Material flow analysis in moroccan cities

Abstract

The world’s population is expected to undergo a further growth within the next decades. African countries are of main interest as they experience a rather high urbanization rate. This demographic shift leads to a higher demand of modern housing types, which requires a huge amount of construction material.
The following thesis is dedicated to obtain a better understanding of how urbanization, and lifestyle parameters especially, are affecting resources. The proposed framework allows the determination of national and regional resource demand of the current building stock in data scarce environments through estimations of population trends and lifestyle parameters. The stock in use is described as a link between construction (input) and demolition (output).
The bottom-up approach is applied to analyze environmental impacts of rural and urban areas in Morocco for the period of 1960-2050. The analysis shows that the concrete demand is steadily increasing within the next decades, causing a high amount of carbon emissions.
In order to reduce CO2 emissions, and on the same time satisfy the increasing housing demand by providing adequate housing for all, national guidelines need to be developed. A possible solution to this problem may be found in the densification of the building sector as well as the recycling of construction materials.