Material flows of residential buildings in South African cities

Abstract

Future population growth is estimated to be concentrated in urban areas of the developing world. This growth and demographic shift will require a large amount of (construction) materials. The present study is motivated by the lack of a holistic approach to understand how urbanization affects resources. A framework is established, which links population increase and the associated material flows devoted to construction of additional housing units as well as densification of the existing building stock. The proposed method makes use of stock dynamics modeling and is based on building typologies that allow deriving consequences depending on construction techniques and housing habits. Main drivers of input flows are population growth and lifestyle parameters, other important determinants of the in stock materials and output flows are lifespans of buildings and materials as well as material intensity of dwelling types. The proposed method is used to analyze the material requirements for two case studies: Cape Town and Johannesburg. Main contribution of this thesis is the proposal of a method that allows deriving resource needs, and in a further step environmental impacts, merely based on population growth and simple lifestyle parameters.