B UILDING & M ANAGEMENT
V OLUME 3 I SSUE 2 M AY - A UGUST 2019
T HE CIT Y F I ED M ETHODOLOGY FOR CITY RENOVATION AT DISTRICT LEVEL
E. V ALLEJO , C. C RIADO , E. A RRIZABALAGA , G. M ASSA AND A. V ASALLO (2019). B UILDING & M ANAGEMENT , 3(2): 23-33
identified for the city. This will provide a clearer vision about
how the decisions have contributed to the achievement of the
final results. In this context, under the umbrella of Sustainable
Strategic Urban Planning, a novel methodology for urban
renovation at district level is proposed and validated by the
European Smart City project CITyFiED (Grant Agreement Nº
609129).
1. I NTRODUCCIÓN
T
he optimization and the particularization of the urban
energy planning processes to each city is becoming an
increasing necessity for municipalities. According to the
literature, the specific dimensions covered by this concept can
vary depending on its interpretation. However, most of the
authors agree on the necessity of adopting a holistic
perspective including the tecno-economic, social and
environment aspects when approaching to the problem.
2. CIT Y F I ED M ETHODOLOGY
FOR CITY RENOVATION AT DISTRICT
LEVEL
During the last years, a great activity has occurred in this
field. Many efforts have been made in the standardization of
smart cities. An example of it, is the case of the Technical
Committees and Working Groups of the ISO TC/268
Sustainable cities and communities. Nevertheless, most of these
works are focused on the definition of several common criteria
and a methodology for measuring the level of smartness and
the sustainability of cities. Although this is a relevant part of
the energy planning process, which provides a better
understanding of the initial situation and the evolution of the
performance of cities, several aspects such as the relation with
the decision that are made during the energy planning process
are not clearly established.
Meeting the ambitious targets set by the European Union (EU),
i.e. reducing greenhouse gas emissions 20% by 2020, 40%
by 2030 and 80% by 2080 respect to the values of 1990 is
essential to reach the objectives of the Paris Agreement [2].
This agreement aims to limit the temperature rise this century
below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The role
of cities in climate change mitigation is currently
acknowledged, particularly in European cities where more
than the 70% of the population lives in urban areas [3].
Besides, it is expected that two third of the world’s population
will be living in an urban area by 2050 [4].
More specifically, small and medium sized cities are the ones
that represent the highest improvement potential considering
that they represent the 83% of the European cities [5].
Besides, around 45% of their buildings were built before
1969, 32% between 1970 and 1989 and only 9.3% in the
90’s, what represents a huge opportunity due to the massive
amount of buildings that are susceptible to be refurbished.
From another point of view, the advances occurred in the field
of the energy modelling and the scenario development at city
scale need to be also mentioned. This practice has been
traditionally more used for energy planning issues at national
scale but nowadays the interest for applying this approach to
the regional and city context is increasing rapidly. However,
as described by Park [1] the scope of city planning includes
also a range of interdependent decisions at the nexus of the
private and public spheres. Besides, as in the cases of the
sustainability assessment frameworks of cities, the way of
considering the role of the main stakeholders during the entire
energy planning and more specifically in the decision-making
process is difficult to understand when focusing the view in the
detailed technical aspects of the energy modelling.
Therefore, the energy consumption reduction in cities and
particularly in the building sector is a theme of interest for the
European Union. However, it is still a challenge for
municipalities to decide how to define and prioritize the
different measures that can be implemented in the different
zones of the cities. In this regard, one of the first steps is the
identification of the areas of the city that are susceptible to be
intervened. This is precisely the step in which the city analysis
through the evaluation of its districts is useful and necessary.
Despite all this experiences and activities in the field, energy
planning of cities is still a challenge. An important part of the
complexity relies on the necessity of combining many different
technical and non-technical phases in which the role and the
interaction of a number of different stakeholders need to be
properly considered. Besides, in most of the cases little
information is available about how and in which phases the
decisions are adopted. Moreover, many municipalities do not
have the needed specialized and diverse capacities required
to cover the entire process. Most of them depend on external
consultancy groups that guide them.
Among other benefits, the evaluation at district scale
facilitates developing a more detailed analysis covering
aspects such as; the identification of the current situation, the
identification of the specific objectives and necessities, the
modelling of the different scenarios for the energy, social and
economic analysis, the prioritization of measures and the
identification of the optimum scenario.
On the other hand, it is relevant to remark that in the context
of the sustainable urban renovation, the decision makers are
generally political and social players who stablish goals and
who define priorities for the city according to the information
that they have available. Taking this into account, the role of
methodologies and tools that provide a comparison of the
existing alternatives is essential to support the decision makers
But the specific process to be followed is still unclear and there
is a need of holistic methodologies and tools that consider a
global approach and that define clearly the procedure for
considering in each phase the participation of the stakeholders
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