Module 7
7 Courses
Greening the Economy: Sustainable Cities Platform: Coursera Institution: Lund University Started: 04/06/2020 Finished: 16/03/2023 Urban Nature: Connecting Cities, Sustainability and Innovation Platform: Coursera Institution: Lund University Started: 02/06/2020 Finished: 18/03/2023 Cities and Consumption: Urban Sustainability and the Sharing Economy Platform: Coursera Institution: Lund University Started: 06/06/2020 Finished: 19/03/2023 Sustainable Regional Principles, Planning and Transportation Platform: Coursera Institution: John Hopkins University Started: 17/03/2023 Finished: 19/03/2023 Sustainable Neighborhoods Platform: Coursera Institution: John Hopkins University Started: 19/03/2023 Finished: 19/03/2023 Sustainable Transportation Networks and Streetscapes Platform: Coursera Institution: John Hopkins University Started: 20/03/2023 Finished: 21/03/2023 Transportation, Sustainable Buildings, Green Construction Platform: Coursera Institution: John Hopkins University Started: 21/03/2023 Finished: 21/03/2023
“Houses are made up of brick, cement, wood, slate, plasterboard, insulation, and a range of other materials that are responsible for carbon emissions during their production. It is incumbent upon housebuilders to consider the embodied emissions of these products and find more environmentally friendly alternatives. Timber frame houses, for example, have embodied CO2 emissions around seven tonnes lower than a standard build house.
The best way for housebuilders to mitigate their environmental impact is to build high quality homes that last. This reduces the need for costly retrofitting or rebuilding in the future, which will cost time, money, and energy.“
Tim Collins, Building sustainability into the UK’s housing stock, newstatesman.com, 27/09/2019
The life-cycles of the buildings we live and work in are a major source of large-scale environmental damage. It therefore stands to reason that a major rethinking of human habitation – from planning to design, construction, operation, maintenance, renovation and demolition – is a key innovation that can help us solve the climate crisis and set a new green building trend that ensures we do not create unnecessary environmental degradation in the future.
Green building is using resource-efficient and environmentally responsible practices to build new or to repurpose already existing structures.
When I was building and studying my MTA Portfolio, I was living in the City of Bristol in the UK. Bristol was voted the European Green Capital in 2015 in recognition of its ambitious environmental improvement and sustainable developments. Bristol opened my eyes to the real-world potential of green building and is one of the reasons I ended up including a module where I could take a deep dive into the concept.
Bristol also has a seemingly never-ending housing crisis, which is not helped by the Bristol and Bath Green Belt which surrounds the city perimeter and heavily prohibits new building developments on what is otherwise untarnished natural countryside. Therefore, in addition to new green building developments, I was also witnessing urban regeneration on a massive scale with every and any available space or structure within the city boundary being repurposed for new housing.
Considering how more and more people are living in built up areas, Bristol serves as real-world example of how, even under environmental restrictions, we can create/recreate urban green spaces for human habitation.