Germanwatch: Habitat III underlines importance of cities for sustainability
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At the end of the UN conference Habitat III in Quito (Ecuador), the environmental and development organization Germanwatch draws a mixed balance. "Around 50,000 people took part in the conference. This alone shows that cities are considered to be of great importance on the way to a sustainable world. It is very good that the adopted New Urban Agenda recognises cities as important players in achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris climate targets," says Lisa Junghans, expert on climate change, adaptation and urban transformation at Germanwatch. However, she qualifies: "The New Urban Agenda is not concrete enough in parts. Citizens will not feel directly addressed and there is a complete lack of measurable goals and criteria for monitoring the success of the agenda. It remains to be seen to what extent the agenda really supports cities in their development towards greater sustainability and a higher quality of life. Civil society in particular will have a key role to play in the coming years to ensure that the principles adopted here for future urban development have an impact."
Habitat III was the third World Conference on Human Settlements and Sustainable Urban Development after 1976 and 1996 and is intended to define guidelines for future urban development. Despite the highly participatory process in the preparation of the New Urban Agenda, the negotiations in the final phase took place, as expected, exclusively within the circle of government negotiators. Junghans: "Although this process is a classic UN process driven by states, it is problematic that city representatives are excluded from the final decisions on their own development."
Germanwatch is particularly positive about the fact that the final document grants cities more self-determination and ownership in the implementation of the New Urban Agenda and that "no one is to be left behind" - a reference to the particularly vulnerable population groups that must be included in the planning and implementation of future urban development policy.
The hope that a larger number of cities would lead the way with voluntary commitments, for example towards climate neutrality, has unfortunately not materialised. "Although there have been some very good announcements from civil society as well as from Germany and the EU regarding the creation of housing and climate-friendly mobility, concrete announcements from local governments themselves have been very limited," says Junghans.
Source: Germanwatch press release, 20 October 2016
The BDA Prize for Architectural Criticism 2018 is awarded to the managing editor of the "Süddeutsche Zeitung" and book author Gerhard Matzig.
The BDA Prize for Architectural Criticism looks back on a history of over 50 years. The prize winners have included Julius Posener, Manfred Sack, Wolfgang Pehnt and Peter Sloterdijk. The prize honours "an outstanding achievement in the field of critical debate on questions of planning and building by journalistic means", as the statutes state. The BDA's "Critics' Prize" is in a series with the two other prizes that the BDA Federal Association awards alternately: the "Great BDA Prize" and the "BDA Architecture Prize Nike".
The BDA Prize for Architectural Criticism 2018 will be awarded at a ceremony on 16 June at 4 pm at the Schmidt Theater in Hamburg. The laudatory speech will be held by Dietmar Steiner. The award ceremony is embedded in the program of the 14th BDA Day 2018 in Hamburg.
Berlin, 9 January 2020 - One of the Herculean tasks in achieving the climate targets is to radically reduce CO2 emissions from the heating supply. A research group led by the Institute for Ecological Economy Research (IÖW) is showing how cities can move away from coal, oil and gas in a socially responsible way. The "Urban Heat Transition" project analysed possible contributions from renewable energies and local heat sources in Berlin's urban districts. "Waste heat from businesses, heat from waste water or geothermal energy have hardly been utilised to date. The key to such environmentally friendly heat are neighbourhood concepts and heating networks," says project manager Bernd Hirschl from the IÖW. "An important prerequisite is a more efficient building stock. Only if the heat demand is significantly reduced can environmentally friendly heat sources be utilised efficiently."
In the three-year project, the project team from the IÖW, the University of Bremen and the Technical University of Berlin worked together with the Berlin Senate Department for the Environment, Transport and Climate Protection with funding from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research to develop local heating concepts for three Berlin neighbourhoods. At the end of 2019, they discussed their results with the heating industry in Berlin, and the documentation of the conference is now available online at www.urbane-waermewende.de.
Developing nuclei for the heat transition
"Previous neighbourhood concepts were often too complex, had too many different stakeholders and often ended up in a drawer. That's why we recommend a nucleus approach," says Elisa Dunkelberg from the IÖW. These could be public buildings, new construction projects, commercial buildings or housing associations and co-operatives.
The researchers show what a neighbourhood concept can look like for an old building district in Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf: Firstly, the heat demand must be reduced through energy-efficient refurbishment. The heat can be generated using a wastewater heat pump, which is partly powered by solar electricity generated on site, in combination with combined heat and power generation. "Particularly in the case of public buildings, which have a pioneering role - enshrined in law in Berlin - it should always be checked in the case of refurbishment and new buildings whether they are suitable as a nucleus for a neighbourhood concept and the co-supply of surrounding buildings," emphasises Dunkelberg.
