Bern – Buildings in Switzerland are responsible for nearly half the country’s total energy consumption, said Stefan Cadosh, president of the Swiss Society of Engineers and Architects. But this could be cut in half with a holistic approach.

Energy-efficient construction and renovation is a complex subject, Stefan Cadosh said in an interview published on the Swiss Federal Office of Energy’s blog Energeia+. “A building not only has to offer comfort these days but also be fit for the future,” said the president of the Swiss Society of Engineers and Architects (SIA). 

Energy-efficient construction is easier for new buildings than sustainable renovations, which require “a good deal of brain power and an intuitive feel when it comes to imparting specialist knowledge to private clients”. And yet it is precisely in the existing building stock that Cadosch sees the greatest potential.

“1.4 million buildings in Switzerland are not in good shape in terms of energy use,” said the SIA president. “The building stock consumes around 48 per cent of the country’s total energy.” 

But this figure could be halved. And “if we switched over to plus-energy buildings, an even greater reduction would be possible,” said Cadosch 

Instead of using even more labels, Cadosh believes that Switzerland should focus more on the concept of the Effizienzpfad Energie, which is based on the 2000 Watt Society.

“We have to be aware of who we are building for and why we are building,” adding that the advantages and disadvantages of different approaches have to weighed on a case-by-case basis.

Cadosch likes the holistic approach to the new standard for sustainable building, though it is difficult for laypeople to understand due to its complexity. The Minergie label could act as a game changer here as it is understandable to non-experts and has successfully shaped public debate....

Calling it the “most ambitious programme of its kind in the nation”, the plan will require landlords of the 14,500 of the city’s worst-performing buildings with a surface area of 2,300 square metres to make sharp reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Measures will include modernizing boilers, water heaters, roofs and windows, the mayor’s office said in a statement.

“Time is not on our side,” said Mayor de Blasio. “We must shed our buildings’ reliance on fossil fuels here and now,” adding that the plan will help “honour the goals of the Paris Agreement”.

To compel building owners to meet the ambitious standards, the legislation will set annual penalties that increase with building size and the amount the buildings exceed the fossil fuel use targets, according to the mayor’s office.

For example, a skyscraper of around 158,000 square metres, such as the iconic Chrysler Building, could incur an annual fine of some $2 million if its energy use significantly exceeds the city’s efficiency targets, reported AFP....

New York – National governments made clear last week that they are not interested in creating a new UN body to coordinate global action on sustainable urbanization.

Representatives of governments, UN agencies, city leaders and other stakeholders met in New York last week to discuss implementation of the New Urban Agenda and reform of the UN Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) during a high-level meeting of the UN General Assembly.

At the meeting’s opening, UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed warned that the global body is not delivering sufficiently in cities. 

“The proud history of urban work at the UN must be harnessed at this vital time, and the UN must be seen again as the lead convener and catalyser for partners, funders, private sector and civil society organisations to scale up their work in urban areas,” she added.

According to Ms Mohammed, this requires reforming the UN’s current lead agency on urban issues, UN-Habitat. Its future has been called into question in the wake of last year’s Habitat III conference, which approved the New Urban Agenda.

In August, the UN released a proposal called UN Urban, which calls for the creation of a new entity to stimulate interest in cities across the UN system, as Citiscope reported at that time. UN-Habitat, in contrast, would focus more setting of urban planning norms through rules and legislation.

But according to Citiscope’s Gregory Scruggs, national governments were nearly unanimous in rejecting the UN Urban proposal last week, with rich and developing countries alike expressing concerns over funding, structure, scope and necessity.

However, no decisions were made at last week’s meeting and a diplomat close to the process said that the earliest a proper decision will be taken on UN Urban is April. Top UN officials, including Secretary-General António Guterres, favour the proposal....

Zurich – The canton of Zurich will designate the watercourses in its urban areas at the beginning of next year. In an effort to protect the waters, it will establish shorelines with restrictions on construction and use.

40 municipalities will be affected by the designation of watercourses, including the cities of Zurich and Winterthur. The remaining cities and municipalities will follow in 2019 and 2020. Watercourses outside the urban areas and Lake Zurich will only be designated at a later time, according to a statement from the canton of Zurich.

