ABSTRACT
Cities have accumulated 75% of all the materials ever extracted by humans. Cities started to grow in the 1700s as manpower in-migrated in search of livelihood following the Enclosure Act in Scotland and similar land privatization in England. The number of large buildings augmented thereafter and high-rises appeared following the invention of steel and the rediscovery of concrete, forgotten after the Antiquity. Despite enhanced durability thanks to steel and concrete, it is not utility but change that governs the lifetime of buildings. The high turnover of materials is due to the destruction of
CONTENTS
Issues with Building Materials .......................................................................... 267 Metals and Concrete ...................................................................................... 268 Polymers and Composites ............................................................................ 268 Recycling ......................................................................................................... 269
Transport: Compounded Sustainability Issues ............................................... 270 Supply Regions ............................................................................................... 271
Sustainable Built Environment: Principles and Metrics ................................ 271 Layout Solutions ................................................................................................. 274
Bioregions and Biourbanism ........................................................................ 274 Rural-Urban Industrial Ecologies ............................................................... 275 Transport Solutions ........................................................................................ 276
Design Solutions ..................................................................................................277 Ecocities and New Synthesis Architecture ................................................. 278 Bioclimatic Houses and Buildings: Reduced Embedded and Operation Energy ........................................................................................... 279 The Sustainable Rural Home as a Closed System ..................................... 281
Sustainable Resource Use .................................................................................. 282 Long-Lived and Adaptive Reuse Solutions ................................................ 282 Material Solutions ..........................................................................................283
References .............................................................................................................284
buildings (Fernandez 2006), in line with creative destruction in the search for prot that seems essential to capitalism (Schumpeter 1943). The obsolescence discourse has evolved in the past century from “nancial decay” (explaining the demolition of very large buildings in very good conditions in Chicago and New York), to the urban renewal discourse (and the complete replacement of entire districts), to progressive or planned obsolescence and creative waste by 1930 (Fernandez 2006).
