A Holistic Methodological Approach in the Urban Context Towards Characterizing the Environmental Performance of Buildings and Promoting Strategic Governance and Sustainability

Abstract

Nowadays, over half of the world's population is living in urban areas. Urbanization has not led only to economic and social transformation, but also to high resource consumption and considerable environmental damage. This study aims to promote a holistic methodological approach in the urban context in order to foster policy modeling, efficient governance and sustainability. The paper has a twofold purpose: (i) to provide an approach for tractably characterizing the environmental performance of the building sector, and (ii) to promote sustainable practices towards greener buildings in urban areas. Towards this aim a composite indicator is analytically defined. The index combines the main environmental pressures that can be attributed to the building sector and is mathematically formulated to be finally implemented generically. Apart from energy, water consumption and waste generation, the presented scheme establishes links with LCA in order to include estimations of carbon footprint (CO₂-eq). The formulated index is combined with the structure dialogue approach that has been developed within Urban Empathy, aMED Programme funded capitalization project focused on the efficiency of sustainable urban policies in the Mediterranean Basin. The structured dialogue process identifies key barriers to the implementation of the selected available practices into sustainable urban policies for the building sector. The paper highlights insights for common priorities, real pilot project results and their relation to implemented policies in order to foster strategic governance and policy modeling for specific areas under consideration.