Small-scale climate smart, ecological and sustainable communities
The district of Porsön next to the Luleå University of Technology campus will be part of a case study, becoming a so-called "living lab", for a new study in Architecture and Construction Management and Building Technology in how smaller neighborhoods or communities in cold climate can become more self-sufficient.
"Our idea is to investigate whether from the inhabitants of a suburbs or smaller neighborhoods, we can create a greener society with our own small-scale crops of food and smart new technologies for power generation and reuse of waste heat, says Marcus Sandberg, researcher in building production and technology at Luleå University of Technology. We also want to premiere the choice of building materials with low life cycle energy", Marcus continues.
A more organic housing with self-sufficiency of electricity and urban agriculture combined with new smart technology for heating is a major trend in the world's big cities. The challenge in this project is to investigate whether it is possible to implement the same on a smaller scale and in our cold climate.
"The concept we are working with is already tested in the US but not in cold winter cities. With the concept of Living Lab, we mean a real place with ordinary people living their everyday life, and that they are part of the study," says Agatino Rizzo, Associate Professor in Architecture at Luleå University of Technology.
Climate issues are becoming increasingly important. Most people in Sweden live in small and medium-sized municipalities that lack the resources of the largest municipalities and therefore have a big challenge in meeting the overall objectives formulated in the Paris agreement. Cities account for a large part of the climate impact, however, the municipal government only controls a small part of this because the bulk comes from industries
The Sustainable Development Goals or Agenda 2030 call for transformative steps “to shift the world onto a sustainable and resilient path”. The translation of, among others, SDG 11 and the 2015 Paris agreement into national polices poses a number of challenges for medium-size to small Swedish cities, which account roughly for 95% of the total number of municipalities and 65% of the total population according to the Swedish statistics bureau.