The designation of watercourses is based on the federal Water Protection Act, revised in 2011, which defines measurement parameters and minimum widths to protect rivers, streams and lakes. As such, it is now necessary to designate a strip of land along a watercourse’s shore on which there are restrictions with respect to buildings and facilities, as well as gardens. 

According to the canton, the space requirements on construction measures that had applied until now will be replaced by the new watercourse definitions, but in three-quarters of the river waters, the protected strips of land will not be wider than those previously in force. 

The watercourses are meant to ensure the space needed for nature and landscape conservation measures. Recreational activities, the use of water (for example, for hydroelectric power) and protection from floods or water contamination are further advantages....

Seoul – Researchers at ETH Zurich and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology are testing a novel building material made from the root network of mushrooms. A structure made from this is currently on display at the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism.

Resources for conventional building materials are finite. In some regions, only a small amount of sand – an important component of concrete – is available, and reinforced concrete is making many countries dependent on imports. 

These are just a couple of reasons why researchers at the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Zurich are testing a sustainable building material that can regrow.

The main component of their building material is mycelium, the root network of mushrooms. Mycelium is a fast-growing, fine matrix of thread-like cells. The researchers mix it with plant-based waste products, such as sawdust, allowing it to be poured into almost any shape or form. There, it is compressed for a few days, after which it is dried to prevent further growth and kill the mushrooms. 

The resulting lightweight blocks are good for insulation. To increase their compressive and tensile strength, the researchers use methods from graphic statics, allowing them to design geometric forms and the internal flow of forces in a targeted manner. 

“Regenerative building materials have the potential to replace conventional materials in many architectural structures,” Dirk E. Hebel from KIT said in a statement.

The researchers have now built a structure out of mycelium and bamboo to demonstrate how society can move away from mining construction materials to cultivating them for urban growth, according to ETH Zurich. The structure is currently on display at the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism in Korea until 5 November....

Houston – The city of Houston was one of the fastest growing cities in the US thanks to its liberal building regulations. But heavy, once-unprecedented storms are set to occur more frequently – and claim more victims.

The fourth largest city in the United States, Houston has long expanded while remaining a relatively affordable place to live thanks to its lack of zoning codes that would otherwise designate residential, industrial or green spaces. 

But last week, that lack of zoning has also resulted in thousands of kilometres of paved roads channelling Hurricane Harvey’s flood waters through neighbourhoods unprepared for the 127 centimetres of rain that fell on the Texas city for four days.

“Houston is not designed to handle this kind of rainfall,” said Texas A&M University Urban Planning Professor Sam Brody. “The storm water system has never been designed for anything much stronger than a heavy afternoon thunderstorm.”

35 people have died in the disaster, a number that surely will rise. Based on costs of Hurricane Sandy in New York and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, rebuilding the centre of the American energy industry will cost tens of billions of dollars.

Proud of its nickname “The City With No Limits,” Houston controls growth indirectly. Properties usually include deed restrictions, or legal covenants mandating that only a home, store or factory can replace current properties. 

The city also has guidelines on parcel sizes, parking and similar rules that have created a vast, suburban-style car-dependent city.

Voters have repeatedly rejected adopting a zoning system in citywide referendums.

“Houston is the Wild West of development, so any mention of regulation creates a hostile reaction from people who see that as an infringement on property rights and a deterrent to economic growth,” Brody said.

Responding to criticism about the lack of zoning, Houston’s mayor Sylvester Turner noted that other cities like Atlanta and Los Angeles have also experienced chaotic sprawl despite their urban planning efforts.

“Zoning wouldn't have changed anything,” Turner tweeted Wednesday. “We would have been a city with zoning that flooded.”

Houston’s population jumped 25 per cent between 1995 and 2015, according to the U.S. Census. Harris County grew 42 per cent to 4.4 million people. Around 30 per cent of its coastal wetlands were lost in roughly the same period, according to Texas A&M University.

In the last seven years, around 7,000 houses and apartment buildings have gone up in Houston and surrounding Harris County on land that the U.S. government has designated within a 100-year flood plain, according to a Washington Post investigation.

Houston has suffered from strong rains and flooding in the past. Last year, storms flooded 1,000 homes, killing eight and causing $5 billion in damages. In 2015, seven died in a storm that dropped 30 centimetres in 10 hours.

In January, the city appropriated $10 million to improve drainage in three bayous – a drop in the bucket for what experts say is actually needed.

