A crucial component in the future sustainable society is architecture. Planning city infrastructure, landscape, transport systems and buildings will be increasingly important with an increasing population. In order to reduce transport needs, future cities and towns must probably be more compact, but other values must also be considered. They should be charming, clean, safe and esthetically appealing.
Surrounding forests and fields should be lush, healthy and teaming with different species. Towns lucky enough to have old quarters of housing and canals from previous centuries should compassionately care for these places to give a sense of rooting to architecture and culture.

The greening of our cities. New York high line – railroad converted to a park. (Photo: S, Å, Bjørke)
Trees, flowers, parks, open waterfronts, lakes, rivers and canals are important for healthy surroundings.
Compact cities and towns cannot give priority to private cars nor parking places, but rather give way for plenty of automatic trams and pathways for bicycles and pedestrians. Much more traffic must go underground, be non-polluting and efficient.
All houses should at least be passive-houses in the sense that they are heated by geothermal energy and produce their own electricity by high-efficient solar panels, windmills, superbatteries and other technologies.
Many roofs and terraces could have trees and gardens. Rainwater should be collected on the roofs and in big underground cisterns – to collect water for dry spells and relieve sewage infrastructure in periods of flooding.
Apartment buildings can be tall but they could also be long, relatively low buildings with spacious apartments with built-in terraces. Such buildings could be between three and seven floors high depending on the location and could be several hundred meters in length. From a distance they would almost look like green hills. Most apartments should have views over natural landscapes, adjacent “hills” or lakes.
The infrastructure for handling waste, water, sewage, electricity, the geothermal heating and computer-guided transport systems should preferably be situated centrally in the buildings and underground. All constructions should be placed in safe distances from river beds and beaches, since flooding due to global warming and climate change has to be considered
All buildings and infrastructure must be robust and built for extreme weather events like long droughts, strong winds, very heavy precipitation, now and then also in the form of wet and heavy snow. Windows and other vulnerable areas should probably have some protection like shutters automatically appearing when necessary. Global warming means extreme weather and increasing precipitation.
A greener architecture catering for the risks from global warming and the requirements for preserving ecosystems demands competence, creativity and financial resources.
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Infrastructure
- Reasons to be hopeful: the climate solutions available now. We have every tool we need to tackle the climate crisis. Here’s what some key sectors are doing
- The pandemic will accelerate the evolution of our cities (2020)
- What’s Wrong With Modern Buildings? Everything, Starting With How They’re Made (Bloomberg 2020)
- EC Green infrastructure
- Green infrastructure becoming mainstream
- Munich re Turning the urban challenge into an opportunity
- Cities in the age of climateconsequences (Grist)
- The value of ecosystem resilience to insurers
- Climate wise: reducing the risk for tomorrow
- Underinvesting in resilience – Get resilient
- Building a climate resilient nation
- Neighborhood units matter
- The case for place-making without the sprawl
- Green Inventions: 10 Hot Eco-Innovations That Could Change The Planet (PHOTOS)
- How better urban design makes us healthier, happier and sexier
- Symbiotic cities’ network
- A new take on suburbia
- Designing urban agriculture
- Three Perspectives on Designing Resilient Cities
- Architecture in Tune With the Climate
- Greening Our Cities: It Takes a Village. Building green infrastructure
- How Do We Make Our Cities More Resilient? Make Them More Natural (April 2014)
- The 21st century needs its own paradigm shift in architecture
- Urban Farming Is Revolutionizing Our Cities
- The Urban Common Spaces That Show Us We Belong to Something Larger
We must protect the parks, pathways, and gardens that connect us to each other and to the ecosystems of our home - Ten key ingredients of a green and healthy community
Transport
- Electric roads could make plugging in your EV a thing of the past
- The hyperloop transportation system
- Why light electric vehicles will outpace cars before you know it
- What is the mobility of the future
- Cambridge chemists make super-battery breakthrough
- Germany unveils world’s first zero emission passenger train
Buildings
- World Green Building Council
- Amazing new house proves that green doesn’t have to mean expensive
- Norwegian green building council
- Build resilient in an unstoppable world
- Zero-energy building
- Titan Brick – for green construction
- Zero energy homes have arrived
- Dome Homes Could Save Everyone From Hurricanes, Earthquakes And Flying Cars
- Discover Green Building with GBIG
- Sustainable green building methods
- How one building is changing the world
- House of the Future Is Here Today, Generates Twice the Energy It Uses
- The Future of the Battery Powered Homes
- Superbatteries
- Green cities: What Australia can learn from Asia
- World’s First Off-Grid ReGen Village Will Be Completely Self-Sufficient Producing Its Own Power and Food
- 5 Eco-Home Development Projects That Are Shaping the Future of Sustainable Design
- The Top 5 Sustainable Building Trends of 2016
- How an Ecological Approach to Architecture Can Help Reinvent Urban Food Systems
Green roofs
- World green roofs
- Why we should use our roofs in the fight against climate change?
- The importance of green roof infrastructure
- Green roofs
- The world’s largest green roof in Silicon Valley
- Green roofs – vision for the future
Pilots and experiments
- Masdar
- Experiment sustainable town
- American towns leapfrogging towards a greener future
- This Is What Los Angeles Could Look Like In 2033
- They paved paradise and put in … some solar panels?
- Finland’s floating village
- Futuristic Paris Smart City is filled with flourishing green skyscrapers…
- MenoMenoPiu Architects design tiny capsule hotels with stunning views of the Parisian waterfront
- These bizarre, beautiful cities of the future are also super green
- I never realized how dumb our cities are until I saw what a smart one looks like.
- Constructing the City of the Future (Saudi Arabia)
- This vertical village looks like a jungle towering 36 stories into the sky
- The Collective
- Inhabitat
- Damanhur
- Global Ecovillage Network
- Transition Town Totnes (TTT)
- Imagining Sustainability in 2030: Smart Farms to Super Batteries
- ‘World’s Most Sustainable City’ to Run on 100% Solar
Architecture for sustainability
- Hafencity Mother nature network
- Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)
- New solar structures cool buildings in full sunlight
- Island in the sun: Why are our cities heating up faster than everywhere else?
- Sustainable Architecture: 5 Reasons To Love Green Buildings
- Going Green in 2014: A Conversation with Two Thought Leaders on Urban Green Design
- Vincent Callebaut, Architecture | Coral reef matrix and plug in
- The Eco-Utopian Visions of Architect Vincent Callebaut – Time
- The Interlace – residential developments in Singapore
- Ecohousing
- Green Cities: Breathe deep and walk freely
- Hafencity Hamburg displays full spectrum of forward-looking urban development
- Sustainable architecture Woha
- This is humankind’s ‘great urbanisation’. We must do it right, or the planet will pay
- 7,000 cities around the world are way ahead of targets to cut carbon emissions
Next
Home | Chapter 5 | 5 Green economy |
Chapter 6 | 6 Greener future? | |
6.1 Green technology | ||
6.1.1 Solar | ||
6.1.2 Wind | ||
6.1.3 Renewable energy | ||
6.1.4 Energy storage | ||
6.1.5 Geo-engineering | ||
6.2 Ecological footprint | ||
6.3 Greener law? | ||
6.4 Greener business? | ||
6.5 Greener architecture? | ||
6.6 Greener tourism | ||