This research examines ways to assess the built environment (BE) for its impacts on the ecosystems and its sustainability in terms of social, economic and environmental aspects on an urban scale. The examination is based on the argument, acknowledged in the literature, that urbanisation is one of the leading causes of unsustainable development, and that the BE makes a significant contribution to this. In order to accomplish this, urban dynamics are identified and mapped with respect to the built environment, and the relationship between urbanisation, the built environment, and the ecosystem is closely examined. The thesis argues that the common denominator in all efforts to move closer to sustainability is an effective assessment method, which not only quantifies the impacts but also informs and educates. The current methods used for assessment of the impacts of BE are found to be inadequate. An appraisal of contemporary assessment methods addressing sustainability and environmental issues at micro (individual building) and macro (urban system) levels is conducted to understand the mechanics of assessment theories. Based on this, a framework for a new assessment system which has the potential to overcome some of the observed weaknesses of the existing ones is proposed. Using multi-criteria analysis principles, this system uses ecological footprint and spatial analysis as its operational engine. It is then applied to a part of the Sydney Central Business District (CBD) for an integrated sustainability assessment. The ecological footprint of the building stock, transport, roads, waste disposal and water supply is calculated as a measure of the environmental impact of the built environment. In addition to this, ???return on investment??? (rental return on construction costs) as a measure of the economic aspect, embodied energy as a measure of material consumption, and ???proximity to facilities??? as a measure of the social benefit of the building stock, are calculated to assess the study area performance on these aspects. These are used to compute an integrated sustainability index for the study area. Various attributes of the built environment, such as total constructed area, height of building, road density etc., are analysed against the ecological footprint to understand the patterns of relationships between urban morphology and the state of sustainability.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/187166 |
| Date | January 2006 |
| Creators | Kumar, Arvind, School of the Built Environment, UNSW |
| Publisher | Awarded by:University of New South Wales. School of the Built Environment |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | Copyright Arvind Kumar, http://unsworks.unsw.edu.au/copyright |
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