Sustainability evaluation in urban fabrics: Indicators System and Spatial Analysis Tool (SISURBANO)

The cities in their varied scales are clear evidence of the human impact on natural geography, behaving in a metabolic way (production, consumption and waste processes) as organisms in a planetary environment of finite resources. To endure and succeed, cities must seek a symbiotic relationship capable of maintaining balance with the natural resources of the planet that supports them. Urban sustainability studies must generate results applicable to the practical scale of the citizen on foot, improving their quality of life and promoting their involvement in the evaluation of the sustainability of its territory. To do this, in order to understand the city as a complex system, the first white study should be the components that make it up, but what is the scale of such components? This project states that the appropriate response can be found in the spatial configuration patterns of the cities, which are classifiable, according to current methodologies, in types of "urban fabrics". But what methodology can evaluate the sustainability of such tissues? This research raises the consolidation of a battery of sustainability indicators and the construction of an automated computer tool that allows to evaluate five dimensions of these tissues: compactness, diversity, energy efficiency, urban metabolism and socio-spatial integration. And, although the city of Cuenca will be the place of study for the development of this conceptual and methodological framework, which will serve as the basis for the construction of public policies, the results may also be applied in other cities of Ecuador and the world.

XVII UNIVERSITY COMPETITION FOR RESEARCH PROJECTS