Template:Wikipedia Urban planning has important implications for sustainability, as well as for quality of life. Housing layout and population density and affect energy use for heating, cooling and transport.
Building regulations also affect sustainability, by encouraging or discouraging efficient design.
Comparisons of energy usage
In comparing the energy usage of different city designs, it is important to choose the appropriate measure. The important quantity to measure is energy usage per capita - that is, the actual amount of energy consumed per person. If focusing on transport, the appropriate measure is energy usage per capita per unit time (e.g. joules/person.year or joules/person.day).
Measures such as joules per person per km have been used to argue that public transport is no more efficient than transport by private cars. The flaw in this argument is that it is not measuring the important figure (i.e. how much energy is used per person).
The reason that this may give a misleading result is that it doesn't capture the various possible effects of public transport, such as shorter distances travelled (due to a more dense housing layout, and clustering of housing near transport); more walking; and the tendency of public transport users to combine their trips (e.g. shopping on the way home from work).[1] However, while these are up for debate, and of course the merits of private vs public transport can be debated, it is important to interpret data correctly, and the logical flaw in using an inappropriate measure is very clear.
Footnotes and references
- ↑ Sustainability and Cities: Overcoming Automobile Dependence, Island Press, Washington DC, 1999. W and Kenworthy J, ISBN 1559636602. Points noted here from memory by Chriswaterguy.
External links
- w:Category:Environmental design (in particular note articles on New Urbanism).
- w:Urban agriculture
- w:Wikipedia:WikiProject Urban studies and planning - a collaboration to improve Wikipedia articles on urban planning.
- Urbepedia (at Wikia.com) - a wiki about all things urban.
Subcategories
This category has the following 6 subcategories, out of 6 total.
Pages in category "Urban planning"
The following 69 pages are in this category, out of 69 total.
A
- ACROS Fukuoka building
- ACROS Fukuoka building/ar
- ACROS Fukuoka building/es
- ACROS Fukuoka building/fa
- ACROS Fukuoka building/he
- ACROS Fukuoka building/id
- ACROS Fukuoka building/ko
- ACROS Fukuoka building/lt
- ACROS Fukuoka building/sk
- ACROS Fukuoka building/sv
- ACROS Fukuoka building/th
- ACROS Fukuoka building/tr
- ACROS Fukuoka building/vi
- ACROS Fukuoka building/zh
- Agraria
- Arcologies
- Automated quantification of solar photovoltaic potential in cities
C
E
I
P
- Performance and analysis of retail store‐centered microgrids with solar photovoltaic parking lot, cogeneration, and battery‐based hybrid systems
- Power and energy potential of mass-scale photovoltaic noise barrier deployment- A case study for the U.S.
- Principles of urban planning
- Principles of urban planning/ru