The legacy of Houston’s growth will take its toll on people for years to come.

Less than 16 per cent of residents have signed up to the National Flood Insurance Program, the federal agency that provides the only flood insurance in the US. The insurance costs around $660 on average a year. 

Many others are hoping that President Trump will come through on his promise to help the city.

By John Dyer, Boston...

Newcastle – An Australian firm has developed a new technology that can harness carbon dioxide emissions and transform them into eco-friendly building products. It has been operating a pilot plant since the beginning of 2016.

Mineral Carbon International (MCI) officially unveiled its pilot plant to the public last week at the Newcastle Institute for Energy and Resources in Australia. 

The mineral carbonation research pilot plant works by reacting carbon emissions captured at Orica’s nearby Kooragang Island operations with minerals, permanently converting the CO2 into solid carbonates.  

“This mimics but greatly speeds up the natural weathering by rainfall which produces common types of rocks over millions of years,” MCI said.

The technology has the potential to dramatically improve the carbon footprint of the building materials.

“Both carbonates and silica by-products have the potential to be used in building products such as concrete and plasterboard to create green construction materials,” explained the University of Newcastle.

According to Orica’s chief scientists Jez Smith, the MCI technology could even one day help entire supply chains lower their carbon intensity.

As the Guardian reported, MCI hopes to be producing 20,000 to 50,000 tonnes of the bonded materials for building companies by 2020, and it anticipates that the process will be economically viable even without a high carbon price.

“There is a big demand among consumers for green building products,” said CEO of MCI Marcus Dawe.

“Like the adoption of renewables in energy production, our technology aims to help decarbonize industries like cement, steel and chemical production.”...

Schlieren ZH – Construction on the Limmattalhbahn light rail line officially began with a ceremony in the presence of the federal president Doris Leuthard. The first stage connecting Altstetten Farbhof with Schlieren Geissweid will be operating in 2019.

According to a statement from Limmattalbahn AG, the Line 2 of the VBZ is scheduled to begin running on the tracks of the Limmattal light rail after the 2019 summer holidays. The first stage of the project will run to Schlieren. Construction on the second stage – from Schlieren to Killwangen – is planned for autumn 2019.

At the ceremony to mark the start of construction on the first stage, the Swiss federal present and transport minister Doris Leuthard commented on the importance of the Limmattahlbahn light rail as an “exemplary transport project for Switzerland” because it “connects municipalities and agglomerations across cantonal borders”.

Aargau government councillor and Landammann Stephan Attiger also described the light rail line as a “key project in the joint agglomeration programme of the cantons of Zurich and Aargau”. Zurich government councillor and minister of economy Carmen Walker Späh highlighted the “well-struck between public transport, street traffic and non-motorized transport”....

Dübendorf ZH – An innovative wellness facility has been put into operation in the NEST research building at Empa. In a world’s first, it is powered entirely by solar energy and the power generated by the users’ physical exercise in the fitness room.

The new wellness facility in the NEST research building at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (Empa) has been put into operation. In an open-concept interior space, three ellipsoids hover beneath the ceiling, housing two saunas and a steam bath. Underneath the wellness modules is a range of fitness equipment for working out.

The wellness facility will be powered largely by photovoltaic installations on the building’s roof and facade. But the users of the fitness facility will also contribute to energy production by using fitness equipment that generates electricity, explains Empa.

In addition to being powered by renewable energy, the wellness facility is exceptionally energy efficient. A conventional facility would devour some 120,000 kWh of electricity per year, but thanks to several innovations, the aim is to reduce that figure to just 20,000 kWh.

One way to achieve this massive reduction is by using a high-temperature CO2 heat pump from the company Scheco, which can generate temperature of up to 130 degrees Celsius. For efficient operation, the generated heat must be used over as great a range of temperatures as possible: 120C for the Finnish sauna, 90C for the steam generator in the steam bath, 70C for the bio sauna, and finally 50C and 30C for the showers and heating respectively. The pump is expected to reduce electricity consumption by around two thirds.

Researchers work and live in the NEST building in Dübendorf, where they can test new technologies under real-world conditions. Empa calls the new wellness facility a “milestone” for the building technology sector, which is why the project has been actively supported by the Swiss-Liechtenstein building technology association, suissetec....

