Andrew Flynn

1
Eco-cities and the conventional city
opportunities and challenges

• Andrew Flynn
• Cardiff University
• Presentation to the
• China (Binhai Tianjin) ? International Eco-City
  Forum
• September 2010

2
Eco-cities and resource consumption

• Eco-cities an important and innovative way of
  seeking to reduce resource use
• Growing popularity
• But what difference will they make to urban
  resource consumption?
• What are the numbers of eco-dwellings being
  built?
• How significant are these new dwellings for
  existing urban areas?
• Use Ecological Footprint to compare different
  types of housing development
• Example from Cardiff a small UK city

3
Ecological Footprint of Cardiffs housing

• Existing housing stock is responsible for nearly
  all of the Ecological Footprint
• New, more eco-efficient housing is not being
  built sufficiently rapidly to change the profile
  of existing housing
• Is it best to invest in innovative energy
  efficient homes or to retrofit existing housing
  stock?

Housing type total housing EF
Existing housing stock 98.7
New houses 1.3
4
Housing types and energy consumption
Housing type Energy consumption pattern
Cardiff average Cardiff average consumption pattern
2002 regulation Cardiff average consumption with slightly reduced energy consumption
Eco-home Reduced consumption mainly due to technical efficiency improvements
BedZED Clearly reduce consumption due to specific BedZED conditions
5
Footprint for housing types buildings and energy
use
6
Limited impacts

• Based on the local land use plan 2001-2016 there
  is to be an 11.6 increase in dwellings
• If all new housing in Cardiff was built using the
  BedZED standard the EF of the total housing stock
  would reduce by 0.99

7
Lessons

• Must not be distracted by eco-city development
• The existing urban structure makes by far the
  biggest contribution to resource use
• Eco-city makes only a modest contribution to
  overall development and to any individual
  citys development
• Need to promote lesson learning from
  eco-developments to existing urban infrastructure
• Promote retro-fitting
• Create opportunities for flexibility and redesign
  in the city

8
Final thoughts

• The Housing Ecological Footprint is only a
  relatively small part of the total
  EcologicalFootprint
• More important factors are
• Food and drink
• Domestic energy
• Travel
• How we live our lives and the buildings in which
  we live our lives should be much better related
• Need to link together our homes, how we travel to
  and from work, the foods we consume to produce
  more sustainable lifestyles
• Living more sustainable lifestyles applies to
  those who live in eco-cities and those in live in
  conventional city