Urban Sustainability
Golnaz Mortezaei; Mahmoud Mohammadi; Farshad Nasrollahi; Mahmoud Ghalehnoee
Abstract
Rapid progress in technology and, consequently, the increasing growth of urban population has inevitably led to the development of residential neighborhoods. Changes in the form of urban texture and their inconsistency with climatic features, together with the rise of energy demand, have had manifold ...
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Rapid progress in technology and, consequently, the increasing growth of urban population has inevitably led to the development of residential neighborhoods. Changes in the form of urban texture and their inconsistency with climatic features, together with the rise of energy demand, have had manifold adverse consequences such as global warming and climate change. According to previous research, most energy in cities is consumed by residential buildings which is highly affected by the city shape, an issue which needs to be amended. Therefore, since buildings account for a significant portion of energy consumption in cities, wise decisions should be made for designing new urban textures that reduce energy consumption. Research on urbanism and energy efficiency has offered different views. The vast majority of studies conducted on the optimization of energy consumption in urban areas have focused on the impact of urban shape on fuel consumption in transportation or have evaluated energy consumption in micro scales. But, as thermal performance changes in scales beyond the building scale, researchers must analyze the thermal performance of buildings in larger scales such as neighborhoods. The missing part in this field is the assessment of energy consumption in neighborhoods. To fill this gap, the present paper attempts to assess the primary energy consumption of cooling, heating and lighting systems in new patterns of residential texture on neighborhood scale. Afterwards, on the basis of primary energy criterion, efficient and inefficient patterns are identified and, finally, some strategies are provided for optimizing energy consumption in new residential areas. The present study is an applied research conducted using descriptive-analytical method. Data was collected by documentary and field methods. In the first step, the concepts of primary energy, energy efficiency, and typo-morphology approach are described and analyzed in order to formulate the theoretical framework of the research. The relationship between microclimate and morphology is also investigated. Then, following the typo-morphology approach, the residential texture of Sepahan Shahr, Esfahan, Iran, is categorized on the neighborhood scale. Finally, simulating the primary cooling, heating, and lighting equipments’ energy consumption in the residential textures via Design Builder software, results are analyzed based on the comparative approach and statistical tests. The results show that there is a strong correlation between primary energy consumption and indicators of design layout, mass placement, form of the building, height of the building, and open spaces. Also, there is a moderate correlation between primary energy consumption and block proportions. Moreover, based on the results from the variance analysis, common row patterns and square-shaped patterns are the most and least efficient patterns of new residential textures, respectively, though the lighting systems’ energy consumption is lower in square-shaped patterns. Other patterns, such as H, T, I, and L shapes are in mid-level for primary energy consumption. Among these patterns, the H-shape is the best choice for four-storey buildings with high-density.
