Sustainable Urban Environments : An Ecosystem Approach

The urban environment – buildings, cities and infrastructure – represents one of the most important contributors to climate change, while at the same time holding the key to a more sustainable way of living. The transformation from traditional to sustainable systems requires interdisciplinary knowledge of the re-design, construction, operation and maintenance of the built environment.

Sustainable Urban Environments: An Ecosystem Approach presents fundamental knowledge of the built environment. Approaching the topic from an ecosystems perspective, it shows the reader how to combine diverse practical elements into sustainable solutions for future buildings and cities. You’ll learn to connect problems and solutions at different spatial scales, from urban ecology to material, water and energy use, from urban transport to livability and health. The authors introduce and explore a variety of governance tools that support the transformation process, and show how they can help overcome institutional barriers. The book concludes with an account of promising perspectives for achieving a sustainable built environment in industrialized countries.

Offering a unique overview and understanding of the most pressing challenges in the built environment, Sustainable Urban Environments helps the reader grasp opportunities for integration of knowledge and technologies in the design, construction and management of the built environment. Students and practitioners who are eager to look beyond their own fields of interest will appreciate this book because of its depth and breadth of coverage.

Ellen van Bueren received her Master’s in Public Administration at Leiden University / Erasmus University of Rotterdam, the Netherlands in 1996. She worked for a couple of years as a consultant at the urban planning firm Zandvoort Ordening & Advies in Utrecht (now part of Royal Haskoning).  By the end of 1997 she started her research and teaching at Delft University of Technology. Until 2002 she worked for the Delft Interfaculty Research Center DIOC-DGO The Ecological City. During these years she was also hired by TNO Building and Construction, a research institute, for one day a week. A synthesis of the research she carried out in this Center will result in a PhD thesis about the design of policy arrangement for a sustainable built environment, which is expected to be published in 2008.

In 2002 she started her work for the section Policy, Organization Law and Gaming, where she continued her research and teaching about the organization and management of complex policy and decision making processes. In 2008 she expects to finish her thesis on Policy-Making for a Sustainable Built Environment, which is part of the Delft Cluster research program. She also participates in the research and management of the Multi-Actor Systems Program of the Delft Center for Sustainable Urban Areas and in the Center for Process Management and Simulation.