Abstract
In November 2014 a green façade was built in the Sestri Ponente district in Genoa, Italy, on an office building owned by the Istituto Nazionale di Previdenza Sociale (National Institute of Social Insurance). This area, which is characterized by a relatively high population density, faces important environmental issues related to, for example, air pollution, stormwater management, and the urban heat island effect. The Department of Sciences for Architecture at the University of Genoa (Italy) is conducting monitoring activity to evaluate the effectiveness of the green façade with regard to summer cooling, winter heating – in collaboration with Research on the Energy System – air quality improvement, and economic and environmental sustainability. Starting from this first pilot project a question arises: what would be the effect of vegetation at the district scale? This article discusses the potentialities for urban sustainable development of the integration of green infrastructure. Simulations carried out with ENVI-Met software demonstrate the potentialities of different amounts of vegetation for urban heat island mitigation. In addition, the possible stormwater runoff reduction was calculated. Such calculations are based on urban design projects developed for the area to evaluate the possible improvement to environmental quality owing to the integration of green infrastructure.
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Notes
- 1.
The predicted mean vote (PMV) is a comfort index defined by Fanger in 1970 and mentioned in ISO 7730:2006 (“Ergonomics of the thermal environment—Analytical determination and interpretation of thermal comfort using calculation of the PMV and PPD indices and local thermal comfort criteria”). PMV takes into account several parameters (e.g., air temperature, mean radiant temperature, wind speed); positive values indicate hot-warm, while negative values cold. According to ISO 7730:2006, PMV values between +0.5 and −0.5 correspond to comfortable thermal conditions.
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Acknowledgments
Master’s students (now graduated architects) Anna Ragosa and Carolina Queirolo are acknowledged. Enrica Cattaneo and Umberto Valle are acknowledged for their fundamental support.
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Perini, K., Magliocco, A. (2017). Urban Sustainable Development in the Mediterranean Area: The Case of Sestri Ponente, Genoa. In: Sayigh, A. (eds) Mediterranean Green Buildings & Renewable Energy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30746-6_45
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30746-6_45
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