Building Resilient and Healthy Cities: A Guide to Environmental Sustainability and Well-being

The management of solid waste is a great challenge for many city authorities in developing countries, and this can be greatly attributed to the increasing generation of waste, a burden of enormous costs, associated with management, the knowledge gap on factors affecting different stages in the management of waste, and the affiliation of stakeholders for this paper waste pickers’ roles and functions. The great literature of work was compiled to draw and analyze the different roles pivoted by waste pickers and the waste picking activity wherein naturing their function in the management of solid waste in developing cities with a purpose of attaining sustainable development. The objective of this research is to justify the position and role of waste pickers as major stakeholders in solid waste management and their function in the sustainability of the environment in developing cities. The possible outcomes of this research are to improve solid waste management through cheaper alternatives such as waste picking and also help in the planning and policy-making processes to ensure proper implementation of waste management systems in developing cities for the attainment of sustainable development.

Air pollution has posed a serious health challenge for both developed and developing countries. Through the Paris agreement, countries have developed actions toward net zero carbon emissions. However, developing countries are being confronted with other environmental challenges which seem to make the path to green recovery unrealizable. This scoping literature review examines air pollution and solid waste issues in Nigeria with the view of promoting green and resilient recovery. The review reveals that, there is high dependence on biomass for cooking, and cooking smoke has exposed more than 120 million people to health risks linked to respiratory tract infection, lung cancer, cardiovascular disease, coughing, eye irritation, etc. More so, rapid population growth and the continuous reliance on forest wood for cooking have not only resulted in environmental degradation and deforestation of forest reserves but have increased the challenge of air pollution. Furthermore, solid waste management remains intractable in most Nigerian cities despite the efforts of various state governments. Government policy on solid waste management seems not to be comprehensive as often the contribution of the informal sector, which is the most active player in waste collection, disposal, and recycling is excluded. While it is worrisome that solid waste volumes outweigh the capacity of urban managers with obvious implications on well-being, there are greater opportunities for waste to energy solutions. Nevertheless, available disposal strategies lack the technological capacity to explore engineering solutions for waste management. Therefore, there is a need to promote green recovery through engineering solutions which will ensure the transition to a climate compatible environment that is inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable.

Heritage buildings play an essential role in representing people past, preserving their culture and social identities and accommodating contemporary functions that support cultural activities. These buildings employ key design principles that anchor the formation of the space and its landscape into the cultural aspects of the communities and the environmental conditions of their location. During COVID-19 pandemic, contemporary buildings have struggled to provide comfortable and effective context for people who had to isolate individually or as a group, while the heritage buildings that mostly serve for cultural purposes have been closed and their functions suspended with another challenge arising of accommodating people in need for self-isolation. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate whether heritage buildings could have performed better than contemporary buildings that were used for individual and mass isolations in Egypt and if key design principles and strategies could be learned from heritage buildings to inform future architectural approaches in the country in order for the built environment to be more resilient in time of pandemics. This question is explored through a comparative empirical study between heritage and contemporary buildings regarding key design principles and strategies and their impact on people’s physical activities, mental well-being and social life during the isolation time. By investigating and comparing their architectural and landscape designs, materiality and environmental aspects (indoor air quality and lighting quality in particular) in both individual and mass isolations situations, the article aims to assess the performance of heritage buildings in such scenarios and highlight key design strategies and features that could inform future buildings and their contribution to users’ experience and resilience during isolation. Results demonstrate that contemporary housing designs negatively impact people experience and health during isolation while contemporary public buildings perform better considering that they were designed based on good standards and assuming that they have the right orientations and landscape, which is not consistently applied. On the other hand, heritage buildings can consistently contribute to positive experience during individual and mass isolation. In addition, key features such as privacy, open spaces and landscape and good ventilation, which have huge impact on users’ satisfaction, are lost or less effective in contemporary residential and public buildings.

