INNOVATIVE MODELS AND STRATEGIES FOR ADAPTING THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT TO CLIMATE CHANGE

Renovation processes as well as the development of new housing will be relevant fields of interventions in shaping the future of contemporary cities and strategic sectors to revive industrial activity, job markets and competitiveness. At the same time they represent the greatest opportunity to face global environmental challenges, such as climate change and natural resources scarcity, through innovative perspectives assuming the built environment as a whole and no more individual buildings as the core of design strategies. The rapid and wider diffusion of “eco-innovation” can have a leveraging effect on environmental, as well as on economic and social improvements, by enabling win-win synergies able to increase the rate of successful processes both in terms of architectural and economic sustainability. As incremental innovations alone cannot achieve an absolute decoupling of economic growth from environmental impacts, increasing the market potential for more radical and systemic eco-innovations is becoming of particular importance to enable a long-term transition to a greener economy. In recent decades, environmental analysis in the built environment has focused on issues relating to life-cycle and energy performance at the scale of individual buildings, establishing energy savings technologies and design strategies that reduce energy use and improve indoor comfort. There has been comparatively little focus on the impacts on the outdoor microclimate at district or neighbourhood scale. A joint study, involving the Universities of Bologna and Westminster, is focused on climatic adaptive-mitigation strategies to support the transition of the built environment to a low-carbon society. The paper outlines the general framework and methodology of the study providing a picture of the design strategies and innovative approaches. In order to encourage industry to take up economic opportunities from developing and diffusing eco-innovative products and services, the study examines the key elements for fostering initiatives at an urban scale, the principal drivers to boost transition, the strategic tools as well as the main barriers to reach successful interventions.