Improving sustainability decision-making at neighbourhood level: a new framework for performance assessment based on china#146;s small residential district

摘要

The built environment (BE) in cities has significant impacts on environmental quality, socio-economic wellbeing and human health. Neighbourhoods are the key spatial link between individual buildings and the broader urban context. Sustainability efforts at building and city level will be less effective if this link is not appropriately addressed. There are two primary types of assessment approach for evaluating the sustainability performance of the BE: qualitatively based building rating systems and quantitatively based material & energy accounting (MEA) methods. Both can only partially address the neighbourhood sustainability. Building rating systems can take a snapshot of the sustainability state of a neighbourhood at a particular time but cannot describe the actual material and energy flows over its life cycle. MEA methods calculate physical flows from a life-cycle perspective but cannot address socio-economic and spatial concerns. This thesis hypothesizes that the two distinct approaches complement one another and their simultaneous use can generate additional data and better quality decision-making information for neighbourhood stakeholders such as buyers, planners and managers. The purpose of this research is to identify, investigate and strategically assess the use of both qualitative and quantitative assessment approaches in an empirical context. In order to validate this hypothesis, a conceptual framework is proposed, which consists of a regionally specific neighbourhood rating system and life-cycle energy and carbon accounting. China’s Small residential district (SRD), which is a type of ‘gated’ neighbourhood and the major residential form in urban China, is used for the case study. Two case study SRDs are used in this research to validate the working of the proposed framework and to understand what additional decision-making information can be generated by using both approaches in an empirical context. Applying the framework involves: a) quantifying the life-cycle material & energy flows and the related carbon emissions for the case study SRDs; b) developing a regionally specific neighbourhood rating system and applying it to the case studies. Applications further lead to create two profiles: a sustainability profile, presenting the full range of sustainability issues at a particular time point; and an energy and carbon profile, describing material & energy flows and the related emissions from a life-cycle perspective.The case study research indicates that the proposed framework can provide a more comprehensive evaluation of the sustainability performance of the BE at neighbourhood level, in terms of neighbourhood labelling, and for existing development, point to possible refurbishment needs and future regeneration. The framework can also be used to improve the design quality of a neighbourhood development at an early stage and facilitate comparison between design solutions. The thesis concludes that using multiple approaches for neighbourhood assessment, qualitatively and quantitatively, can significantly improve the quality of decisions of the various stakeholders.