Sustainable Transformation of Neighbourhoods
Abstract
The study focuses on the investigation of potential strategies to transform a whole district or neighbourhood, specifically here, district 9 in Zürich. Strategies are based on a thorough analysis of the status quo of the area as well as sustainability goals and city’s future objectives. The main aim for the transformation of an existing area is to reduce the existing emissions by keeping high quality of the space and allowing for future growth. The transformation reduces the impact of demolition and/or the construction of new developments with all related emissions and consumptions. The focus, in this research, is given to reduce heating demand of the building stock, reduce fossil fuels dependency of the buildings, increase the quality of the space through diversity aspects and finally define potential increase in living space in the neighbourhood. The resulting potential benefits from the setup strategies, are presented in terms of reduced MJ for heating demand, reduced kCO2 kg by changing energy carrier, increased quality through optimal diversity distribution and increased square meters for living space. Furthermore, the work uses stakeholders and specifically existing owners, as a potential to direct and facilitate the process of transformation. The importance of having a higher scale (neighbourhood scale) perspective is underlined, as well as the importance of transforming the existing built environment. Finally, this work was conducted in an explorative way, giving the possibility to identify a variety of future possible developments of the concept and different possible ways of application.