Overheating occurs when the indoor thermal environment presents conditions in excess of those acceptable for human thermal comfort or those that may adversely affect human health. Summertime overheating of homes without active cooling has been demonstrated across diverse locations, such as the UK, USA, and New Zealand. Climate change is predicted to cause hotter summers in many countries with more frequent and intense heatwaves. There is, therefore, a need to understand the likely overheating risk of homes in these future summers. Simple physics-based models are very limited in their ability to produce valid assessments of overheating. More complex modeling using Dynamic Thermal Simulation (DTS) software can simulate internal temperatures when the modeled building is subjected to future weather files. There are, however, acknowledged uncertainties attached to the overheating determined from these simulations. Data-driven models can use temperature monitored in existing buildings to predict future overheating risk. This paper presents the idea of ‘overheating signatures’, simple mathematical models which relate the internal temperature in spaces to the external conditions and occupant behavior. Synthetic data from a single-zone building were used to derive such models and evaluate their ability to ‘predict’ overheating for different UK weather conditions. Analysis of the data revealed that there was a strong correlation between number of hours overheated and the warm period average outdoor air temperature (R² above 0.94). Applying the regression model to two different UK locations showed high correlation between overheating results predicted by the mathematical model and those from dynamic thermal simulation (R², 0.94 to 0.98). Based on these findings, we conclude that data-driven models have an important role to play in evaluating overheating risk. Future work is, however, needed to refine the mathematical models with data on a daily timescale and to test them on real-world buildings. Although this research has a focus on the UK dwellings, it is likely of interest to other countries with a temperate climate.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a behaviorally defined neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by social-communication deficits and restricted, repetitive behaviors. It affects ~1 in every 54 children in the USA. These autistic children suffer from anxiety, particularly when they engage in outdoor activities, mostly due to environmental stimuli and unawareness of communicating with them. While the evidence suggests that engaging in outdoor activities can improve the quality of life of autistic children, they reportedly rarely engage in outdoor activities. Therefore, they are introduced to autism centers with well-established quiet spaces and retreat areas by their mentors and are guided to gradually use them to relieve their stress/anxiety. They can return to the classroom when they feel calmer. Unfortunately, they lack access to such spaces in public areas when overstimulated. This research aims to conduct a feasibility study on designing calm spaces in public areas for children, including autistic ones. The required data were collected by performing an extensive literature review on autism design features. Then, questionnaires were distributed among experts regarding the types of calm spaces and design features. The Delphi method is employed to conduct the questionnaire survey and continue in three rounds until the experts reach a consensus. The final result approved one out of the three types of calm spaces. The expert panel also agreed on all design features attributed to autism.

Green infrastructure has become a recent point of interest because of growing concerns about the global environmental crisis and human challenges in urban contexts. Green infrastructure systems contribute to reach sustainability goals for reducing the environmental impact of human settlements by generating ecosystem services, create more resilient cities, reduce poverty, create better work options, and improve the food supply. Research was carried out in Guanajuato’s industrial corridor, where transnational auto companies have been operating for 30 years and have changed the rural landscape. In this sense, landscape cartography was developed, considering urban and physical elements. On one hand, we consider land use/land coverage and geomorphology as elements of landscape unity, and on the other hand, the marginalization index was linked to a social development perspective. Furthermore, based on cartography, a visual assessment was conducted throughout the corridor, in order to support the understanding of fine processes otherwise not allowed in general analyses of cartography. As a result, north–south corridors are crucial to sustain cohesion between different ecosystems caused by the presence of an agricultural barrier and the growth of north-eastern metropolitan areas as an artificial barrier; most small localities are near less affected areas and could be used as nodes for green corridors, as well as a source of employment.

Continuous development and densification are occurring as a result of dense population in cities, which, according to the United Nations, will increase to 68% by 2050, causing serious problems such as environmental stress, unhealthy living, and densification without planning policies and strategies. As a result, there are an ever-increasing need and demand for environmentally oriented urban development concepts (of any scale or size), particularly in areas of cities that are experiencing significant densification. Pocket parks are a form of the notion that can help cities and neighborhoods become more green and inclusive. Tirane, Albania’s capital, is used as a case study to shed light on the development of public spaces and pocket parks within the city, as well as initiatives undertaken by the municipality of Tirane MoT and non-governmental organizations in collaboration with residents. The paper emphasizes the significant potential of urban pocket parks to improve community interaction, maintain a healthy environment, and encourage people to walk and cycle through neighborhoods rather than driving. Furthermore, transforming these underutilized and neglected areas into new green spaces can meet the WHO requirements that users walk no more than 5–10 min to reach them.

Sustainability has become one of the most popular discourses of our societies. Importance of sustainability arises from the fact that societies are facing numerous (especially, ecological) risks. But there is no universal recipe for achieving sustainability. In fact, sustainability is being oriented towards locality—public places of living, working and recreation where the idea of sustainability reaches full purposefulness, especially for urban citizens. Seeking sustainability on local levels is justified by the fact that our communities are spatially, ecologically and culturally specific and in which individuals have specific needs and demands. In these circumstances, the question of attitudes towards transforming potentials of public spaces becomes one of the key determinants of development strategies (Auclair and Fairclough in Theory and practice in heritage and sustainability, Routledge, 2015). From the reflections of Max Weber to contemporary urban studies, green markets are most central and resilient public spaces, drivers of the development of urbs which encourages us to analyse them as important locality connecting it with new postmodern and sustainable city paradigm (Seale in Markets, places, cities, 2017; Visconti et al. in J Macromarketing 34:349–368, 2014; Watson in Urban Stud 46:1577–1591, 2009). Its central place in city structure means the green markets are strongly embedded in urban identity, providing idea of urban community as a place of everyday social interaction, space of exchange and diversity. Bearing this in mind, we will argue that green markets have the potential to become creative and sustainable public spaces due to their potential to be green literally as well as conceptually. To test our hypothesis, we explored citizen’s perceptions and attitudes towards green markets as public spaces important to community sustainability. This research was conducted in the two largest cities in Croatia (Zagreb and Split) using a quantitative research methodology. The results broadly confirmed that green market is compatible with the principles of postmodern urbanism, such as sustainability, participation, social inclusion and the potential for social innovation.

