CO2-reduction in new housing estates: a workshop as a building block

Abstract

Abstract niet beschikbaar

The issue of climate change and related to that reduction of CO2 emissions has gained a prominent place on the agenda of environmental policymakers. The project 'From Greenhouse to Green Housing' aimed to analyse barriers and opportunities for CO2-reduction in building locations and to develop and test, based on this analysis, a participatory method for the design of future urban areas with low CO2 emissions. The first phase of the project included an overview of the state-of-the-art knowledge about options for CO2-reduction and an empirical analysis of the role of options for CO2-reduction in planning processes for new housing estates. In the second phase a participatory method for the design of future urban areas with low CO2 emissions, the CO2-reduction workshop, was developed and tested. The workshop consists of two days with an interval of three or four weeks between the two sessions and should be held early in the planning process. The results show that the workshop:- stimulates awareness about options for CO2-reduction among key actors, - gives the actors more insight into the kinds of options available for CO2-reduction,- involves actors who could play a role in realising options in an early phase of the planning process, and - facilitates to make agreements about the actual implementation of options for CO2-reduction. To disseminate the workshop method and to bring the CO2-reduction workshop under the attention of local governments and project managers of building locations, a manual aimed at these actors has been written.