The goal of sustainability initiatives are to enact fundamental sustainability principles while navigating three converging crises— climate change, natural resource depletion, and an impending end of the fossil fuel era. Yet, it turns out, our biggest obstacles are our own rates of consumption. It is predicted that 75% of the built environment will be either new or renovated between now and 2035, offering great opportunity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by applying principles of sustainability to these constructions. In 2012, buildings in the U.S. generated 44.6% of all greenhouse gas emissions, followed by transportation and industry, which contributed 34.3% and 21.1% separately. Even as climate change builds momentum, intentions to lower resource depletion within cities are often followed by unsustainable actions. Still, cities are complex and adaptive systems that, if properly planned, can avoid current pitfalls in the future.
Green building, as defined by US EPA (US EPA n.d. Green Building), “is the practice of creating structures and using processes that are environmentally responsible and resource-efficient throughout a building’s life-cycle from sitting to design, construction, operation, maintenance, renovation and destruction.” Additionally, LEED provides a third-party verification of green building designs, construction, and operation. Green building follows examples of living things in nature, making use of renewable resources of energy and water such as sunlight, wind, and rain. It tackles many objectives of sustainability simultaneously. Even further, green buildings are biodegradable, built with the end in mind since the building will eventually be torn down. But are green buildings economically sustainable? So far, the average cost build of green buildings is 2% more than conventional buildings, but this will be paid back in 6 years from energy savings, considering the fact that operation contributes most costs in conventional buildings (Kats 2010).
Unfortunately, our current green building initiatives are far from the ideal. In actuality, many problems exist. One study from Virginia Tech showed that hot water recirculating systems touted as “green” actually use more energy and water than their standard counterparts. Researchers Edwards and Brazeau compared the hot water recirculating system with a traditional one and discovered that consumers often waited for the cold water to flush down the drain before the water warmed to a comfortable temperature for showering. This demonstrated that actually 20% or more energy was consumed even in best operation scenario in which the water pump ran before use. This evidence put the U.S. Department of Energy report and system manufacturers in a dilemma. They reported recirculation devices as water and energy saving, ignoring the fact it needs water to produce extra energy, making this system, albeit masquerading as ‘green’ or environmentally conscious device, an unsustainable design (Brazeau et.al., 2011).
In this scenario, utilizing other forms of heating offers a possible solution. For example, ground-source heat pumps could be installed in this buildings. It is an energy-efficient choice for heating and cooling even in any climate, while conventional air-source are not applicable in extreme weather climates. The ground-source heat pump could make use of thermal mass of the earth, which usually maintains a stable temperature at 50°F to 60°F, to remove heat from buildings and release it into the ground in summer and the reverse in winter, accomplished by heat-transfer medium such as air or glycol. Regardless of high installation costs for vertical systems in commercial and urban settings, it saves 50% of the cost in operation (Kats 2010). In this way, the buildings could use free sources of energy around it and gain economic benefits in the long run.
In addition to having more superstructures such as buildings, cities are dense compared to outlying rural areas. As population density in cities continues to increase the population in the once rural areas also rises. Sprawl is a settlement pattern in most cities of United States, which has the characteristics of low-density land use, single-use zoning, and automobile dependency. It is currently one of the largest issues, along with Green Building, that we are facing when turning cities into more sustainable and livable regimes. As more residents outside of city commute longer distances they add to already burgeoning U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. “Transportation consumes 26 percent of the world’s energy produced and is responsible for 23 percent of the world’s energy-related greenhouse gas emissions.”(Robertson,2017, p.345) Therefore, designing energy-efficient buildings is counterproductive if these buildings are separated by long distances.
Furthermore, sprawl affects people’s physical and mental health because people may have less chance of doing physical activities and talking to their neighbors face to face. What makes the situation worse is that teenagers could be the most affected people. According to a study conducted by the Center for the Advancement of Health in 2008, the more miles a teenager drives, the more at risk they are for injury or death (ScienceDaily, 2008). Additionally, the study suggests “Teens in sprawling counties were more than twice as likely to drive more than 20 miles per day as teens in compact counties were — and the younger they were, the more miles they drove.” (ScienceDaily, 2008). While other studies suggest, “Sprawl threatens water quality, climate protection and land conservation gains.”(Harvard University, 2013). Researchers at Harvard Univeristy analyzed the landscape of Massachusetts acre-by-acre over 50 years using sophisticated computer models. These scientists developed four plausible scenarios to see how Massachusetts will look in the future. “The results of the study show that sprawl, coupled with a permanent loss of forest cover in Massachusetts, create an urgent need to address land-use choices.”(Harvard University, 2013) From this study, we can see that sprawl, an inevitable obstacle to sustainability goals and actions, must be examined for a livable life in the future.
The antipode to sprawl, is called ‘smart growth’, operates on the basis of mixed land-use zoning and green infrastructure. Overall, its principles are designing compact buildings with a range of housing opportunities that create walkable neighborhoods, open space, natural beauty and provide a variety of transportation choices. Applying the former elements, the community will become attractive and livable. Another approach, “New Urbanism”, focuses on making communities attractive and socially successful. A realistic example of New Urbanism is a community in the city of Vancouver called Mole Hill. This small city has very few parking spaces and converted allies, which used to be occupied by cars, into gardens, fruit trees and seating areas.
Measures of urban efficiency encompass economic, social, and environmental output. Many properties of cities vary continuously with population size (Bettencourt et.al., 2013). As urban populations continue to expand and nonrenewable resources deplete, sprawl and green buildings will become even more important. For example, rural towns have less access to water than larger towns (Portland State University, 2018). And when urban populations rise and water sources dwindle, the current water disparity experienced in rural areas may reflect the experiences of city dwellers in the future. Even further, as ecosystems change cities must adapt. While smart growth and new urbanism concern the form and scenery of urban development, a critical functional component is missing from this approach. Another method to implementing change in green infrastructure, green building, smart growth, and population density is to simultaneously consider their systematic characteristics during city planning since rates of social output and sprawl increase per capita with city size (Bettencourt et.al., 2013). A systems approach prepares for the future by surveying current responses to human climate change related disparities then makes predictable and fair development decisions.