tools allowing the analysis of the processes of design and evaluation
of the sustainable neighborhoods. This analysis underlines in particular the non existence of the
“absolute tool”, and concluded with the need to develop particular tools for evaluation, complementary
to those already existing focused on design assistance and based on qualitative approaches.
An analysis of the existing set of indicators is proposed, it shows their utility for an urban
project as well as their limits. The fourth part proposes an analysis of the operational practice of
town planning in the French context and proposes an operational approach of implementation of
sustainability in such process. The latter part introduces the development of the tool for evaluation
called NEST which constituted the final part of this work. The tool is based on the technique of life
cycle analysis (ACV) to evaluate the environmental impacts of the district to be created. The
physical elements of the district (buildings, public spaces, green areas, infrastructures), such as
defined in an early phase of the urban project, are integrated in the tool. It calculates then seven
environmental indicators to evaluate the project, these results being brought back to the stakeholders
of the district planning process. An operational experimentation of the process proposed
and the use of the evaluation tool is also eventually presented, based on the ongoing Kleber
neighborhood project in Biarritz (Fr). It shows the contribution of the tool for the design of such district
with the goal to set up there a sustainable neighborhood.
Introducing the concept of sustainable development into town planning requires, in addition to
environmental, social and economic approaches, a technical comprehension of the city and its
urban components, as a closed system which consumes resources and as a consequence generates
impacts. To understand the city as a system, in order to establish objectives and strategies to
manage and transform it to sustainable, requires the implication of the stakeholders involved in the
decision-making, the design and the use of the city. This work brings several hypotheses on the
current possible approaches and proposes pragmatic solutions for the implementation of such
operations.
CONSTRUCTION D‟UN OUTIL D‟EVALUATION ENVIRONNEMENTALE DES ECOQUARTIERS : vers une méthode
systémique de mise en œuvre de la ville durable – Grace Yépez, 2011
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