What would a good city look like?

To make a better city, planners aimed at creating a city in which the insalubrious environment and social structure would be defeated by a reordering of physical and social arrangements, so that all the citizens could attain the benefits of beauty, community, and democracy. In Harvey’s opinion, the better city should confront on the postmodernist challenge to political economy, and deal with environmental sustainable.

However I think green buildings could make good cities, and also citizens will have a best quality of life. According to the World Green Building Council’s definition, “to significantly reduce or eliminate the negative impact of buildings on the environment and on the building occupants, green building design and construction practices address: sustainable site planning, safeguarding water and water efficiency, energy efficiency, conservation of materials and resources, and indoor environmental quality.”The green building, which is sustainable in the built environment, can reduce environmental impact but also provide better buildings. The technologies associated with green buildings include:

-Energy conservation
-Water conservation
-Material selection
-Use of renewable materials
-Occupant health and indoor environment quality
-Site ecology
-Recycling

The green building can be residential, commercial, retail and industrial buildings. For example, the green building uses water-mining plant to recycle water on toilet flushing, watering the garden, and washing cars. The building also uses phase-change materials for cooling, automatic night-purge windows, wavy concrete ceilings, which saves a lot of money and become more sustainable.

The idea of green and healthy cities is becoming more important nowadays. The better city should be planed for health and well-being by planners, and they will mainly focus on service facilities, educations. The good city will also need to be safe in community, and make community more walkable, and has an urban design with exquisite streetscape. However the planner keeps developing new ideas of how cities should be changed, therefore the city will become more livable and sustainable in the future.

Reference:
Susan S. Fainstein, can we make the cities we want? The urban movement
Richard Reed and Sara J. Wilkinson (Oct, 2006) Green building-issues for the valuation process, Uiversity of Melbourne