Andrew FlynnCardiff University

Presentation to theChina (Binhai Tianjin) International Eco-City

ForumSeptember 2010

Eco-cities and the conventional city:

opportunities and challenges

• Eco-cities an important and innovative way of seeking to reduce resource use

• Growing popularity• But what difference will they make to

urban resource consumption?– What are the numbers of eco-dwellings being

built?– How significant are these new dwellings for

existing urban areas?• Use Ecological Footprint to compare

different types of housing development– Example from Cardiff – a small UK city

Eco-cities and resource consumption

Ecological Footprint of Cardiff’s housing•Existing housing stock is responsible for nearly all of the Ecological Footprint•New, more eco-efficient housing is not being built sufficiently rapidly to change the profile of existing housing•Is it best to invest in innovative energy efficient homes or to retrofit existing housing stock?

Housing type % total housing EF

Existing housing stock

98.7

New houses 1.3

Housing types and energy consumption

Housing type Energy consumption pattern

‘Cardiff average’ Cardiff average consumption pattern

‘2002 regulation’ Cardiff average consumption with slightly reduced energy consumption

‘Eco-home’ Reduced consumption mainly due to technical efficiency improvements

‘BedZED’ Clearly reduce consumption due to specific BedZED conditions

Footprint for housing types: buildings and energy use

Limited impacts•Based on the local land use plan 2001-2016 there is to be an 11.6% increase in dwellings•If all new housing in Cardiff was built using the BedZED standard the EF of the total housing stock would reduce by 0.99%

• Must not be distracted by eco-city development– The existing urban structure

makes by far the biggest contribution to resource use

– Eco-city makes only a modest contribution to overall development and to any individual city’s development

• Need to promote lesson learning from eco-developments to existing urban infrastructure– Promote retro-fitting– Create opportunities for

flexibility and redesign in the city

Lessons

• The Housing Ecological Footprint is only a relatively small part of the total EcologicalFootprint

• More important factors are – Food and drink– Domestic energy– Travel

• How we live our lives and the buildings in which we live our lives should be much better related– Need to link together our homes, how we travel to and

from work, the foods we consume to produce more sustainable lifestyles

• Living more sustainable lifestyles applies to those who live in eco-cities and those in live in conventional city

Final thoughts