ABSTRACT: This paper describes the
results of the first year of the SoURCE – Sustainable Urban Cells – research project. The
project’s main objective, focused on sustainable
management of urban areas from an interdisciplinary and holistic approach, is
to experience the sustainable reshaping of the city considering a minimum core of
the larger city’s model, conventionally
called the urban cell. The methodological approach aims to evaluate and improve
the energy flows from nature to city, from city to itself and from city to
nature. The method seeks to provide a standard procedure to evaluate the performance
and optimization of the urban cell energy balance through innovation technology
either with the use of renewable resources or in the final consumptions. The
methodology was tested in a case study of a single urban cell. Since any urban
cell will have a different energy balance due to local characteristics and
functions, an urban cell can be added to a close one (generating a urban cells
grid) in order to ensure a better energy balance from the addition of more than
one urban cell. The project foresees the elaboration of tools and strategies
for citizen information, training them about energy sustainability, with
special emphasis on young people.
COMMENT: This research belongs to a
project named Source which is aim to get better sustainable management in Italy
and Sweden. The writers introduce a method based on a minimum core called “urban
cell” of the city to calculate and assess the balance between potential use of
renewable energy source and energy consumptions. The writers also take it into
a case study and get some results and conclusions. In my opinion, the method
can be optimized for the simulation of energy use, because it provides a possibility
to calculate the Ep and Ec. The models of urban area are currently idealized,
so this method can be well fit for energy simulation of urban areas. As a
primary idea, I will try to take it into practical use and get data which may
be valuable for my research. It’s may be an easy way to get something that I
want to analysis.
