Toward post-carbon neighborhoods?

As the climate emergency intensifies and resources become increasingly scarce, attentions are turning to urban brownfield regeneration as a way to preserve vital farmland and protect biodiversity-rich ecosystems. Realizing the vision of a low-carbon future depends on humankind’s ability to both protect the planet and adapt to the impacts of climate change. Rising to this challenge will demand action on multiple fronts.

Moving ahead with the transition

We need to fundamentally rethink how we live our lives. Among other things, this means looking again at how we organize and build our cities, reassessing how we move around and travel, creating more green spaces, relying more on local resources, and weaning ourselves off fossil fuels. Neighborhood-scale approaches hold great promise precisely because they stand at the intersection between urban planning and architecture, allowing us to address these challenges at a scale that’s neither so small that we can’t see the bigger picture, nor so big that we lose sight of the details. Such approaches are part of a wider trend toward a more locally focused concept of planning and architecture, where the emphasis is on both regenerating existing neighborhoods and building new communities around public transport hubs and clean commuting networks. And these neighborhood-scale changes aren’t just the preserve of city centers. They’re happening everywhere.

Pioneering initiatives

Over the past two decades, new eco-friendly neighborhoods have sprung up in most of Europe’s major cities. The first generation included places like Vabuan in Freiburg, Beddington Zero Energy Development (BedZED) in London and Ecoparc in Neuchâtel – pioneering developments that highlighted the potential environmental benefits of city living and trialed more sustainable approaches to urban regeneration. The second-generation movement, which is now in full swing, is more concerned with marks and certifications: hence the sheer number of new “eco-neighborhoods” and “sustainable neighborhoods,” not all of which necessarily deserve to carry these labels. The upshot of this trend is a one-size-fits-all approach whereby planners and designers often treat every new development as a clean slate, sometimes failing to consider local realities and contexts.

A forward-thinking vision

Now, we have come to the collective realization that fresh thinking is needed if we are to drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions, build climate-resilient cities and achieve the vision of a genuinely post-carbon future. In other words, it’s time for the third generation of neighborhoods in transition. New approaches are already coming to the fore: approaches that double down on frugality, efficiency and adaptability, and that have circular principles at their core. With their emphasis on sourcing locally, creating more interconnected green spaces and repurposing what’s already there, these post-carbon neighborhoods will play a key role in shaping a more resilient, livable future for today’s cities.

Emmanuel Rey, Associate professor of Architecture and Sustainable Construction Technologies and head of the Laboratory of Architecture and Sustainable Technologies (LAST), EPFL

• This article was published in August 2023 in three local dailies – La Côte (Vaud Canton), Le Nouvelliste (Valais Canton) and Arcinfo (Neuchâtel Canton) – under a joint initiative between EPFL and ESH Médias to showcase the R&D being carried out at EPFL on advanced construction techniques.