Thursday 13th February - Saturday 15th February 2003
Copenhagen, Denmark

Session 2: Buildings, Land and Efficiency

Andrew Brown
Building Design and Ecological Citizenship
Associate Dean for Planning and Development, The University of Texas School of Public Health, Health Science Center, Houston, USA

Almost fifty percent of humans are now housed and work in urban settings. Resource extraction, industrial production, and materials distribution involved with construction processes form a vast segment of most economies and place huge strains on the environment. Building operating systems consume huge amounts of energy.

These processes and their products - the cities and the buildings in which we live - are complex technologies comprised of hundreds of subsidiary technologies. Ecological health implies a revision of our current approach to buildings.

Fully accounting for their impact means understanding upstream and downstream implications in terms of material origins, by-products of construction processes, and impacts on natural and man-made infrastructures.

Can the need to consume standardized industrial products, to create cultural symbols, to concentrate capital, to satisfy material appetites, or to promote human health and welfare rationalize the impact a building has on the environment? Should human priorities ever be assessed in isolation from the process of environmental accounting?

Building systems typically evolve to incorporate emerging technologies. What design opportunities are created by new technologies? Are there models in nature that can serve as valid models for building technologies?

Ideally, design integrates building technologies to balance both competing human needs and the needs of human and the environment.

Thinking ecologically involves re-thinking traditional approaches to the design process: to functional programming, to the role professional ethics, to the role of the architect as artist, and to the selection of building systems technologies.

Buildings must simultaneously promote the health of humans and the health of the environment, and thereby demonstrate ecological citizenship.

Maxwell Chiazor
Developing Land Information Systems in Nigeria: The Lagos Experience
Department of Geomatics, The University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia

With a population of about 13 million (UNDP 2001), Lagos, the former capital city of Nigeria, is one of the emerging megacities in the 21st century. As a center of urban agglomeration, Lagos has an unfair, unreliable and chaotic land market leading to improper planning for both real estate and other urban services; this has been exacerbated by the absence of appropriate databases for accurate land information. An important component of the current globalization of world economies is the plan for privatization of land and real estate development by the Lagos state government. In this context, research has shown that modern technological development will stimulate modernization, and make the city more viable for investment. Concerned groups often believe the geographic information systems and technologies as an important component of sustainable land-use (World bank, USAID).
Yet, despite the efforts of these multilateral development partners, the development of a geographic information system for sustainable planning is far from achieving the desired results. This paper will look at the World Bank assisted project from which a GIS was used and the current in-house GIS project by the land registry. If the adoption of GIS by the developed nations is a means to an end, what are the criteria on which policy makers in Nigeria can be persuaded to adopt GIS? Is it true that what is good for one society may not be good for another? How can the culture of ‘technology distrust’ be removed so that people of Lagos can accept this innovative technology? This paper is aimed at encouraging the diffusion and adoption of GIS across a broad spectrum of the Lagos state administration, by improving the understanding of the roles of a GIS in development. It shall present two case studies from ‘GIS strong’ nations such as Australia and New Zealand where there is evidence that government is reaping the benefits of a geographic information systems and technology in resource management.

Roselle Miko and Shirley Thompson
Making the Canadian National Building Code Go Further: Managing Perceptions Surrounding Energy Efficient Building Processes and Technologies
Natural Resources Institute, University of Manitoba, Dysart Road, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Currently, one third of all landfill materials in Canada come from the construction industry; mainly in the form of wood, asphalt, and cement, but also as secondary by-products such as plastics, adhesives, etc. With the current shortage of available land for landfills and the premium cost of construction materials, and the embodied energy in these materials, reducing these wastes makes economic, environmental, and social sense.
The Canadian National Building Code legislates the standards to which residential and commercial buildings are constructed. However, current mainstream practices and the Code are not addressing issues of industry sustainability or responsibility. With low standards, inadequate housing results with poor people paying with their health, as well as with higher fuel bills. For those contractors willing to go beyond the Code, they can employ standards found in voluntary programs such as the R2000 (residential) program, which promotes healthier, more energy efficient buildings that have better indoor air quality than those buildings built exclusively to Code, as well as using less materials and producing less waste. In spite of climate change and Kyoto, only 30 percent of licensed, active builders in Manitoba choose to go beyond Code, and are registered R2000 builders.
This paper will discuss perceptions and economic realities surrounding energy efficient building processes and technologies that deter the majority of contractors from going beyond Code. In addition, this paper will endeavour to position Canada’s Code within current international agreements and discuss the implications for Canada if we do not adopt better standards. A two part case study, based on a Canadian R2000 building, will examine contradictions inherent in Code requirements, as they relate to industry perspectives on adopting green building technologies, processes, and materials and contrast Canada’s Code to a European country’s Code.