A Hybrid Model for Sustainable Urban Metabolism in Metropolitan Communities

Abstract

Climate change, and its disturbing implications, increases interest in sustainable living and development of ecocities. Intending to re-build society using ecological solutions, various governments and organizations are challenging themselves to produce ecocity models and evaluation systems. Urban metabolism, measuring a city’s resource flows, is a common evaluation approach. This research project uses urban metabolism to assess waste reduction, reinforcing resilience of circular metabolisms, by two ecocities. Key performance indicators, planning principles, and adherence to international green building guidelines are used to quantitatively calculate the effectiveness of the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Ecocity flagship cooperation project between the governments of Singapore and China and the Dockside Green project in Canada. Qualitative data, including reviews from prominent sustainability researchers, are also evaluated. Findings suggest that the effectiveness of both ecocity models were inhibited by the practicality and feasibility of their master plans; in particular, several quantitative goals for bending the urban metabolism were unsuccessful. A hybrid model is introduced with principles and guidelines for optimizing previous prototypes and proposing feasible solutions to create a flexible template for achieving circular metabolism. It utilizes the quantitative indicators that were shown to be effective across both case studies and takes into account their viability by applying qualitative feedback.