The built environment is at a turning point. With projected trends in population growth and urbanization, global demand for new floor area is expected to rise sharply. This will put unprecedented pressure on the availability of natural resources and incur greenhouse gas emissions and energy demand. Such environmental stressors risk driving the world away from the UN Sustainable Development Goals, but equally represent an opportunity for just sustainability transitions. The contents of this book aim to address some of these grand challenges from a multi-disciplinary perspective. Low-energy architecture, low-carbon cities and the often-forgotten sustainability of refugee settlements are some of the themes dealt with by the authors.

Providing a complete and in-depth overview of the available knowledge in the area of low energy and low carbon architecture. The scope of this edited book includes several important topics ranging from chapters giving a broad view of the progressing models in ecologically responsible environments to other chapters focussing on recent advances in design strategies and building technologies in low energy heating, cooling, daylighting, materials, and building sustainable systems. The book will give the readers insight to the future of low energy and low carbon architecture in the beyond-green era and discussed in the broader context of the progressing theories of regenerative design.

Low Carbon Cities is a book for practitioners, students and scholars in architecture, urban planning and design. It features essays on ecologically sustainable cities by leading exponents of urban sustainability, case studies of the new directions low carbon cities might take and investigations of how we can mitigate urban heat stress in our cities’ microclimates. The book explores the underlying dimensions of how existing cities can be transformed into low carbon urban systems and describes the design of low carbon cities in theory and practice. It considers the connections between low carbon cities and sustainable design, social and individual values, public space, housing affordability, public transport and urban microclimates. Given the rapid urbanisation underway globally, and the need for all our cities to operate more sustainably, we need to think about how spatial planning and design can help transform urban systems to create low carbon cities, and this book provides key insights.

101 Rules of Thumb sets out the essential elements of low energy architecture in a fresh, intuitive way. In an area where ever-changing technology and complex legislation and can cloud the designer’s thought-processes, this book encourages the designer to think clearly and intuitively about the fundamentals of low energy buildings. With reliable, simple rules of thumb that will provide new ideas and refresh the designer’s palette, each page focuses on a single piece of advice or guidance along with a clear hand-drawn illustration, while there are also plenty of tips and more detailed information for those who wish to dig deeper. The emphasis is on passive low-energy principles, and the rules of thumb cover all the design fundamentals from site and location to orientation and form, peppered with some which will help the designer to think ‘outside the box’ about the design process itself.

Low Carbon Cities is a book for practitioners, students and scholars in architecture, urban planning and design. It features essays on ecologically sustainable cities by leading exponents of urban sustainability, case studies of the new directions low carbon cities might take and investigations of how we can mitigate urban heat stress in our cities’ microclimates. The book explores the underlying dimensions of how existing cities can be transformed into low carbon urban systems and describes the design of low carbon cities in theory and practice. It considers the connections between low carbon cities and sustainable design, social and individual values, public space, housing affordability, public transport and urban microclimates. Given the rapid urbanisation underway globally, and the need for all our cities to operate more sustainably, we need to think about how spatial planning and design can help transform urban systems to create low carbon cities, and this book provides key insights.

The built environment is at a turning point. With projected trends in population growth and urbanization, global demand for new floor area is expected to rise sharply. This will put unprecedented pressure on the availability of natural resources and incur greenhouse gas emissions and energy demand. Such environmental stressors risk driving the world away from the UN Sustainable Development Goals, but equally represent an opportunity for just sustainability transitions. The contents of this book aim to address some of these grand challenges from a multi-disciplinary perspective. Low-energy architecture, low-carbon cities and the often-forgotten sustainability of refugee settlements are some of the themes dealt with by the authors.

How do you achieve effective low-carbon design beyond the building level? How do you create a community that is both livable and sustainable? More importantly, how do you know if you have succeeded? Harrison Fraker goes beyond abstract principles to provide a clear, in-depth evaluation of four first generation low-carbon neighborhoods in Europe, and shows how those lessons can be applied to the U.S. Using concrete performance data to gauge successes and failures, he presents a holistic model based on best practices. The four case studies are: Bo01 and Hammarby in Sweden, and Kronsberg and Vauban in Germany. Each was built deliberately to conserve resources: all are mixed-used, contain at least 1,000 units, and have aggressive goals for energy and water efficiency, recycling, and waste treatment. For each case study, Fraker explores the community's development process and goals and objectives as they relate to urban form, transportation, green space, energy, water and waste systems, and a social agenda. For each model, he looks at overall performance and lessons learned. Later chapters compare the different strategies employed by the case-study communities and develop a comprehensive model of sustainability, looking specifically at how these lessons can be employed in the United States, with a focus on retrofitting existing communities. This whole-systems approach promises not only a smaller carbon footprint, but an enriched form of urban living. The Hidden Potential of Sustainable Neighborhoods will be especially useful for urban designers, architects, landscape architects, land use planners, local policymakers and NGOs, citizen activists, students of urban design, planning, architecture, and landscape architecture.