Entering the Ecological Age

posted in: Blog | 0

Peter Head, a Director at the engineering consulting firm ARUP is one of the world’s leaders in sustainable urban development.

In his paper ‘Entering the ecological Age’ Peter Head sets out a vision for sustainable cities of the future. He concludes that we can – and must, transition to a mode of development that allows us to live within environmental limits of resource use. He shows how this can be done by addressing key themes of Energy, Waste, Water, Food production,

He addresses the key themes of Carbon emissions, Ecological Footprints, Transport, Water and Waste, Energy, Food production and Transport in turn.

Peter says that by taking an integrated  approach to urban design and development, each element of a sustainable city starts to reinforce the other and creates a virtuous ‘closed loop’ system.

The idea of a closed loop urban design system is being pursued locally by researchers at Zero Waste SA. A paper by Professor Steffen Lehman of Zero Waste SA shows that one of the ways we can have a significant impact on resource use is to start minimising and recovering waste from the building and construction sector. To read more about what’s happening in Adelaide on this front visit Green Industries SA. (Zero Waste SA was the forerunner of Green Industries SA.)

You can read Professor Lehman’s paper on minimising urban waste flows from construction here.

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *