Great question!

So, do you mean like effectively all cities? Then maybe, but I think almost no.

I don't like rating systems in general. They will produce infrastructure that is far better than the status quo, but not likely good enough. The assumption is that in the setting they were developed in, over the time period being considered, this is the best balance of cost and performance (broadly speaking) that the designers of the system could come up with. But costs change and not all settings are created equal. I would consider the highest standard of any rating system as a reasonably good place to start, but not where to finish.

Look up GATE - global association of transition engineers - and think about what transitions are coming. We know about peak fossil carbon, peak conventional agriculture, peak ecological footprint; all of these are predictable. We know the future we're going to be seeing in 40 years will be not very much like the future we were expecting 40 years ago.

If we're building infrastructure that will have an expected lifespan of 100 years, and will be receiving it's first maintenance in 25 years, we shouldn't just be thinking about what that maintenance cycle will entail, but rather what the whole lifecycle maintenance is going to be. Most of the design life of that infrastructure will be existing in a low energy intensity environment where the amount of available labour will be significantly reduced (certainly on a per capita basis, but I think also on an absolute basis). Will concrete wall panels and high-tech heating and cooling be serviceable at 50 years? Likely not.

I think individual sustainability is an oxymoron. Individual resilience makes sense to me. Be a net energy producer, manage more land than your ecological footprint, be able to grow your own food, make good solid community connections - all of these things will add to individual resilience.

It could be possible to design buildings with the same principles. How do you make sure the changes in energy availability in the future will not make your building a pile of junk?

In Canada, for residential applications, I would use STES to hold the heat required to get through winter, and to store winter for AC and refrigeration through the year. I would be off-grid, so that my operating costs will not change with energy costs. That means a HUGE thermal mass, and good insulation, and lots of south facing glazing. I would use solar thermal hot water, and store heat in the phase change of paraffin, so I could have instant solar hot water. I would use just enough solar electric to drive the ventilation system (on batteries) and manage my water system (direct solar pumps, cisterns, no well). Cost is similar to conventional, but uses more land than typical urban designs.

In your setting, you'd have to work out what you get for free, and what services you must have. Keep the energy as close to the original form as possible when it is stored, so you have the least losses. Interest rates are likely to stay low, and almost the entire cause of inflation will be from energy costs - if you can effectively eliminate your energy demand, your property value will increase faster than inflation. Figure out how you're going to service the infrastructure when the cost of energy is high and low, and when the cost of labour is high and low. All 4 cases will exist in the foreseeable future, regardless of setting.

Good luck.

Dear Mamun

Once the city is built, its sustainability performance is largely fixed. The sustainability should be considered from early design stages. However, some adaptations can be addressed incurring in unexpected lifecycle cost.

I consider it is important to develop a diagnostic to assess the adaptability potential. Nevertheless, the comment above (answer) it is true; times change and the building issues as well.

Regards,

Jaime

Good morning Mr Rashid

I agree with Mr Nuttall that this is a truly great question.

Personally, I see two aspects in it:

The first one is associated with a city and the buildings within. There is a significant difference between the "life-cycle" of a city and the "life-cycle" of the individual buildings within in. Even when we create a create an environmental friendly building within the city the individual building contribution to the greening of the city will be just a short burst of light in the millennial existence of the city itself. Mainly it will last until the next major upgrade of the environmental rating system but it should be expected that some of the residual environmental benefits will continue to deliver the environmental benefits for a bit longer. If we consider a city as a huge mosaic of the individual buildings in it, if those individual buildings do not change their 'color' to "green" even for a shot period of time in the life of the city, that city is unlikely to change its overall 'color'.

The second one is related to the building ratings. In my view, the emphasis should be less on individual building ratings but on uplifting of the general building code and promotion of environmental friendly building design through the code itself. The building rating should be preserved only for the capital developments where, one would expect, sufficient resources to be available to undertake the rating process. It is probably better to have many 'light green' buildings than only few 'dark green' buildings in the city.

With Best Wishes

Vladimir Ladinski

Currently most of the green building rating systems are voluntary and prescriptive. There are very few with continuous monitoring to see whether the green aspects of the building as designed or projected, are maintained through the life cycle of the building. If on the other hand, buildings are mandatorily assessed on a regular performance benchmark, it will have far reaching effects. Rating systems have remained a design tool. However, they can be considered as first steps in a paradigm shift in environmental design of both cities and buildings.

They are two different ways to get ecological results. The urban sustainability and the architectural ecology. The big city system, its ifrastructure, land use model, the technical way of development, the energy consume are the challenge for the urban planning and the urban policy. It does not work well. I don't like green rating as an approach. I think then you need create builging, you should design good architecture. It means the good use the plot of land, good use of solar and earth energy, keep water balance concerning the rain, the ground water and the sewage. If you get suссess at individual case, we have a chance to hope that any one else take your experience for his practice.

Mega rating systems can hold nations accountable to reverse the inevitable rising greenhouse gas effect's adverse impact on global climate systems. To roll up data for a national measure one must start at the major contributing sources: buildings cause 25% demand on energy and none are net zero polluters. Trade offs must be a tactic for built environment in situ. Codes can move the dial toward net zero and industry will respond with systems scalable to be affordable. Check Hanover principles for founding basics for society to embrace

Great question!!!

It points to a fundamental issue: Can sustainability be addressed by individual buildings? Or such efforts resemble Danaids leaky jar?

While the mess can be attributed to a rotten system as you somehow put it, my answer is still yes -we can learn from individual buildings, which, somehow can generate lessons learnt, for remedial measures.

For the sake of future generations it would be wise to get a benchmark of how much energy us consumed by a building as a unit. Then rolling back consumption will require energy conservation techniques that have measurable benefits to use in predicting the efficacy of each action. Some can have quick payback while other techniques may not break even economically but are necessary nonetheless if gov't mandates a % reduction in consumption of fossil fuel energy. Gov't may strictly enforce carbon tax or hold property owners accountable for meeting lower consumption rates.

Therefore case studies showing best practices in building sustainably makes it possible to be more prescriptive by gov't.

Hi Mamun

When confronted by a whole "unsustainable" city depending on fossil fuels for energy, one can raise the question of the importance of an individual "green rated" building. The power of the individually rated building is in the way it is used to educate the public. People want to live and work in buildings that are cheap, comfortable, safe and beautiful. Although greatly flawed, most rating systems provide benchmarks for people to identify "green" buildings therefore stimulating a demand for more. Douglas Nuttall mentioned Transition Engineering, a worthwhile movement to follow. How do you answer your own question?