Climate-neutral district heating: utilising waste heat and renewables
District heating plays a major role in urban areas. "To become climate-neutral, it is important to integrate more local heat sources from wastewater, river water and geothermal energy as well as waste heat into district heating," says Hirschl, adding that attention must also be paid to the resilience of the heat generation system. A joint case study with the Neukölln district heating plant shows that it is possible to utilise local heat sources. But it needs to be tested technically and requires supporting financial measures. The next steps should now be test drilling for deep geothermal energy, for example, as well as pilot plants that use large heat pumps to provide wastewater or river water heat for district heating. Strategies for funding and risk protection are needed for investment in these technologies, some of which are untested and highly expensive.
Heat transition requires municipal strategic heat planning - and social compatibility
"Municipal heat planning, which has long been standard practice in pioneering countries such as Denmark and in other federal states and municipalities for some time, helps to tap into the identified potential," emphasises Hirschl. The basis for this is a heat register that visualises heat sources such as waste water and commercial waste heat. This can also be used to identify neighbourhoods for cross-building concepts. With sector coupling, it is also important that local authorities and cities plan across infrastructures. Instruments such as urban land-use planning and urban development contracts must be geared towards climate neutrality.
Low refurbishment rates in recent years show that purely incentive-based measures are not enough to ensure energy modernisation. The researchers therefore recommend implementing the regulations more strongly and developing a step-by-step plan to guide the building stock towards climate neutrality. At the same time, subsidies must be increased and conditions for passing on rent must be made more socially acceptable. A step-by-step plan under the conditions of a rent cap must be designed in such a way that energy modernisation is economically reasonable for both landlords and tenants.
Federal Ministry of Education and Research funds "Urban Heat Transition" project for another two years
The Federal Ministry of Education and Research is funding the project in a new partner constellation for a further two years in order to test solution strategies for the central obstacles to implementation and to anchor the research results in municipal heat planning. In addition to the IÖW, the partners are Berliner Wasserbetriebe and the law firm Becker Büttner Held.
The discussion about climate change and the growing demand for living space have increasingly brought timber construction into the focus of planners, architects and developers over the past year. After all, sustainable timber construction can make a significant contribution to climate protection and the creation of living space. The increased interest in timber construction is also reflected in the industry figures: the turnover of companies grew by 7 percent in 2019 compared to the previous year, the number of employees increased from around 68,000 to around 70,000 and the timber construction rate continued to grow in both residential (new construction) and non-residential (new construction) construction.
Holzbau Deutschland has published these and other facts, figures and forecasts on the structure of the sector, market and economic trends, the business situation and financing, as well as training and careers in the carpentry and timber construction trades in its "Situation Report Carpenters / Timber Construction 2020" published. It can be downloaded free of charge from the Association's website in the Business Administration section.
Even after Corona: Continue to drive forward climate protection
At the conclusion of the 11th Petersberg Climate Dialogue last week, German Chancellor Angela Merkel appealed that in the period after the Corona crisis, "when we launch economic stimulus packages, we should always keep climate protection firmly in mind and make it clear that we are not cutting back on climate protection, but investing in technologies that are fit for the future."
Timber construction has long been one of the sustainable technologies that can make an essential contribution to achieving climate protection goals. "Ecological, sustainable and resource-saving construction with wood must therefore continue to be the focus in residential construction as well as in redensification and gap filling in existing buildings. In order for timber construction to be recognized as an alternative on an equal footing with other construction methods, the framework conditions must be further improved and the building codes of the federal states must be adapted to the current state of the art," demanded Peter Aicher, Chairman of Holzbau Deutschland.
The current and further development in timber construction
Until the outbreak of the Corona pandemic, the mood in the timber construction industry was good. The satisfaction of carpentry and timber construction companies is also reflected in the Holzbau Deutschland business survey, in which almost 370 companies took part at the turn of the year 2019/2020. Their order backlog at the beginning of the year already averaged 17 weeks (previous year 15 weeks). The current exceptional situation in the wake of the Corona pandemic has not changed this much: According to recent surveys, most businesses are going about their work without any significant restrictions and in compliance with clearance and hygiene rules. Builders are also sticking to their construction projects. Many timber construction companies are currently benefiting from the existing high order backlog. For some of them, the workload will last until next year.
How turnover in timber construction will develop in 2020 and beyond, and what impact the Corona pandemic will have, cannot be reliably assessed at the present time. Regardless of the current situation, the timber construction industry has assumed a further 5 percent increase in sales by the beginning of March. The value is also based on the cautious confidence of the entrepreneurs from the economic survey of Holzbau Deutschland.
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