rating expenses that constitute as much as 85 percent of life-cycle costs, with space heating and cooling, lighting, water heating, equipment, and appliances typically accounting for more than 60 percent of those outlays.
One true “sustainable urban community” is currently under development in the United Arab Emirates (UAE); made up of two towers projected to combine residential, commercial, and retail space, it is expected to break ground this year. Its sustainability “premium” on up-front construction costs — that is, the extra expense of including environmentally friendly features — is about 15 percent. However, the project’s Swiss and British planners and engineers estimate that the project will reap as much as 80 percent energy savings over its lifetime, thanks to an optimized mix of facilities; improved insulation approaches; radiant cooling, which uses chilled water as opposed to forced air for air conditioning; and photovoltaic as well as other solar power systems. Overall, this combination of approaches translates into an attractive internal rate of return of about 20 percent.
Nowhere is the opportunity for sustainable urban planning and development more pronounced than in the developing world, especially in Asia. The Asia-Pacific region is home to 55 percent of the world’s population and has more than doubled its consumption of ecological resources since 1961, according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and environmental watchdog Global Footprint Network. The World Bank estimates that by 2015, more than half of China’s urban residential and commercial building stock will have been erected during the previous 15 years. And in India, the largest developer plans to build 750 million square feet of retail, commercial, and office space in the near future, three times the amount it constructed in the previous six decades. But in the midst of this building boom, Asia has the chance to improve its heretofore less-than-exemplary environmental record. In their report titled Asia-Pacific 2005: The Ecological Footprint and Natural Wealth, the WWF and Global Footprint asserted that these building trends present an opportunity for the region to “shape the world’s path towards sustainable development in the coming decades.”
Some officials in Asia have begun to recognize that they must act differently than the West has or they will pay a huge price in environmental catastrophes and rising energy costs. In a December 2006 speech, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh wondered rhetorically whether growth is “sustainable if development in the developing world merely mirrors the experience of the developed” world. The Chinese Communist Party–controlled newspaper China Daily proclaimed in February 2008 a “farewell to the GDP growth cult,” noting that “GDP must be based on environmental sustainability.”
A number of initiatives in China focused on promoting sustainable development have come to the fore in recent years. For example, Huangbaiyu, a poor village in Liaoning province, was chosen in 2003 as the site of China’s first model “eco-village,” and the massive eco-town of Dongtan near Shanghai is set to open in 2010 at the start of the Shanghai World Expo. Other towns have taken more mundane approaches. Rizhao, a city of 3 million in Shandong province, is focusing on maximizing the use of solar power. Today, 99 percent of households in Rizhao’s city center and 30 percent in the suburbs are reported to have solar panels for lighting and water heating. Although some environmental experts have been skeptical of these statistics as well as of China’s overall commitment to sustainability, these projects appear to be a step in the right direction.
For all its long-term benefits, sustainable urban planning will not become commonplace without significant support from many of the more powerful elements involved in major building projects. For example, governments can set tougher environmental standards for construction efforts, provide incentives for building in a sustainable way, and educate the development community about sustainable techn