The Vesuvius National Park (VNP), with its approximately 110,000 inhabitants within the park area and over 600,000 in the territory of the municipalities, is the most populous in Italy and the most densely populated. But it is also a park with unique environmental and landscape values recognized on a global scale: MAB UNESCO biosphere reserve, two Site of Community Importance (SCI) areas, and one Special Areas of Conservation (SACs). Therefore, the dichotomy between nature conservation needs and local development instances, here more than elsewhere, demands a solution rooted along a path of sustainability. Furthermore, it must be considered the peculiarity of being one of the most potentially dangerous volcanoes in the world: due to the risk to which inhabitants and activities are subjected, the entire area is declared “red zone” by National Civil Protection Office and is consequently prevented any increase in volume, necessarily shifting the orientation of development policies toward sustainable supply chains: tourism (naturalistic but also religious and cultural ones), fine agricultural production, conversion of old farmhouses, etc. Starting from the preparation of the Environmental Report and the Impact Assessment for the Urban Plan of a municipality belonging to the so-called “Vesuvian crown” composed of 13 cities lying inside the boundaries of the VNP, we aim to identify an operational methodology that can be adopted by all the municipalities within the park territory. The Vesuvian territory contains a plurality of different and unique elements in their identity: natural areas, local products of high food and wine quality, paths and nature trails, ancient farms. But it is also characterized by a very strong soil consumption: during the 70 s until some years of the 2000s, a rapid urbanization phenomenon almost devoured the protected area, aggravated by phenomena of illegal building. Thus, the study has highlighted the conditions of fragility and vulnerability of the Vesuvian area, with special concern to soil consumption, potentially compromising landscape and ecological values. The assessment of environmental suitability of plan actions has addressed the strategic choices toward sustainable development, through conservation of natural resources and biodiversity, relocation and concentration of production activities, protection of cultural heritage, mitigation of hydraulic risk, moving in the direction of a conscious and rational use of the “soil” resource.

In 2020, more than 80 million people have been recognized as forcibly displaced, and Refugees represent about 35% of that. Jordan has one of the highest number of refugees in relation to its population, which is due to multiple influxes of refugees to the country since the late 19th C until today. These people settle either in refugee camps or in urban areas. The sudden mass migration to the capital city Amman has caused massive pressure on the city’s infrastructures and urban fabrics and resulted in uncontrolled urban expansion. Meanwhile, refugee camps in the city and in several other areas have outlived the crisis that produced them and have turned into urban areas with substandard living conditions. They are often excluded from all development plans. The poor/lack of planning policies which were developed by foreign consultants, have led to unbalanced concentration of investment between the newer and older parts of the city, and the densification of informal settlements in eastern Amman. Current research mainly discusses the urban expansion in Amman from Satellite perspective and quantitative population growth, with little understanding of the street level of these urban changes. Therefore, this research analysis the impact of the refugee crisis on the urban characteristics of Amman. First, five neighborhoods have been identified as examples of areas that developed post-every refugee movement. These areas are: The historic town (19th and early 20th C), Al Wehdat camp (established in 1955), Al Ashrafeyeh (1950s–1960s), Al Rawabi (1970s–1980s), and Khalda (1994 –Now). Second, empirical observation through site visits is used to analyze and compare the urban characteristics of each of these neighborhoods. The findings of this research provide insights into the urban trends in Amman, which can be used to assist effective future planning policies, as well as assist further research on the environmental quality of different urban typologies. The theoretical implications add to the body of research on relationship between immigration and urban production.

