Title of thesis: The residential carbon landscape – impacts of land-use change and construction practices on urban residential carbon pools
Doctoral candidate: Antti Kinnunen
Doctoral committee:
Jukka Heinonen, Professor at the Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Iceland
Seppo Junnila, Professor at Aalto University, Finland
Juudit Ottelin, Associate Professor at NTNU, Norway
Abstract
Despite occupying a mere 2% of the global land area cities are responsible for up to 70% of the anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, making them the forefront of climate change mitigation. A hefty portion of this is attributable to residential buildings and properties, as building and construction sector has been estimated to contribute approximately 40% of the global anthropogenic GHG emissions and residential land use forms cover a substantial portion of the global built area.
Much of the research to date has focused on reducing the emissions associated with residential environment, for example by reducing building energy consumption, improving public transportation network and densifying the urban form. However, a novel aspect has arisen from recent literature to utilize urban areas as part of the natural system, producing tangible environmental benefits on their own. This school of thought builds upon the sustainable development goals to not only aim at mitigation, but also restoration and regeneration.
The doctoral research aims at quantifying the biogenic carbon sequestration and storage (CSS) potential of urban residential environments, operationalized through green infrastructure and biogenic construction materials. We identify the key background drivers associated with the residential CSS potential and utilize empirical and scenario modelling to estimate how historical planning and construction practices as well as predicted future urban growth might impact this, accounting for the lost CSS potential of natural- and rural environments as well.
Our results show that carbon neutral or even -negative neighbourhoods are achievable from the land use perspective with pre-meditated effort from the planning and construction sector and bring into question the conventional sustainability paradigm associated with urban growth; is dense necessarily always the best choice?