London – San Francisco topped a list of the most high-tech cities in the world, winning in just about every category. Four Chinese cities made it into the top 25, including Beijing which climbed 15 spots since the 2016 rankings.

Cities that rely on cutting-edge technologies and create opportunities for people to develop new ones are those that will flourish in the future as the world’s population becomes more and more urban, reports Business Insider. 

The business news site consulted 2thinknow, a research firm that specialises in analysing innovative cities, to rank the most high-tech cities in the world. It compiled a list of 85 cities based on factors related to technological advancement, such as the number of patents filed per capita, startups, tech venture capitalists, and level of smartphone use.

The top 25 cities were divided fairly equally between Asia (nine cities), Europe (six) and North America (ten). Conspicuously absent from the top 25 were cities from Africa or Oceania, despite Melbourne recently being named the most liveable city in the world by the Economist’s Intelligence Unit.

Not surprisingly, San Francisco and its proximity to Silicon Valley topped the ranking. Calling Silicon Valley “the gold standard for tech”, the city won in just about every category thanks to its gigantic startup culture, venture capital scene and density of designers and programmers.

The highest ranked Asia city was Seoul, South Korea, which files more patents that just about any city in the world according to 2thinknow, while the highest ranked European city was London with its extensive public transportation network and high number of startups and programmers. 

Four Chinese cities made it into the top 25: Beijing (16), Shanghai (17), Shenzhen (20) and Hong Kong (22). Many of China’s high-tech cities excel in patents and venture capital, according to the article....

Cambridge, MA – China’s massive investment in industrial parks have not only added to growth within the immediate commercial area; it has created new urban areas or "edge cities" beyond the boundaries of the industrial parks with increased productivity and higher wages.

Researchers in China and the United States have discovered a new urban phenomenon underway in China: the creation of industrial parks does not just add to growth within the area designated for manufacturing, it also significantly increases economic production and consumption well beyond the boundaries of the industrial parks. 

The spill-over effect is so striking that the researchers named these new urban centres “edge cities”, places that generate their own hubs of diverse economic activity and residential life, explains MIT, which participated in the study of 110 industrial parks near eight cities in China: Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Tianjin, Dalian, Wuhan, Xi’an, and Chengdu. This corresponds to nearly 10 per cent of all industrial parks in the country.

The new parks create “a spatially concentrated increase in local market potential” as well-paid workers look for nearby housing and retail opportunities. This leads to “sharp improvements in worker quality life”, notably a reduction in commuter times as new homes are constructed in these edge cities, which typically crop up in the 2-kilometre radius around the industrial parks. 

Other economic benefits include on average a 41 per cent increase in employment, an 8 per cent increase in total factor productivity, and a 3 per cent increase in wages. Retail activities also grew.

But as the researchers discovered, not all industrial parks resulted in an increase in productivity in the surrounding area. Those that fared best invested in human capital and had clearly defined connections with existing firms – such as a supplier-manufacturer relationship – located near the parks....

St.Gallen – An exhibition pavilion made of rammed earth will be built in St.Gallen next year. A smaller version is now being constructed in the Sittertal valley by students from Swiss and German universities.

The Sittertal valley was well known as a textile manufacturing region until the 19th century, according to an article by the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). Constructing buildings out of rammed earth also goes well back in history. 

“Using the rammed-earth technique for a building on a site that was once devoted to textiles is our way of acknowledging that history,” explained architect and EPFL guest professor Roger Boltshauser.

The exhibition building, which will be built next year, will be 23 metres long, 6 metres high and 6 metres wide. Students from the EPFL, the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW) and the Bauhaus University in Weimar, Germany are now constructing a smaller model or ‘mock-up’ using building materials from the region and prefabricated components. This approach will help cut down the building time, explains the EPFL.  

The building materials also have the advantage that they can be recycled, allowing the mock-up to serve as a pilot project for the new technique. The rammed-earth columns will also have steel cables running through them from top to bottom, a technique that could be used for other projects.

As regards construction of the St.Gallen pavilion next year, Bolthauser said: “By combining prefabricated earth blocks with other prefabricated concrete components, the pavilion is a glimpse at what could be the future of rammed-earth construction. It will also allow us to calculate the associated savings in terms of costs and grey energy.”...

Zurich – Urban centres are growing in Switzerland, leading to conflicts with neighbouring rural areas. Sensible land use can counter this development.