This research focuses on garden-cities in Istanbul, first developed as a new, innovative housing models in the world, later planned in context of sustainability, green architecture, and recently with the pandemic, COVID-19.  In the beginning of the twentieth century, E. Howard’s book of  Garden-cities of To-morrow and his idealized garden-city models became a worldwide phenomenon. First with the climate change concerns, and later the recent pandemic COVID-19 people began to question the old planning theories and doctrines and the city and metropolitan life model which was imposed throughout the twentieth century. Nowadays, with the increasing awareness of sustainability and green architecture, also planning with the renewed interest, this old rhetoric, E. Howard’s garden-city models have recently made a come-back as a research object after the recent pandemic. The original English garden-city models and its derivatives in Europe were known as cité-jardins, in France, and Garten-stadts, in Germany, also known as bank-houses in Istanbul, Türkiye. These housing models were transferred to Istanbul via European, French, and Italian architects later were designed and developed uniquely for Istanbul. Characteristically various models of French cité-jardins (garden-cities) developed for Istanbul by Henri Prost a French architect-urbanist who was affiliated the French urbanism school were searched. Until 2000s, the garden city housing models and its derivatives in the post-Prost period known and developed as bank-houses as a version of his cité-jardins later implemented by Turkish architects on the Asian-Anatolian side; Kadıköy, Acıbadem, Koşuyolu and European Side; Levent, Yeşilköy, districts were revealed. After the 2000s, some new and innovative housing models appealing the old, English style countryside living originated from garden-cities were planned out of the city. In the 2020s,  with the recent pandemic the old, Welwyn garden-city concept come-back first in England, later influenced the world and Istanbul.  As original garden-city, this model first known as bank-houses emerged and evolved as healthy houses concept planned in green areas with the pandemic specifically for Istanbul were examined.

This work is oriented to analyse the carbon footprint calculator for urban planning developed by the authors funded by the Community of Madrid. The starting point is the evolution of urban planning related to environmental problems that have resulted in current situation. Now it is needed to plan cities in a context of climate crisis. Planning with climate change criteria is especially important in the Community of Madrid, a hotspot of urban growth at the European level with a very unique dynamic, near doubling the artificial surfaces from 1990 to 2018, in less than 30 years, and without regional planning. The carbon footprint calculator consists of an assessment of the uses and activities to be developed in future planning that generate greenhouse gas emissions, as well as changes in land use that affect the soil’s sink capacity. Mitigation strategies (as self-generation capacity by renewable energies) are analysed for assessment and quantification where data is available. The carbon footprint calculator includes the derived and influential activities that should be included in the application for the approval of urban planning instruments, within the ordinary or simplified strategic environmental assessment procedures, in relation to the potential environmental impacts in terms of climate change. The carbon footprint calculator could help to measure different urban planning alternatives (alternative 0, no transformation and others) for the urban development or transformation, as in the application of a planning proposal is shown. Consequently, thanks to carbon footprint calculator it is possible to choose the lowest carbon emissions alternative among several and to make visible the crucial aspects that generate the most emissions at an early stage of urban development as it is a masterplan.

This research proposes the application of green roofs to the flat terraces of residential buildings, commercial buildings, and public-owned buildings in the city of Tirana. Green roofs have proven that they can offer ecological, innovative, and sustainable solutions. Application of green roofs provides multiple such as reduction of CO₂ in the atmosphere and on-site, management of rainwater runoff, reduction of noise pollution, addition of green areas, and reduction of urban heat air islands and brings a positive contribution to urban agriculture, recreation, flora, and fauna. Green roofs demand higher installation cost rather than conventional ones, but they prove to be more cost-effective and economical in the long run. As a case study, two buildings of the communist period built in one of the most urbanized areas of Tirana have been selected. The study examines the type of construction and the capacities that these buildings have to support different types of green roofs. Green roofs are classified according to the density of vegetation, applied technological solutions, and components used in construction. The long-term benefits of each roof type are compared with the cost of application, and based on the analysis, the most appropriate one is selected.

The concept “Design with Nature” has recently been promoted as the most effective solution to the global warming problem. Because there is limited natural-cross ventilation in the Mediterranean climate in Alexandria, Egypt, reliance on natural-stack ventilation in modern tall residential buildings is crucial. This research intends to rely on economical housing while maintaining thermal comfort within units. The research discusses the use of an atrium with evaporative cooling to direct the cool airflow toward tall buildings. The study uses CFD simulation with ANSYS Fluent to demonstrate and explain the concept. A centralized atrium with evaporative cooling applies to two different height cases: a five-story residential building and a ten-story residential building. The experiment simulates four variables: two air-exhaust opening positions, atrium width, and atrium shape. Each variable is assigned to a certain category. The results are presented through a comparison between the temperature and velocity contours of the proposed buildings. According to the findings, a centralized atrium with a rectangle shape in a ten-story residential building with an upper air exhaust vent provides an appropriate stack effect. Finally, in tall residential housing, the use of an atrium with an evaporative cooling system increases the effectiveness of natural-stack ventilation.