Right-Sizing Cities for Maximum Power: Urban Form Parameters for New York City and the Greater Philadelphia Region
1
School of Architecture, University of Ulsan, Ulsan 44610, Korea
2
Department of Architecture, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Sustainability 2019, 11(8), 2352; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11082352
Received: 29 March 2019 / Revised: 14 April 2019 / Accepted: 17 April 2019 / Published: 19 April 2019
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Architectural Theory for Sustainable Urban Design)
This paper examines the urban form parameters in theories and ideas related to the urbanizing world. Adopting emergy (spelled with an “m”) synthesis, we studied New York City and the Greater Philadelphia region to determine the appropriate urban form, including building height, development density, bulkiness, and transportation. The European and North American mid-rise urban block is an effective settlement type for reducing per capita emergy in construction and building operations. Buildings over 40 stories with a development density exceeding a floor area ratio of 5 tend to show higher emergy investments per person. Large and bulky buildings with low surface-area-to-volume ratios that reside on the periphery of cities consume a significant amount of energy due to conditioning building space and the increased transportation needs for commuters.
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Keywords:
urban form; urban design; sustainability; emergy analysis
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MDPI and ACS Style
Lee, J.M.; Braham, W. Right-Sizing Cities for Maximum Power: Urban Form Parameters for New York City and the Greater Philadelphia Region. Sustainability 2019, 11, 2352. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11082352
AMA Style
Lee JM, Braham W. Right-Sizing Cities for Maximum Power: Urban Form Parameters for New York City and the Greater Philadelphia Region. Sustainability. 2019; 11(8):2352. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11082352
Chicago/Turabian StyleLee, Jae M., and William Braham. 2019. "Right-Sizing Cities for Maximum Power: Urban Form Parameters for New York City and the Greater Philadelphia Region" Sustainability 11, no. 8: 2352. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11082352
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