Today, Switzerland consists mainly of two metropolitan areas, according to an opinion piece in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. One stretches out from Lake Geneva, the other from the cities of Zurich and Basel. And the country will become all the more urban in the years to come as the population increases. This could lead to conflicts with the undeveloped land in areas adjacent to the cities.

According to the article, there are two ways of dealing with this situation. A passive approach would lead to more regulation and blockades, whereas an active approach would be one in which the undeveloped land is no longer regarded “as something left over next to built-up areas, but rather as a multifunctional area that can take into account different requirements”. 

This “transition from next to each other to with each other” would show itself in the multiple use of mown pastures for leisure activities, for instance. “Parks could be developed out of forests next to built-up areas, which would pleasantly stand out from the widespread monotony of our forests.” But this approach would require a certain “intellectual effort”....

Macao will benefit from the expertise of the technology corporation Alibaba in processing big data, explained Open Gov in a statement.

The project will be divided into two phases. During the first phase, which will run until 2019, a cloud data centre will be established in Macao.

The aim is to use big data and artificial intelligence to implement different measures to improve public services in the special administrative region.   

From July 2019 to June 2021, the second phase will both focus on improving Macao’s technological infrastructure and develop projects related to environmental protection and customs clearance procedures.

It will also exploit the existing potential of data analysis to create forecasting models for Macao’s economic development.   

According to O Lam, who signed the contract as representative of Macao, the smart city project will boost socio-economic development and social conditions in Macao....

Eighty per cent of America’s population lives in urban areas, writes Cooper Martin, Program Director for the Sustainable Cities Institute at the National League of Cities (NLC), in an article for Meeting of the Minds.

The majority live in small cities and local authorities that do not have the resources to fight climate change. While the NLC wants to support these authorities in fighting for resilience, it highlights that plans developed for one city cannot simply be “copied and pasted” into another city.  

The organisation aims to develop plans that could work in multiple cities, such as partnerships between authorities. Martin explains that in many authorities, one body alone is responsible for sustainability and that this work is not integrated into other bodies.

Within a partnership, it does not make sense to develop isolated sustainability initiatives, according to the article. Instead, the focus should be on amending existing plans to incorporate sustainable elements.    

A particular challenge facing cities is potential population growth. Martin explains that it will be decisive for authorities to introduce sustainability measures in good time. It would be meaningless to grow first and then consider sustainability when making cities resilient to the effects of climate change, he writes.    ...

The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Panasonic and Xcel Energy are combining their expertise in a bid to drive the development of carbon-neutral projects and smart cities. In a first step, the three partners will simulate and optimise the energy load profile of Peña Station NEXT, a planned 155-hectare mixed-use development in Denver, Colorado, by using URBANopt, a buildings and district energy modelling tool currently being developed at NREL.

URBANopt will analyse the projected energy consumption of office and retail space, multifamily dwellings, a hotel, as well as parking and street lighting within the planned development. The data will then be integrated into Xcel Energy’s grid distribution modelling tools to create a cost-effective design framework that the utility company and developer can use to integrate more distributed energy resources into the project, such as photovoltaics or efficient building systems.

According to NREL, the project has great promise beyond Peña Station NEXT's borders. Xcel Energy could choose to own and operate the infrastructure needed to achieve carbon neutrality, and even expand the offering to future communities in Colorado. Panasonic for its part is interested in how it can replicate and scale carbon-neutral districts and developments across its other smart city projects through Panasonic CityNOW.

“The NREL partnership with Panasonic and Xcel Energy helps deliver on our shared vision for clean, affordable, and reliable energy systems at a pace and scale that matters for our society,” said Juan Torres, NREL’s associate laboratory director for energy systems integration. ...

An article on The World Bank’s website says that in the developing world, it is mainly housing that kills people, not disasters. The resilience of cities is currently being discussed on many different levels, but the one clear solution is more resilient housing. The triage strategy for housing risk reduction should involve a two-step process. First, housing that is uninhabitable must be declared as such and the residents resettled. Second, it is essential that housing repair measures are identified to then make them more resilient to natural disasters.

However, triage alone will not make housing more resilient, so retrofitting must also be affordable and subsidised. Microfinance could be a way to support this process. The safe living conditions that this creates would only be the beginning. Over time, the productive neighbourhoods that evolve would drive economic growth in the world’s cities....