FINLAND

ECOPADEV, 2002 - 2004

ECOPADEV - International Research Project - European Community Funding - project ID - EVK4-CT-2001-00064

Designing a new district or rehabilitation of an existing urban area are long term projects that have important impacts on the life of an urban project.

The EU Directives regarding buildings is to improve their energy performance and to move towards zero energy buildings. But the energy performance of buildings starts to be defined at the urban planning stage when the urban plan layout starts to shape.

Additionally energy performance is neither static nor independent from other planning criteria that also deal with the plan of the urban space, the use of endogenous resources, either dealing with renewable energies, water management and recycled materials.

CITIES OF FUTURE

Concern this projects to the study of the development of sustainable urban plans with the use of the Check List of the ECTP-CEU, and the LEED system for neighborhood development.

At the European context systems like BREAM are also can be used to address the design of sustainable buildings considering urban planning criteria impact.

Urban projects like Wise Plans and Musec have already been developed at the local level aiming to test development methodologies for pilot action plans where sustainable communities were implemented.