Urbanization and construction are primary drivers of land cover and land use change, climate change and environmental degradation. Sustainable development seeks to counteract the negative impact of cities and urbanization. Shifting away from the still prevailing human-nature dialectic, social-ecological systems view humans as part of nature, thereby linking biophysical and social factors into a coherent system across spatial, temporal and functional scales. This approach and related complex and adaptive approaches and systems enable a new take on sustainable urban development and in particular green cities. The proposed book will focus on different aspects of advancing urban social-ecological systems with particular emphasis on the Urban-Rural Dialogue in Green City Design.
The chapters will outline novel approaches to thinking and designing green cities, urban form as urban landform, integration of architectures and their settings, novel hybrid land use and related hybrid architectural typologies, multi-stakeholder and multi-species approaches. This will include a range of topics including green urban land use, urban ecosystem development and support, urban agriculture and food production, urban farming and gardening, and human health and well-being. Given the existing strong movement and research in this field in Italy, the book will concentrate on ground-breaking approaches and research from this region.
A list of recognized authors will present approaches and discussions centering around the above-listed thematic foci concerning green cities planning, design, governance and ultimately aspects of living in green cities. The presented themes and approaches are also of more general fundamental relevance for urban contexts in other regions with comparable climate and environmental conditions. Therefore, we anticipate that the book will become a course book for many courses taught at universities worldwide, as well as a book for researchers and practitioners that wish to inform and prepare themselves for what is to come in terms of novel green city design.
Alessandra Battisti (PhD) is an Architect and a Full Professor in Technology of Architecture and Environmental Design in the Department of Planning, Design and Technology of Architecture, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy, where she is also the Director of the 2nd level University Master‘s degree course in “Environmental Technological Design”, a Member of the Faculty Board and a Teaching Staff Member for the Ph.D. in Planning Design Technology of Architecture. Since 1993, she has been carrying out research, teaching and experimentation activities on topics such as technological innovation for environmentally aware architecture, buildings’ ecological and energetic efficiency, bioclimatic approach in design and environmental sustainability, urban analysis and urban regeneration. She holds strong expertise in sustainable architecture, energy building, renewable energy, and their relation with regeneration processes of existing urban fabric and architecture. She is an expert consultant for the European Community as well as an expert consultant of the MUR (Italian Ministry of Universities and Research). She is also a Member of the Inarch (National Institute of Architecture) National Board. She has over 200 scientific publications and 14 books to her credit and she is the winner of more than 30 international architectural competitions.
Michael U. Hensel is an architect, partner in OCEAN Architecture | Environment and book series editor of the Springer Nature Series Designing Environments. He is a university professor at TU Wien and leads the research department of Digital Architecture and Planning. His work focuses on advanced sustainable planning in design, fusing architecture, landscape architecture and urban design, data-driven planning and design and trans-scalar and multi-domain modeling.
Defne Sunguroğlu Hensel is an architect, partner in OCEAN Architecture | Environment. She is Associate Professor for Landscape Architecture and Urban Ecology at Southeast University in Nanjing, China, coordinating manager and steering board member of LamoLab Research Center, and book series editor of the Springer Nature Series Designing Environments. She is also a researcher at the Technical University of Munich, in the EU Horizon 2020 FET Ecolopes Project. She previously taught at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, Oslo School of Architecture and Design, and Vienna University of Technology and she was an innovation fellow at the University of Technology in Sydney.
