Design

All ECL projects include the following elements (adjusted to local environmental, socio-cultural, and economic conditions):

  • Urban Form, Urban Design, and Land Use: All projects reflect what is becoming known as “European green urbanism,” featuring compact urban form; pedestrian environments, mixed land uses (including areas for social housing); medium densities (i.e., 150-250 persons per hectare); average of 4-7 stories in height; legible street layout and a clear hierarchy of interconnected streets; defined public and private spaces including public spaces, plazas and squares; clear district boundaries; visual landmarks; public street art; and flexible floor types and buildings; among other such elements of sustainable urban design.
  • Urban Heat Island (UHI) Reduction Strategies and Bio-diversity Networks: All projects address the issue of the UHI with green roofs and green walls connected to an infrastructure of urban forests to support local flora and fauna and to form part of what is known as “continuous productive urban landscapes” (Viljoen 2005).
  • Mobility: In addition to pedestrianism, ‘bicyclism,’ and public transit systems, all projects aim to include some car-free neighbourhoods and areas that only allow the circulation of special small electric vehicles or ‘segway”-type devices requiring special road infrastructure and electric charging/parking facilities.
  • Water Recycling: All projects aim at zero water waste by recycling all sewage and grey water, and managing storm water on site. To this end, all projects feature constructed wetlands, ecological sewage treatment greenhouses (‘eco-machines’), and/or biogas digesters.
  • Energy production: Similarly, all projects aim for zero external energy input by way of using photovoltaic panels, wind turbines, solar water heaters, biogas reactors, biomass-fuelled cooling-heat-power plants (CCHP), and/or geothermal heat pumps, all connected to an internal ‘smart grid’ system that sell excess electricity off to the urban grid when there is a surplus of energy production, or that draw from the city grid in case of internal shortages.
  • Food Production: All projects have food production areas to meet the basic dietary intake of the residential population with rooftop gardens, high yield poly-culture plots, permaculture areas, high-yield greenhouses, and/or vertical farms.
  • Solid Waste Recycling: In all projects, organic waste is collected and recycled on site to be used as fuel for biogas reactors or for the CCHP plants, or to be composted as fertilizer for the food-producing areas. Non-organic solid waste is collected and sorted also on site through underground vacuum piping systems.
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